Chapter 377 He Said I Need You To Trust Me
They cleared the fence and the forest swallowed them.
Agnes ran. Full speed.
Branches caught her dress, her hair, the skin of her arms. Andrew held on with the desperate grip of a child who had decided the angel was running and the angel’s running was his, and his arms were locked and his face was buried and his fifty pounds of starved, terrified body was the lightest and heaviest thing Agnes had ever carried.
She ran for twenty minutes. Past the outer wards. Past the patrol perimeter. Past the scent line where Viremont wolves would stop tracking because the forest beyond it belonged to neutral territory and pursuit into neutral territory required authorization that patrol captains lacked.
She stopped. Leaned against a tree. Her arms were shaking so violently the vibration was transferring into Andrew’s body. Her chest was heaving. Her wrists were screaming. Her lip was still bleeding. The cold had turned her fingers blue and her teeth were chattering.
Andrew had passed out. His body was limp against her chest, his breathing slow and steady, the breathing of a child who had exhausted every resource his small body possessed and was trusting the angel to handle the rest.
Agnes held him. She looked up at the canopy. Stars were visible through the gaps in the branches, cold and distant and indifferent to the woman standing beneath them with a stolen child and a stolen freedom and a baby she hadn’t told anyone about.
Then she heard it.
Garrett:Agnes, can you hear me?
Tears filled her eyes.
If he was mindlinking, he was close. Close enough that the distance between her and safety had just collapsed from impossible to measurable.
Her stomach dropped. Because close enough to reach her meant close enough to reach the compound, and the compound was a trap, and the trap was designed for the exact man whose voice was threading through her chest right now.
Agnes: Yes. Garrett, my father is planning to attack Darkhowler tonight if you show here. It is a trap. He wants you here so he invade Darkhowler.
Silence on the other end. One second. Two.
Garrett:Where are you? I’m coming.
He hadn’t acknowledged a single word of the intelligence. She had just handed him the complete operational blueprint for a coordinated invasion of his kingdom, the timeline, the entry point, and his response was five words, and the five words were about her, and the five words hit her matebond with a warmth so immediate and so total that her knees nearly buckled.
Tears fell.
They came fast, hot against the cold skin of her face, and the crying was silent because Andrew was asleep on her chest and the forest had ears. The tears were carrying everything she had been holding since the chair and the silver and the backhand and the five-story wall and the pillory and the boy and the whiskey room where her father had spoken Garrett’s death with the cadence of a man ordering dinner.
Part of her had wondered if he would even want to come for her. The part she had buried beneath operational discipline and tactical calculation, the part that listened to a stranger through a cracked window say “unlikable by design” and “good riddance” and “a traitor who entertained him in bed.” That part that had spent four hours constructing a scenario where Garrett Darkhowler received the intelligence that his mate had been extracted by her father and decided the extraction was a gift. That part that had whispered that the man she had lied to for months would do the math and conclude that the math favored letting her go.
He was coming.
He hadn’t hesitated. Hadn’t calculated. Hadn’t weighed the tactical value of her retrieval against the operational risk of approaching a fortified compound.
The guilt and the relief hit at the same time, tangled so thoroughly that she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Guilt because she had been lying to this man every morning and the relief felt undeserved. Then, worry came. Darkhowler was in danger.
Garrett’s mindlink came through again, lighter this time, threaded with the warmth he used when he was trying to cut tension and knew the blade needed to be gentle.
Garrett:Your emotions are doing laps right now. I can feel guilt, relief, guilt again, something that might be nausea, and what I think is anger at yourself. Want to pick one so I can respond appropriately, or should I just bring a blanket and cover all the bases?
A laugh broke out of her. Involuntary, wet, muffled against Andrew’s hair. The laugh was the first honest sound she had made in hours, and the matebond carried it to Garrett, and through the connection she felt his response: a single pulse of warmth that said there you are.
She pushed the laugh down. The intelligence couldn’t wait.
Agnes: Garrett, listen to me. Go home. Fortify. They are going to kill Cross first. He is the primary target because my father considers your Beta the structural spine of Darkhowler, and removing him collapses your command chain. You are second. He wants you dead because killing you kills the matebond, and killing the matebond is how he plans to bring me back under his control.
She paused. The next part was bigger. Continent-scale.
Agnes: My father is coordinating with Orosia. The plan is cascading. Viremont takes Darkhowler. Bloodmoon mobilizes because they are geographically closest. Viremont takes Bloodmoon while their forces are committed to your rescue. Drakenfell and Shadowclaw send reinforcements to both. Orosia invades Drakenfell and Shadowclaw while their armies are stretched across two fronts. The entire alliance fractures. The lynchpin is you being here, Garrett. If you are at the compound, Darkhowler is empty, and the cascade begins.
She swallowed. The swallow tasted like blood and cold air and the particular bitterness of a woman delivering intelligence about her own father’s war plan to the man her father intended to kill.
Agnes:I will get myself out of this and find you. Go home.
The matebond hummed. Three seconds of quiet that carried the specific quality of a man processing tactical intelligence at the speed his training demanded while simultaneously managing the emotional reality of hearing his mate’s voice for the first time in hours.
His voice came through the matebond steady, warm, and carrying the particular certainty of a man who had already made his decision and was informing her of it rather than discussing it.
Garrett: I need you to trust me that I have Darkhowler handled. Cross is aware. My captains have been briefed on a Viremont scenario since the day I started following you to meet your father. We planned for this.
Her chest tightened. Then her stomach dropped. He knew.
Garrett:Let me get you out of here. Where are you?