Chapter 101 Shield

Chapter 101 Shield

Violet's Pov

Stephanie moved before anyone expected her to.

Not toward Eric. Not toward Jacob. She came straight at me.

She crossed the distance in three steps, arm already raised before I had fully processed what was happening. I had run this vision. I had seen the four-second window. But this was not the sequence I had predicted. Something had shifted in the last sixty seconds and the new version was coming at a different angle.

I stepped left.

Not fast enough.

Her forearm caught my shoulder and the force of it spun me sideways. My back hit the wall. I kept both hands curled in front of my belly, protecting Eli from the impact.

"Stephanie." Eric's voice from across the room.

She didn't acknowledge him.

"You think your little visions make you untouchable," she said. She was looking at me with something underneath her composure the entire time. Not just calculation. Something older. Something personal.

"I never said untouchable," I said.

"You beat four of his fighters coming down those stairs. You redirected two of them using nothing but their own momentum. Six months ago you were the girl everyone in our pack called cursed."

"I was never cursed," I said. "You know that now."

"I know that your gift is worth more than you are." She took another step. "That's what I know."

Jacob's voice cut across from near the door. "Stephanie. Think about what you're doing."

She glanced at him. "Stay out of this."

"She's nine months pregnant."

"I'm aware of what she is."

"Then act like it," he said.

She turned back to me. Her weight shifted. I read the shift. I already knew it. I had seen enough fighters to know what a committed movement looked like in the second before it happened.

I pressed both hands against Eli.

The vision came fast. Her left hand, coming up, aiming for my face.

I moved right.

She adjusted mid-motion. Faster than I had given her credit for.

Her hand caught my arm and she yanked hard.

The floor came up.

I went down on one knee and caught myself with both hands. I kept Eli away from the impact. That was the only thing my body did automatically, without instruction. Everything else I had to think about: that one thing happened on its own.

"Violet." Jacob's voice was different now. Close.

He moved across the room toward me.

A fighter blocked him. One of the two Eric had positioned near the door.

Jacob drove into the fighter with his shoulder. Both men went sideways.

Stephanie raised her arm again.

I was still on one knee.

Jacob got there first.

He put himself between me and the blow. His back was to her. He turned his shoulder into the path of her strike to take it on the back of his arm rather than let it reach me.

The sound was wrong.

Not the sound of impact on a shoulder. Something sharper.

Jacob made a sound I had never heard from him.

He stayed upright. But his left arm dropped. He pressed it against his side.

"Jacob." I was on my feet before I knew I, had stood. "Jacob, look at me."

He turned his head. His face was tight. His eyes were clear.

"I'm standing," he said.

"You're hurt."

"Yes." He didn't argue. "Keep moving."

I looked at Stephanie.

She was looking at her own hand. Then she looked at me.

For a half second something crossed her face, something closer to a person who had just realized they had crossed a line they had not intended to cross.

It lasted half a second.

Then it was gone.

"That was his choice," she said.

"Yes," I said. "It was."

I pressed both hands against Eli.

The vision came with a clarity I had never felt before. Not a window appearing in a wall. More like the wall disappearing entirely. I could see the next ninety seconds laid out with a precision that had no gaps.

Stephanie's next move. Her right side is shifting weight.

The fighter who had been wrestling with Jacob was back on his feet, moving toward me from the left.

Eric is near the door. Watching. Calculating whether to move.

I saw all of it.

"Jacob," I said quietly. "Can you stand without favoring the left?"

A pause. "Give me twenty seconds."

"You have fifteen."

He straightened. It cost him something visible. He straightened anyway.

"The fighter coming from your left," I said. "He plants his right foot before he grabs. When the right foot plants, move left."

Jacob looked at the fighter without turning his head fully.

"Understood," he said.

I looked at Stephanie.

"You've been doing this for four years," I said. "Working with Eric. Planning. Adjusting when plans changed. You're very good at it. The patience it requires. The ability to stay positioned inside uncomfortable situations without breaking character."

"Is there a point to this?"

"Yes," I said. "Everything you built in four years came apart in one night because you did not account for the fact that I have been watching come-from-behind fighters for six months. I know how people move before they move. I have seen outcomes before they happened. The person I am most connected to in this room is the child I am carrying, which means I have been seeing the next two minutes with complete clarity since before you crossed the room."

She looked at me.

"So I know what you're about to do," I said. "And I know it doesn't work."

She moved anyway.

People always moved anyway. That was the thing about visions. Knowing what was coming did not mean the person coming at you believed you knew. They always moved.

I stepped exactly where I needed to step.

Her momentum carried her past me.

I redirected the energy the way Pell had shown me three months ago during a session I had attended only to observe. She went forward. Her hands went out to catch herself.

The fighter from the left reached Jacob.

Jacob's right foot planted. He moved left. The grab missed.

Jacob used his body weight with his right shoulder. The fighter went down.

Eric moved from the door.

I turned.

"Jacob," I said. "Eric."

Jacob moved toward Eric. Left arm held against his side. Right shoulder forward.

Eric looked at him. Then at me.

"I don't want to do this," Eric said.

"Then don't," I said.

"The plan doesn't change because of one night."

"The plan has already changed," I said. "You just haven't accepted it yet."

He moved toward me.

I pressed my hands against Eli and let the vision come one more time.

Eric's right shoulder. The exact angle. The weakness had been there for eight weeks.

Four seconds.

He reached with his right hand.

I hit the shoulder with the heel of my palm. The same movement I had practiced in my mind twenty times over the last hour. Precise. Deliberate.

He exhaled sharply and stepped back.

Jacob drove into Eric with his right shoulder.

Both men went sideways into the wall.

Jacob's left arm was against his side the entire time. One arm. He was doing all of it with one arm and his body weight.

They hit the wall and Eric went down first.

Jacob stayed upright.

He was breathing hard. His left side was wrong. But he was standing.

Stephanie was getting up from the floor across the room.

I turned to face her.

"Don't," I said.

She looked at me. She looked at Jacob. She looked at Eric on the floor.

She was doing the calculation I had watched Eric do so many times. Assessing the cost of the next move against the probability of a different outcome.

"It's over," I said. "The documentation is already at the council. Your buyers know the situation has changed because Caius has been outside this fence making contact for six weeks. The six wolves at, the eastern boundary are not going home without us." I held her gaze. "There is no version of the next ten minutes that ends well for you."

Stephanie looked at me for a long time.

Then she sat down on the floor. Not dramatically. Just practically. Like someone removing themselves from the board.

I looked at Jacob.

He was against the wall. Upright. Left arm pressed to his side.

"Jacob.”