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“Sloane. Five wolves. Two minutes. Nobody asked you to do that.”

“Nobody had to.”

He leaned against the wall beside her. Close enough that their shoulders almost touched. She didn’t move away.

“He’s going to keep coming,” she said quietly. “He’ll send another probe. Then another. He’ll learn the response times, the gaps, the personnel. He’ll know exactly how many wolves it takes to overwhelm us before he commits everything he has.”

“I know.”

“And when he comes for real, it’ll be for me. You know that.”

“I know that too.”

She turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were red at the edges, though whether from the fight or the cold or what was happening behind them he couldn’t tell.

“He won’t get to you,” Chris said.

“You can’t promise that.”

“I just did.”

“Chris.”

“I will put myself between you and him. Every time. Every way he comes at you. I will be standing there, and he will have to go through me first, and he won’t. He won’t get through me.” He kept his voice level. He didn’t reach for her, didn’t crowd her, didn’t make it into a gesture she’d have to carry. He just said it, standing beside her, looking at her face in the early light. “I will protect you with my life. That’s not negotiable. That’s not the bond talking. That’s me.”

She held his gaze. He watched her fight the instinct to deflect, to say something sharp, to turn the promise into a joke she could survive. He watched her not do any of those things.

“Okay,” she said.

It was barely a word. It left her like something she’d been holding in her hands too tightly for too long and had finally, carefully, set down.

“Okay,” he said.

They stood against the wall while the compound woke around them. The patrol shift changed. Voices carried from the dining hall. Somewhere nearby, a door opened and closed.

Sloane’s shoulder pressed against his. He let her lean.

Chapter 24 - Sloane

The argument started over the map.

Sloane had the patrol schedule spread across the kitchen table, the gaps marked in red, Caitlynn’s recalibrated anchor points flagged in green. She’d been at it since the briefing broke, cross-referencing Viktor’s deployment against the weather projections, working through the overlap between the western approach and the drainage corridor that nobody had covered properly since Tuesday.

Chris came in from the evening patrol smelling of rain and pine and the cold mineral edge of the ridge. He set his jacket on the hook, looked at the table, looked at her.

“You moved the western detail.”

“I repositioned two wolves from the western detail to cover the drainage corridor during the low-pressure window. Viktor signed off.”

“Viktor signed off before I briefed him on the ridge approach. The western detail stays where it is.”

She set her pen down. “The drainage corridor is a blind spot during weather fluctuation. That’s documented. Caitlynn confirmed the anchor degradation. If Garrett sends a probe through that corridor on Thursday night, we have nothing.”

“And if he sends a full team through the western approach while the drainage corridor is covered by two wolves who should be holding the flank, we lose the residential path.”

“He won’t come through the western approach. I told you that in the briefing.”

“You told me what you think he’ll do. You don’t know.”