CHAPTER 162

CHAPTER 162
WE SHOULD STRIKE

Trees stood in quiet, bleak stillness at daybreak. Joel's men and he walked among them like phantoms, steps measured. The underbrush had a coating of frost, and the sun had not yet risen above the eastern slope.

The decoy site was set up. A ruined cave close to the old borderlands, thick with ancient blood smell and infused with discreet warding magic. Sufficient to attract the rogues in without exposing any real secrets.

Hours passed.

Nothing.

And a noise. not near, but above. A whisper carried by the wind.

A wolf's howl. Met with silence.

The leaves crunched, then. Joel raised a hand.

Motion. Silhouettes. A few. Four, at

Too few.

Lynk bent down next to him, nostrils flaring. "They're testing it."

His mouth compressed into a grim line. "Let them."

They never quite fell into the trap. skimmed the edges, more. Just enough to scent it, to leave a signature, and to vanish. Like a wisp.

They knew it was bait, said Lynk quietly.

Joel nodded. "And they didn't send a lot. It's not an attack. It's reconnaissance. They're mapping out our response. How far we'll respond."

There was a second scout who ran up. "More sign west of the ridge. Scent trails disappear into nothing.same thing again."

Joel stood up. "Pull back the men. No more shadow games tonight."

Where the warriors had retreated, Joel stopped, looking back towards the forest. The air was eerily quiet.

They wanted us to search for them.

Lynk tilted his head. "Why?"

"To remind us," he said, with a grim memory, "that we are not alone in laying traps."

They camped again at dusk, this time deeper back in a rock outcropping. No fires. They communicated in whispers.

He was up late at night, back at the map again. Trends where trends shouldn't be. Tracks that stop short. Clusters of symbols Lena once dreaded.

"They're not coming forward," he said at last, looking at Lynk. "They're going around."

As wolves.

"Like gods playing at wolves."

Lynk said nothing. He just looked at the stars through the hole in the roof of the tent.

"We're not ready," he admitted. "Not yet."

Lynk exhaled. "So we prepare. We fall back. We acquire more knowledge. Sharpen each blade, sharpen each mind."

He glanced at the map again, at the faint mark of ink where the cabin stood.

"She won't be safe for long," he whispered.

Lynk took a step ahead. "So we're done. Not next moon. Not tomorrow. Now. On our terms."

He nodded slowly. "We tempt them. One last time. And when we attack. we never miss."

His mind strayed back to Emerald's face. pale, watchful, holding more secrets than she ever spoke. A flash of regret crossed his own face, then he quelled it.

He just couldn't afford to regret. Now.

There was a cessation of the crackle, after a solitary sharp sound. The chill intruded, and Joel, leaning over the map, broke the silence.

Let them approach. We'll bury them beneath their own foreboding.

And at the back of his mind stood the ancient fear once more. What if I don't manage to keep her alive?

Later, after Lynk had slept restlessly for a while, Joel was alone in the tent. The cold was more intense then. Still, he did not notice.

He remembered her. how her voice had shaken earlier while he was about to leave, how she gazed at him like she already knew the secrets he would not reveal.

He remembered how her hand rested against his a moment longer than it should have, how her eyes darted toward the window, as if something beyond it were speaking to her.

And so the last report from the butler came back to him, inscribed in memory: "She discovered a garden, Alpha. One we had never seen. It did not exist before. I was unable to proceed beyond the door."

Joel closed his eyes. A garden. Blood-blossom flowers. Distorted time. The reverberations of Lena's ceremonies written into flowers that would not flower during winter.

What did she notice inside? What did this reveal to her?

He knew magic leaves traces behind. He had seen enough while at war, upon skin, in breaths, in madness.

And if Emerald had traveled through territory evidenced by Lena's blood, then time had been going by faster than he had feared.

Joel stared into the leaping flames, then glanced back at the map.

At any cost, she could not be captured.

He'd burn the world to ashes before that happened.

And in the silence of the frozen encampment, he whispered her name. not a vow, but a caution to the shadows 

“She's mine.”