Page 123 of Nikolay

Bronc held my gaze and said nothing.

“Maddie is my mate.” The word landed in the room and stayed there. No taking it back now. No dressing it up in uncertainty. “I failed her.”

I heard Juliet inhale softly.

The bond pulsed once in my chest, sudden and raw.

“Whatever needs to be done to bring her home,” I said, “the hands that do it will be mine.”

No one moved.

In the silence, the wards in the wall hummed faintly as insects.

Bronc studied me for a long moment, and because he was Alpha, brother, soldier, and father all in one dangerous body, I felt the full weight of that examination. He was measuring not only whether I meant it, but whether I meant it enough. Whether I understood what I was asking. Whether this declaration came too late to be worth the breath it cost.

He saw whatever he needed to see.

At last, he gave one short nod.

Not forgiveness. I had not earned that from him, if indeed I ever could. But it was not rejection either. It was the nearest thing to an alliance a vampire prince and a wolf king could build in the middle of a crisis over a woman one had wounded and the other loved.

Maksym looked down at the map. “Then sentiment has been clarified. Good. Let us discuss the compound as it is rather than as we might prefer it to be.”

That was my brother. He had always known where to cut.

Taras turned a page in his notebook. “Ironwood is not an improvised pack estate. Lynch has capital, discipline, and paranoia. All three are relevant.”

“Cameras,” Wrecker said.

“Yes.”

“Motion sensors,” Arsenal added.

“Yes.”

“Private contractors,” Bronc said.

Taras inclined his head once. “At minimum.”

“Wards,” Lucia said.

This time Amelia was not yet there to elaborate, but Lucia’s certainty had its own weight. She had fought too long beside witches and too often against traps set by supernatural men who preferred sophistication to honor.

Taras touched a notation near the eastern treeline. “Specifically constructed, we believe, to blunt vampire intrusion. Possibly to misdirect supernatural signatures as well. We are working from incomplete intelligence.”

Maksym spoke with both palms still on the table. “Brute force at the front gate gives him time. If Lynch is holding her for leverage or ritual, he moves her deeper, moves her elsewhere, or accelerates his schedule. A show of force may satisfy pride and lose the objective.”

Bronc’s lip pulled back just slightly. “Directness isn’t pride.”

“No,” Maksym said evenly. “But it is visible.”

Before that could harden into something less useful, Big Papa finally stopped tapping his heel. “Visibility matters if the Council comes sniffing after blood. So does keeping our girl alive.”

“We are all ex-special,” Wrecker said. “We can ghost a fence line cleaner than most can hold one.”

“We can,” Arsenal said. “Question is whether the wards let us get close enough for it to matter.”

Doc uncrossed his arms and pushed off the wall. “Question is also timeline. If we hit wrong and they relocate her, we’re chasin’ air.”