Chapter 447

ARIA

…

It took twelve minutes.

Twelve minutes that were the most intense twelve minutes of my life to that point, which was saying something given the day I’d had. Each wolf was different some came into the link easily, finding the anchor’s offered connection with the relieved quality of something that had been looking for exactly this. Some fought it. Two of them I had to hold in the shield bubble for thirty seconds or more while the feral edge softened enough for the link to take hold.

Louis’s wolf was the most difficult. It threw itself at the shield six times, snarling with an intensity that had Priya taking three steps backward and then, apparently annoyed at herself for the three steps, taking two of them back. On the seventh attempt, something shifted – the feral quality breaking like a fever, the wolf going still, and then Louis’s voice coming through the link with the same rough quality as Andrew’s but also unmistakably, entirely Louis.

“Alright,” Louis said. “Alright. I’m here. That is the strangest thing I have ever experienced and I once watched Morrison try to do the funky chicken at a pack celebration.”

“The memory of that,” Andrew said, through the link, “is seared into my consciousness and is one of the reasons I was open to novel experiences.”

“Focus,” Santos said, out loud, because Santos had not shifted and was managing the two people who couldn’t link and keeping everyone moving.

Priya’s wolf was fast and confident and came into the link almost immediately, with the quality of someone who’d been waiting for exactly this invitation. “I can hear everyone,” she said, the moment the connection took. “This is incredible. I can hear everything. Andrew, you’re thinking about the eastern trap positions.”

“I’m planning,” Andrew said.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Priya said.

“This is not how the mindlink works,” Louis said.

“It’s how it’s working now,” Priya said.

“Everyone stop talking,” Santos said, with the patience of a man managing thirty wolves and a Luna who was holding a connection that had never been tested at this scale. “We have four

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minutes.”

Through the link: thirty wolves, all of them present, all of them themselves, all of them connected to the anchor that was warm in my chest and expanding outward with the effort of holding all of them simultaneously. It was nothing like any training I’d done. It was also working, which was the relevant fact.

I pushed an image through. The territory’s northern approach. The trap positions. The three trigger points for the wolfsbane crossbows. The eastern perimeter with its modified vines. The tree line where the hostile force was approaching.

The wolves received it. I felt them receive it – thirty individual acknowledgments coming back through the link, not words, the sensation of people receiving a map and filing it.

Then I pushed one more image.

The pack grounds. The shelter, somewhere underground, where the children were. The clinic, currently empty. Margo and Celine in the east alcove with Ivory’s supplies laid out in order.

I didn’t need to add anything to that image. The wolves understood what it meant.

Thirty wolves stood up simultaneously.

“Santos,” I said out loud, for the non-shifters. “The plan.”

“Eastern flank holds the perimeter while the traps engage,” Santos said, with the crisp efficiency of someone who’d been building this in his head since the words one hundred fifty had been said. “Western flank moves through the secondary tree line to cut off the retreat path. Main force holds the center until they’re committed to the approach, then closes the formation. Witches are the priority target once the pack is engaged – they need line of sight, we deny them line of sight.”

“Through the link,” I said. “Andrew. Louis. You heard all of that.”

“Heard it,” Andrew said. “Eastern flank is me, Sam, and four of the trainees. Louis, you take western with Priya.”

“I was already there,” Priya said.

“Santos, center with me,” I said.

“You’re going to be in the center,” Santos said.

“I need to maintain the link,” I said. “The link runs from me. If I’m not on the field, the wolves lose coordination the moment they’re out of range.”

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Santos looked at me for two seconds. He had the expression of a man who had opinions about this and was choosing to file them under not useful right now.

“Stay close to me,” he said.

“Close to you,” I agreed.

“Margo,” I called across the hall.

Margo appeared from the east alcove immediately, which meant she’d been listening to everything and was ready.

“If this goes badly,” I said.

“It won’t,” she said.

“If it does-”

“Luna Aria,” she said, with the specific patience of someone who’d worked alongside Ivory for years and had developed a high tolerance for people suggesting negative outcomes that she’d already decided weren’t going to happen, “I have Ivory’s supplies, her instructions for every compound in the case, and twenty years of watching her manage impossible situations. If it goes badly, I will handle what needs to be handled. Go do what you’re doing.”

“That’s all I needed,” I said.

I turned to face the hall. The thirty wolves arranged in the loose formation they’d found naturally. Santos and four human fighters on foot. Priya and her people distributed through the wolf ranks.

Outside, somewhere on the northern approach, one hundred fifty wolves and six witches were twenty minutes away.

Actually, at this point, closer to eight.

“Through the link,” I said, and felt the anchor carry the words into the connection where thirty wolves received them simultaneously, “they’re betting we fall apart without Kael. They’re betting that without our senior leadership, without the mindlink, without the standard pack infrastructure, we crumble. They planned this. Damon Blackwood planned this, specifically, because he knows this pack and he thought he knew our limits.”

—

Through the link, a quality I didn’t have words for thirty animals who were also thirty people, all of them listening, all of them present.

“Prove him wrong,” I said.

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Through the link, clear and unmistakable and collectively, in the rough voices of wolves who were themselves and connected and ready:

“Done.”

The hall doors opened and we went out into the dark.