Page 68 of The Iron Alpha

"From where," I say.

"North." Cael's gaze holds mine. "Scotland."

The word settles into the church walls like a stone placed into a foundation. Scotland. The territory none of us govern.

The territory I've been treating as a rumor for years, a name attached to whispered intelligence and the dying word of a rogue who bled out on my flagstones.

"The probes aren't military," Cael continues. "They're reconnaissance. Someone is mapping my coastline. Learning the tides, the patrol rotations, the gaps." His head tilts. "They're patient. Whoever is running them has the restraint to wait."

I lay the arrowhead on the map. The steel catches the gray light filtering through the open roof.

"Manufactured weapons appearing on Soren's supply lines. An organized military column at Emric's border. Coordinated reconnaissance probes at Cael's coast." I place my palm flat on the map, the territories spread beneath my fingers like the anatomy of everything I've built. "And the supply corridor between the Tower and Dover has been systematically dismantled. Settlements going dark. Treaty families burned out or frightened into silence. The pattern runs northwest."

I trace the line on the map with one finger. Northwest. Toward a territory none of us governs.

"The Dover insurgents carried weapons we never traced. The same quality as this." I tap the arrowhead. "Steel-tipped. Manufactured. Distributed to anyone willing to test the brotherhood's lines."

Soren's voice is flat. "You're saying this is one enemy."

"I'm saying this is one strategy. Four territories attacked in four different ways, each designed to exploit the specific vulnerability of the territory it targets. Your supply infrastructure. Emric's border exposure. Cael's coastline. My treaty settlements." The pattern is so clear it makes the wolf press against my ribs, not restless but focused, the coiled attention of an animal that has finally caught the scent of what's been circling his territory. "Whoever is behind this understands the brotherhood. Our strengths, our weaknesses, where we're reinforced and where we're thin. They know us."

The silence holds. Four alphas processing the same conclusion from four different angles.

Emric breaks it. "The rogue who died in your ward."

"He said a word before he died." I don't repeat it. The rogue's dying utterance pointed north, toward a name I've spent years refusing to dignify with acknowledgment, a wolf whose existence I treated as a border problem when it was an existential one. "I dismissed the intelligence. I was wrong."

Saying it costs me nothing I'm willing to name. The admission is tactical. Dwelling on the error is not. The relevant fact is that whatever force is coordinating these attacks has been building for years, and I was too focused on the internal workings of the brotherhood to see the external threat for what it was.

"What do we do," Soren says. Not asking for orders. Testing whether I have a plan that's worth more than his own.

"Emric engages the Welsh column. Prisoners, not corpses. I want to know who's supplying them, who's commanding them, and where the supply chain originates." I look at Emric. He nods, the confirmation immediate, because Emric has been waiting for authorization to do what his instincts already demanded. "Soren, I'm dispatching wolves from the Tower to reinforce your supply lines. My scouts will trace the contamination path backward until we find the source."

"And me," Cael says.

"You let the next probe land. And you take them alive."

Cael's expression doesn't change, but the set of his jaw tells me he's already considered this and discarded it twice. Taking prisoners requires restraint, and restraint is not the Storm Pack's natural register.

"They'll stop probing if I take prisoners."

"Then we'll know the other end is listening. That's intelligence too."

Cael holds my gaze long enough that a lesser wolf would look away. Then he lifts one shoulder, a concession so minimal thatyears of reading his silences is the only reason I identify it as agreement.

The meeting should continue. There are logistics to coordinate, patrol schedules to synchronize, supply reallocation to calculate. The machinery of four territories working in concert requires hours to calibrate.

I open my mouth to move to the next item, and the bond detonates.

It isn't a pulse. It isn't a tightening. It's a concussion, a shock wave traveling through the connection from the south with a force that locks every muscle in my body simultaneously. My hands grip the altar stone hard enough that the moss shreds under my nails. My jaw clamps shut. My vision narrows to a point, and for one dislocated heartbeat I am not standing in a ruined church in the center of England. I am in the great hall of the Tower, and a wolf with bared teeth is closing the distance, and every tooth in my head aches with the need to bite.

Eleanor.

The wolf surges so hard my spine bows. The scent of the other alphas sharpens to a razor edge, every body in this church registering as an obstacle between me and her. Her fear and fury and iron-boned resolve pour through the bond like a river through a breached wall.

My legs want to move. South. Now. The instinct has no language, no strategy, nothing but the white-hot imperative of a predator whose mate is under threat.

The fear is enormous, primal, the response of a body confronting a predator with no tools to match it.