Panic - Elara

Panic - Elara
The safe rooms were humming with controlled panic. One room became the triage center: cots lined in neat rows, bandages and poultices laid out, Helen and the other healers barking soft commands, setting up a rotation so no one collapsed from exhaustion. The other—the hidden stairwell behind my closet—was where I sent the children, the mothers, and anyone who needed a quiet corner. We’d practiced this before; it still felt like threading a needle in the dark.

“Move them down, Greta,” I told a young omega, my voice steady though my hands shook at the edges. “Two at a time. Walk—don’t run. Keep noise to a minimum.”

She nodded and did it without hesitation. Discipline made me proud, gave me a small, fierce glow of warmth. The pack answered when I asked—That was something I hadn’t expected to cherish so much: the recognition that my voice mattered.

Helen met my eyes across the room. Her face was a map of fatigue and determination. “I’ve got the med bay stable. We can handle initial traumas, Elara. I’ll call for reinforcements in shifts.”

“Good,” I said. “Keep water and cool compresses ready. If the heat hits anyone—”

“It will,” she finished for me, always practical. “We have beds with shade and cold cloths. I’ll watch for symptoms.”

I ran my thumb along the spine of the emergency ledger—names, injuries, who’d been cleared and who needed more care. My throat tightened. We had time this round; we’d gotten people down before the rogues reached us. That window of time was a luxury we’d never have again unless we planned for it.

There was another thing I needed. The book. The way it had opened and shown me pieces of Lima and Nathan… of the dagger… I had to know more. If the vision was a map, I needed to read it.

The moment of hesitation was soon thrown to the side because if there’s a pattern, if the dagger—if Taylor is using something we don’t understand, knowledge is our best defense.

I slipped into the office like a shadow. My fingers fumbled with the lock with a practised motion—the same motion Austin had used when he’d slipped keys to me to hide things in plain sight. The book lay where I’d tucked it under the ledger, unreadable to most, alive to me. I lifted it carefully as if it might bite.

Back in my room, I closed and bolted the inner door. The closet’s second latch clicked into place—fabric hung over it to hide the seam, a mundane camouflage that felt absurd and brilliant at once. The safe room’s heavy door groaned shut. A hush fell; someone inside whispered a prayer under their breath. I told Helen to stay with me—watch the corridor, keep an eye out for movement. She agreed, settling a fresh blanket over her knees like a shield.

I sat in the corner with the book in my lap and took a breath that felt too big for my lungs. The pages were warm as if the story had a pulse. I opened to the place my vision had left off.

The scene rewound. We were back at the clearing, and the book unfurled the moment Taylor, rode hard, face set and eyes bright with a shimmer that was not mere excitement. Behind him the rogues fell into a ragged line, teeth bared, knives glinting, but it was Taylor’s voice that cut above the rest—clear, claiming, as if he were used to being obeyed.

“Get the dagger,” he bellowed, and his men obeyed like hounds at a master’s command. “Take the Alpha head. Bring me her tears.”

I froze. The sound didn’t come from the book anymore; it was in my bones.

I leaned closer, compelled and horrified. The words in the book were no longer just narrative; they were a sliding window into thoughts. The moment Taylor’s foot struck soft earth, a new layer peeled back—thoughts, intentions, a cruel geometry that I had never seen in a man before. His plan unfolded in cold, clinical fragments:

Get the dagger. Kill the Alpha. Make her weep. Catch the tears.

Because the dagger, the vision showed me, fed on a very particular offering: the tears that belonged to a heart that loved and loved without return. The ritual—that awful, precise phrase—required: the blade to be driven through tears that for a faith unreturned. The dagger’s thirst was not merely for blood; it was for the salt of sacrifice, the proof that one soul had given its devotion freely and been denied.

Taylor’s plan was almost elegant in its brutality.

Kill Austin. Force the Luna to watch. Capture her grief, warm and stamped with devotion but never to be returned with his death... and feed it to the blade. The dagger would drink, and something in it would change—grow, darken, claim power it hadn’t held before. The last pages showed Taylor with the dagger lifted high, the metal catching moonlight like a snout catching stars, while around him the rogues cheered with animal hunger.

My hands shook. I slammed the book closed and pressed the flat of my palm to its cover as if to smother the memory. Helen’s eyes were wide, steady. She didn’t speak.

“It needs him,” I whispered, the words tasting like iron. “It needs Austin’s death to complete it.”

Helen’s jaw set. “Then we stop it.”

The room seemed to shrink around me. A thousand small plans rushed through my head—hide the dagger, move Austin, lure Taylor away, set a trap. But the book had shown me more than the plan; it had shown me how precise Taylor’s timing could be, how carefully he worked the rogues into something that looked like a pack. He’d crafted a danger that would make him look like the savior if he failed in any subtlety.

I thought of Austin—out there, holding a line with Leo and Marcus, a dozen rogues racing the wind to reach our border. The book had given me a terrible advantage: foresight. But foresight comes with a cost—the knowledge that choices had to be made right now.

“Lock the door,” I told Helen. “We won't let anyone inside even Austin, Marcus or Leo.” My voice was small but sharp. “Get me the markers and the maps. We’re making contingencies. We’re moving the dagger to a place only I will know.”

Helen obeyed, already reaching for a notebook. She moved with the calm certainty of the practiced mother of a pack, and her presence steadied me. I opened the book again, not to the story this time, but to the blank margins where I could write—names, plans, contingencies. If the dagger needed tears, we would deny it the chance. If Taylor wanted Austin dead, we would make sure Austin couldn’t be cornered alone.

Outside, the rogues were coming. Inside, the book had given me the direction. I would not let it write our fate.

I closed the notebook with a hard, careful hand and slid the book to the side. Then I whispered, into the wood and fabric of the room and the hollowed place in my chest where Austin’s name lived, “Come home safe.”