MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

Chapter 174: HOLD THE LINE

ROWAN

The first thing an acting Alpha learned was that everyone needed something from you at the exact same time.

Marco caught me before I cleared the pack house doors.

"North gate compromised." His voice was steady. Working to keep it that way. "Twelve sentinels holding a perimeter built for eight."

"Victor’s men," I said. "Where are they."

"Tree line. North edge." He paused. "They have not moved."

That was the part I did not like.

"How long."

"Since they arrived. They came through and stopped and have not moved since."

An enemy who was not moving was not confused or hesitating. An enemy who was not moving knew something the other side did not.

"Numbers," I said.

"Thirty confirmed at the gate. Could be more in the tree line. We cannot get a clean count from the ramparts."

Thirty against twelve. Corvin was twenty four hours out. Ryker had not answered his phone across three attempts and I was going to deal with that when I had the space to be furious about it. Right now I had thirty men at my gate and twelve sentinels holding them and I needed to fix those numbers before the waiting became an advance.

"Pull the second ring in. Every able body between twenty and fifty at the north wall. Anyone trained goes forward. Anyone not trained moves the non-combatants south and keeps them moving until they reach the boundary house. I want the pack house clear of anyone who cannot fight in the next fifteen minutes."

Marco’s jaw was tight. "We have never done this without your father."

"I know. We are doing it now. Go."

He went.

I moved through the main corridor and out the side entrance and across the training yard at a pace that was not running. An Alpha who ran sent a message to every wolf in the pack and that message was panic, and panic moved through a pack the way fire moved through dry grass, faster and hungrier than the thing that started it. I kept my stride even and my face still and ran through the numbers in my head while I walked.

Thirty at the gate. More in the trees. Corvin two hours out. Ryker unreachable. One acting Alpha who had held this role for seven days and had spent six of them hoping the moment it was tested would come later rather than today.

It had not come later. It had come now and now was what I had.

The training yard had people in it who should have been moving. I caught Petra’s eye, one of the senior non-combatants, and tipped my head toward the south corridor. She understood immediately. She turned and started moving and others followed her and that was what a frightened pack needed above anything else. Not a speech. Not a strategy read aloud. Someone who was not afraid for them to follow.

I kept walking.

The north wall was sixty-year-old stone, built wide and thick for exactly this kind of morning. By the time I reached it the sentinels had doubled on the ramparts and the second ring was filtering in at my back, moving into position with the quiet discipline of people who had trained for something they had never actually needed until now. The way they moved settled something in my chest. Not comfort. Resolve. The pack was afraid and the pack was still doing its job anyway. I would take that.

I took the rampart steps three at a time.

From the top of the wall the tree line sat roughly four hundred metres out. Victor’s men were in a loose formation at the edge of it. Not advancing. Not retreating. Thirty bodies I could count and the trees swallowed whatever was behind them.

A sentinel pressed a scope into my hand.

I swept the line slowly.

Armed. Weapons lowered. Standing and watching the wall with the patient stillness of men who had been told to wait and were entirely comfortable with it. Not shifting their weight. Not talking among themselves. Just watching. They had the look of men who had done this before and expected to be here a while longer.

Behind them, barely visible between the trunks, a black car had been driven directly onto the grass and left at an angle with the engine still running. It made no practical sense unless it was meant to be seen from the wall.

Not a vehicle. A message. He had put it there so we would look at it and understand that he had planned this, prepared for it, chosen to be here. That nothing about this morning was improvised.

I lowered the scope.

"Has anyone spoken," I said.

"Nothing," the lead sentinel replied. "They arrived, stopped, and have not moved since."

Forty-three minutes since Nia had run through the kitchen door. Forty-three minutes of Victor’s men standing at the tree line in complete silence. That was not hesitation. That was a man who was comfortable because he already knew how this resolved. He was waiting for us to arrive at the same conclusion he had started from.

I stood at the wall and studied the field and thought about the variables.

I could feel every wolf on that wall waiting for me to do something. I did not do anything. I watched the tree line and I thought and I let them wait, because an Alpha who moved before he was ready was not protecting his pack. He was just moving.

The radio crackled.

I knew the voice before the static cleared.

I had learned more about combat from Victor Hale than from anyone else my father had ever hired. Half the sentinels on this wall had learned the same things from the same man.

Which was exactly why he had sent thirty of them to my gate and not moved them.

He knew exactly what I had.

He had built it.

"Rowan." Not Acting Alpha. Not a title. Just my name, the way he had always used it. Like we were still in the yard. Like the last three years had not happened. "Come up to the wall. Let’s talk."

I took the radio from the sentinel’s hand.

"I’m already here," I said.

A pause. Something in it that might have been satisfaction.

"Good." His voice had not changed. That was the thing I noticed every time. Victor Hale sounded exactly as he always had. Even now. Unhurried. Precise. Like the world was moving at the speed he had chosen and not a breath faster. "Then you already know what I have out there and you already know what it would cost you. So I will skip that part."

I said nothing.

"I do not want your pack," Victor said. "I never wanted your pack. Your father knows that. You know that. I want one person and you are going to give her to me because you are smart enough to understand what happens to the people behind that wall if you don’t."

"Speak plainly," I said.

"Give her to me." Even now. Patient. Almost gentle. The way he had sounded when I made a mistake in training and he was correcting me before it became a habit. "Every man I have goes home tonight. Your pack stands. Your father returns to exactly what he left. No one is hurt. You have my word."

The wall had gone completely still around me.

I had watched Victor Hale keep his word in front of me more times than I could count. He kept his word the way other men breathed. Without effort. Without exception.

That was what made this worse.

"I don’t know who you mean," I said.

"Yes you do." He let that sit for a moment. " I taught you better than that answer."

My grip tightened on the radio.

He was not talking about Amaris. Amaris had arrived through a ceremony with witnesses. She was not hidden. She was Luna of this pack by law and by name.

He was talking about someone else.

The only woman in Gravemoon who had come back from the dead and chosen to be quiet about what she had come back as.

"Twenty minutes," Victor said. "I would use them."

The radio went silent.

I lowered it.

He knew every gap we had.

And he had sent thirty men who were not moving because Victor Hale had never been interested in force when information would do the same job with less cost. He was standing outside this wall waiting for me to understand that he could breach it whenever he chose and had chosen not to yet.

That was what the car was for too. Left running in the field where I could see it from the ramparts. I see you. I am not afraid of you. I am choosing to wait.

I had learned that tactic from him.

I stared at the tree line.

He was not talking about Amaris. Amaris had arrived through a ceremony, stood at a public mating, worn my father’s ring in front of the whole pack. There was nothing quiet about Amaris. There was nothing hidden.

He was talking about Freya.

Freya, who had come back from the dead. Freya, who my father had brought back without explanation and housed without announcement. Freya, who I had accepted because my father asked me to.

Now do I hand her over and protect the pack?