Page 124 of Nikolay

Taras’s pen resumed its precise motion. “Stealth increases odds of recovery but requires exact sequencing, and we do not yet possess it.”

“Brute force gets Maddie moved before dusk,” Maksym said.

“If she’s even there,” Gunner muttered.

I spoke before anyone else could answer him. “She is there.”

Every gaze returned to me.

I was careful with my breathing. “We have her on the inside. We must proceed as though she has not gone willingly along with whatever Lynch intends.”

No one argued.

That silence told me more than agreement ever could. For all our differences in species, age, rank, and custom, no one in that room believed Maddie had simply decided to tuck herself under Sage Lynch’s arm and forget the world. Not Bronc. Not Juliet. Not the wolves who had watched her grow.

Good.

Because I needed that truth held by witnesses. I needed it set in the room like another weapon on the table, something no one could quietly put away later if I failed.

I looked down at the map again. The black perimeter lines seemed to pulse under my gaze.

Juliet’s voice came low and certain from near the door. “She’ll be looking for a way out.”

Something moved in my chest then, not relief but a sharpened form of agony. Yes. Maddie would be looking. She would be smiling if it bought her an inch, provoking if that bought two, storing every detail and every insult to use when the moment came. My bright, rough-edged wolf with whiskey eyes and a mouth too honest for her own safety. The woman I had made feel lesser when she had always been the stronger of us.

“She will,” I said.

Bronc dragged a finger again along the main road into Ironwood, then along a service route branching west. “So we assume she’ll move toward noise if I make it. Or toward a breach if we go quiet.”

“Assuming she can,” Lucia said.

Nobody liked that addition, though all of us needed it.

The wall clock ticked above the sideboard with maddening politeness. Time in old houses always sounds more judgmental.

Maksym straightened at last and looked around the room. “We prepare both options until new intelligence removes one.”

“Agreed,” Taras said.

Bronc did not agree aloud, but he did not object either. That, from him, counted as cooperation.

The bond pulled again. Hard enough this time that I shut my eyes.

Not pain exactly. More a dragging ache, as if some invisible hook had found the center of my chest and drawn east.

Hold on, I thought with a desperation I would never have voiced aloud before witnesses. Hold on, little wolf.

When I opened my eyes, my reflection in the window looked older than the face I wore. Behind me, the room bent over the map like a congregation over a grave.

Just then, Amelia came through the door still pulling her jacket straight with one hand, green eyes lit with the hard brightness she wore when her mind had outrun sleep and settled somewhere beyond fatigue. She had a folded packet of notes in one hand and was already digging into a cargo pocket with the other before the door had finished shutting behind her.

“No time for pretty versions,” she said, breath quick but words precise. “I’ve got it.”

No one in the room was fool enough to ask her for ceremony.

Taras’s pen lifted and waited.

Amelia spread her notes on a clear section of table as if dealing cards that might kill us. “The Rite of the Severed Path must be performed at dusk. Not midnight, not moon peak, not whenever some dramatic asshole feels inspired. Dusk. Precise point when the sun drops below the horizon and the moon shifts from red to black.”