Page 125 of Nikolay

For one suspended beat, the room seemed not to breathe at all.

Then Taras’s pen stopped moving entirely.

Doc straightened off the wall so fast the chair leg beside him scraped stone.

Juliet’s fingers tightened on Lucia’s arm.

Amelia tapped one note with a blunt nail. “That is the window. That is the only window that matters. If Lynch means to force the bond or sever an existing fated pull or whatever bastard variation of this he thinks he’s performing, he has to do it then.”

The bond in my chest lurched so violently that for a moment the edges of the room sharpened to cruelty. Sever. The word itself felt profane.

Bronc’s voice was dangerous now, gone quiet in the way only truly lethal men ever managed. “How sure are you?”

“Sure enough to stake my hands on it.” She looked up at him. “I translated three different source fragments and cross-checked two ward matrices that were ugly enough to make me want a drink at seven in the morning. He has to do it at dusk.”

Wrecker muttered something low and filthy under his breath.

Amelia went on in those rapid, clipped bursts that always made it seem as though her thoughts were trying to outrun her mouth and nearly succeeding. “He almost certainly believes that protects him from vampiric interference because of their daylight habits. If he assumed Obsidian’s family would have to wait for full dark to move, then dusk gives him a buffer. Enough time to finish before any rescue force gets there, enough transitional light to muddy signatures, enough ritual cover to keep his own people focused inward instead of outward.”

“He is going to fuck around and find out,” I said.

The words came from me cold enough that several heads turned.

Amelia blinked once, then nodded like a woman slotting new pieces into an already vicious puzzle.

I placed both hands on the table and looked at no one but the map. “Kozlov vampires were born, not turned. Sunlight is barely an inconvenience, and certainly not a cage. We go out whenever we damn well please.”

Bronc spoke up. “Then let’s just go now. Why wait?”

My father finally spoke.

“Sage Lynch is not a fool. He’ll likely suspect someone has tried to contact Maddie without luck. He likely also knows we realize Ironwood is beyond reach now as well. They will be prepared for an attack. We must be strategic about our timing. They will be most vulnerable when the ritual is being performed. It will be the best time to strike. If he thinks vampires cannot engage during daylight hours, all the better.”

Amelia exhaled through her nose. “Fingers crossed he’s less informed that we thought.”

“Do you have anything on interior ward placement?” Taras asked.

“Fragments, not certainty.” She pushed another paper toward him. “Outer barrier is layered. Some old blood-work in the bones of it, some modern amplifiers, probably keyed to pack signatures and anti-compulsion interference. There’s at least one ritual chamber space prepared or being prepared, likely below grade or surrounded by stone pillars where the lines can be anchored. I can probably worry at the perimeter. I cannot promise I’ll break it quietly. And he’ll likely keep the ritual to just his elders. He won’t want his entire pack knowing he’s doing something so heinous. So your battle will be with his security team, not the entire pack.”

“Going in quietly may already be off the table,” Bronc said.

“Visible may cost us her,” Maksym replied.

And there it was at last, the question that had been sitting in the center of the room since before dawn, now sharpened by the knowledge that time was no longer abstract. We had not merely lost hours. We had been assigned their exact value.

Bronc flattened both hands on the map. “I go to the gate. Public. Direct. He gets one chance to hand her over. Council can’t say I came sneakin’ over his fence like a criminal when I’m askin’ for my sister back.”

“The Council will not be the one strapped to an altar if he panics,” Lucia said.

“He won’t panic,” Bronc said.

Maksym looked at him without blinking. “You are assuming rationality in a man preparing a ritual built on obsession.”

“That’s not rationality,” Doc said. “That’s pathology.”

Big Papa rubbed a hand over his beard, eyes on the map. “Bronc’s not wrong about optics. If bodies drop on sanctioned territory without warning, it gets political in a hurry.”

“Everything gets political in a hurry,” Taras murmured, already writing again. “The question is whether we prefer political fallout or a failed extraction.”