Chapter 72: The Knock at the Gate

The night didn’t end. It just bled into a gray morning that felt colder than usual. Fog wrapped the estate like it was trying to smother us, curling against the windows, seeping into the walls. No one had slept much. Every creak of the wood, every hiss of the wind made us think Caleb was back—or worse, that something bigger was coming.

By dawn, the war room was already crowded. Ethan had dragged in three extra monitors from the lower command center, their cords tangled like snakes. Elena had a line of knives laid out in front of her like a surgeon preparing for an operation. Rhea sat at the edge of the table, silent but alert, her journal balanced on her knees.

Callum leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, and muttered, “It feels like we’re waiting for a bomb to go off.”

“It does,” Aidan agreed. His gaze flicked toward me. “And I don’t like waiting.”

Ethan typed furiously, his eyes fixed on the scrolling code. “Patience is a virtue, my friends. One I personally lack, but hey, I’m trying.”

Elena groaned. “You? Patient? Please. I’ve seen you lose your mind waiting for a kettle to boil.”

“That’s different,” Ethan shot back. “The kettle has one job, and it fails at it. Consistently. Every. Single. Time.”

“Maybe it just hates you,” she said.

“Knives can hate too, you know,” Ethan muttered. “And I’m not convinced yours don’t.”

That got a laugh out of her—sharp, unexpected, but real. For a second, the air lightened.

Then the alarm went off.

\---

Not the shrieking siren that meant “attack.” This was the lower-pitched tone that meant “visitors at the gate.”

We all froze.

Ethan’s fingers flew across the keyboard. The main monitor blinked, then focused on the outer perimeter.

Figures stood in the fog. Dozens of them. Maybe more. Their silhouettes blurred by the mist, but close enough that we could tell they weren’t just standing—they were lined up.

And kneeling.

My stomach dropped. “Not again.”

“They’re hybrids,” Echo said from the doorway. Her voice was calm, too calm. “But not Gregory’s.”

“How can you tell?” Elena asked.

“They’re breathing differently,” Echo said simply.

Elena frowned. “That’s… creepy. But okay.”

Ethan zoomed the feed. The fog shifted just enough to reveal faces. Men. Women. Even a boy who couldn’t have been older than fourteen. All of them staring straight ahead, eyes glowing faint gold.

A message.

For me.

“They’re waiting,” Callum said. “But not for Gregory. For you.”

\---

We gathered in the courtyard within minutes. The fog pressed close, muffling sound, making the air taste damp and metallic. The gate loomed between us and the hybrids, iron bars slick with dew.

The kneeling figures didn’t move. Not even when we approached.

Finally, I stepped forward. My voice was steadier than I felt. “Why are you here?”

One of them lifted her head. A woman with short dark hair, a scar running across her cheek. Her eyes locked on mine.

“We came because we heard the call,” she said.

“What call?” Aidan asked, his hand brushing the hilt of his blade.

The woman’s gaze didn’t shift. “The Harbinger’s call. Her voice. It spread through us like fire. Through blood. Through bone. We couldn’t resist. We don’t want to resist.”

Elena swore under her breath. “Well, that’s not terrifying at all.”

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “You think I called you?”

The woman’s lips curved into something almost like a smile. “We don’t think. We know.”

Ethan leaned close to me, whispering, “Please tell me you didn’t accidentally send a mass text to every hybrid in North America.”

I elbowed him, but the knot in my stomach only tightened.

\---

We brought a small group of them inside. Carefully. Elena insisted on keeping her crossbow ready the entire time, muttering that she didn’t care how “kneely and obedient” they looked. Aidan shadowed me like my shadow had grown muscles, and Echo kept drifting closer to the hybrids, studying them the way she always studied—like she was peeling back layers no one else could see.

The woman with the scar introduced herself as Liora. She didn’t sit when we offered chairs. She just stood in the center of the room, her posture straight, her eyes bright.

“You are the last,” she said to me. “The seal-bearer. The one they called R.”

“Stop calling me that,” I snapped. “I’m Roxanne. That’s it.”

“But the blood doesn’t lie,” Liora said. “The others felt it too. That’s why more are coming.”

“More?” Elena repeated. “Define ‘more.’ Like, a handful? A crowd? A flash mob?”

Liora tilted her head. “Hundreds. Maybe thousands. We all felt it. And we all know where to go.”

Ethan groaned. “Perfect. Great. Just what we needed. An army of hybrids showing up at our doorstep like some freaky fan club.”

“They’re not fans,” Echo said. Her eyes hadn’t left Liora. “They’re bound. The way I was. The way she was.” She nodded toward Rhea. “And the way you were supposed to be.”

That landed heavy in the room.

“Bound to what?” I asked.

Liora’s gaze softened, almost reverent. “To you. To the bloodline. To the Harbinger.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something. Instead, I forced myself to stay still. “And what if I don’t want that?”

“Then you must break us,” Liora said.

\---

The silence after that was thick.

Elena broke it with a sharp laugh. “Okay. Sorry. Just to make sure I heard that right—your options for Roxanne are: one, she leads you all; or two, she kills you all. Did I miss a third, less horrifying option, like ‘everyone goes home and bakes cookies’?”

Liora didn’t even blink. “No.”

“Well, I hate you already,” Elena muttered.

Aidan put his hand on my shoulder, steady but firm. “Rox, don’t let them push you. This isn’t your decision to make right now.”

But it was. We all knew it.

\---

That night, we argued.

Ethan insisted we should let the hybrids in, use their numbers as leverage against the Creed. Elena said it was suicide to trust them. Echo argued that they weren’t enemies—they were mirrors. And Callum thought we should drive them off before more came, before we were overrun.

The voices rose, sharp and raw, bouncing off the war room walls until I couldn’t hear myself think.

Finally, I slammed my fist on the table. “Enough!”

Everyone stopped.

“They’re not my army,” I said. “And I’m not their Alpha. I don’t care what Gregory or his sister or anyone else planned. I decide who I am. Not them.”

Silence followed. Long. Heavy.

Then Liora’s voice drifted from the doorway.

“But you already decided,” she said softly. “The moment you survived, the moment you stood, you chose. The bloodline doesn’t care what you want. It only cares what you are.”

And then she left.

\---

I lay awake for hours that night, staring at the ceiling, Aidan’s steady breathing beside me.

Because deep down, I knew she was right.

And the real question wasn’t if I would lead them.

It was if I’d survive it.