Chapter 560

HALE

Finishe

Petra looked like she wanted to ask a follow-up question and then looked at the rest of the table and decided against it.

“The physical capacity,” I said. “You said she’s physically active. Elaborate.”

Malen shifted in his chair. “She participates in the pack’s physical training. Not the wolf-specific drills, but the general conditioning and the combat disciplines. She’s been doing this for — based on our intelligence, her entire tenure in Shadowmere, which is close to fifteen years. She’s not a wolf and she doesn’t fight like one, but she fights. She has specific techniques adapted for fighting against wolves that use their size and their predictive patterns against them.” He paused. “In the second year, during the northeastern boundary operation, our field operative had a direct physical engagement with her. She’s five foot four and weighed approximately fifty-five kilos at that point. Our operative was a full wolf, two hundred pounds, partial shift. She held the engagement for seven minutes before breaking contact and retreating using a prepared route through the botanical perimeter that our operative couldn’t follow safely.” Another pause. “Our operative had a dislocated shoulder. She had a knife wound to the forearm that she’d apparently treated herself before our intelligence confirmed the engagement had occurred.”

“She treated herself,” I said.

‘While continuing to walk to her destination,” Malen said. “Yes.”

I stood up again.

This time nobody tried to stop me. I walked to the fire – the anchor fire, burning in its specific continuous way – and stood in front of it with my back to the room and processed what I’d just been told.

Four years.

Four years of operations against one woman. Sixty-nine documented incidents. Personnel lost, resources expended, supply chains disrupted, the death eater approach attempted and failed twice. Vela, who’d been running the primary field operations against Shadowmere, was now ash in a dungeon. Alaric, who’d been our best intelligence asset inside the northeastern territory network, was ash in the same dungeon.

Killed by Ivory Vance.

With the dagger.

In what Vela had apparently characterized, in her final transmission before entering the dungeon, as a visit cather than an interrogation. She’d walked in. She’d stabbed Vela before Vela finished speaking. She’d told Tole Vela to send a message.

And then she’d gone two doors down and done the same to Alaric.

The message had arrived. I’d felt Vela’s death through the coven connection – not the way the younger members felt it, with the full emotional weight of a bond severing, but the way I felt everything since taking the anchor seat, which was through the fire, through the network, through the thing that connected

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Chapter 560-

all of us and was one of the reasons the Ashveil network had survived for three generations.

She knew I’d feel it.

She’d sent the message knowing I’d feel it and had intended for me to feel it.

*Game on,* she’d said. *They want a war. I’ll give them one.*

Finished

One human woman. No wolf. No supernatural capacity. A healer.

Standing in a dungeon telling us that she was declaring war on the network that had been trying to kill her for four years and had sixty-nine operations to show for the trying.

I turned around.

“Let me underst “Are you tellin network, we

supernatur

“Yes,” M

I tur

,” I said. “Let me be very precise about what I’m asking.” I looked at Malen.

r years of sustained operational pressure, with the full resources of this

to neutralize one human woman who has no wolf, no magic, and no y kind.”

time,” Malen said. “Before the amnesia. After the amnesia – while she was operating ries, without the context of what she’d built and who she was – she came second.” that. “She came second in the Ghost Hunt of Shadowmere Pack without knowing who Is are designed for wolves. She’s human.”

capacity,” I said.

lly understand it,” Malen said. “The endurance specifically. She’s been tortured. She’s been She’s been waterboarded. She’s been held captive and she’s been used as target practice and branded. In any of those situations, the intended outcome was death or incapacitation

t enough to remove her from the field.” Malen looked at the folder. “Sixty-nine documented is over four years. She’s survived all sixty-nine.”

-nine,” I said.

t all of them were our work.” Malen said. “She’s made enemies across multiple territories from the earch she’s been doing. Some of the attempts were independent. But the outcome is the same. They Arned a page. “And then there’s the death cater.”

She removed a death eater from herself,” I said.

Yes, Maien said.

“That’s not possible

And yet, Mal

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Chapter 560-

“The pain alone

Finished

“She’s apparently made specific relationship with pain over the years,” Malen said. “Based on the surviving accounts from the operatives who interacted with her during various incidents, she doesn’t respond to pain the way subjects are expected to respond. She responds to it the way someone responds to an inconvenience they’ve decided is not going to be the deciding factor.”

“And the reason for that,” I said.

“Several reasons,” he said. “She’s extraordinarily intelligent. Her field instincts are – I’ve said it already, but I want to emphasize it – among the highest I’ve encountered in fifteen years of field work. Not counting supernaturals. Counting everything. She reads threat environments faster than most people I’ve worked with, she adapts operational architecture in real time, and she’s built twelve years of specific defensive and offensive capacity in Shadowmere that turns a small pack into a significantly harder target than its nominal strength suggests.” He paused. “And she’s not alone.”

“The inner circle,” I said.

The inner circle,” I said.

“Also a problem,” Malen said, with the tone of someone who’d been saving this part.

“Tell me.”

“Shadowmere’s inner circle is – each member is, individually, at the top of their specific discipline,” Malen said. “The security chief, Nina, built Shadowmere’s alternative infrastructure during the curse years essentially from scratch. The communications and physical security systems she developed without the mindlink are more sophisticated than what most functioning packs use. Jordan, the intelligence operative, has a network that we didn’t discover existed for three years – he’d embedded it in places we weren’t looking, which means he was better at hiding things/than we were at finding them, which is a specific kind of difficult.” Malen paused. “Elite, the defense and war specialist, is someone we have actively avoided engaging directly since an incident in the second year that we don’t discuss in briefings.”

“What incident,” I said.

“The incident we don’t discuss in briefings,” Malen said. “The point is that each of them, individually, is formidable. Together-” they stopped.

“Together what,” I said.

“Together,” Malen said carefully, “they appear to lose a significant portion of their individual cognitive capacity and replace it with something that is difficult to categorize.”

I turned from the window.

“They’re idiots together,” Malen said. “Specifically and deliberately. They play poker in hidden rooms. They have book clubs. They bully the alpha. The alpha bullies them back. They make decisions about pack budget that include based on the financial intelligence we’ve gathered a not-insignificant expenditure

on novels,

Novels,” I said.

A specific series, Malen said “Multiple members appear to have independently acquired copies and

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Chapter 560-

supplementary materials.” A pause. “It seems to be a coping mechanism.”

I stared at them.

Finished

“You’re telling me,” I said, “that the inner circle of the pack that has been the primary obstacle to our operations for four years that has survived sixty-nine attempts on one of its members, that has maintained pack cohesion through a three-year alpha curse, that has killed two of my operatives this afternoon without apparent hesitation – spends their downtime reading novels together.”