I hear them before I see them. The low rumble of heavy engines through the south gate. Black Cadillac Escalades, four of them, dark tinted windows, rolling through the compound yard in a line. The engines idle low and heavy.
How Atlanta of them.
Erik steps out of the lead vehicle. Wolves pour out of the other three. Ten, twelve of them. Male and female. Some in tactical gear, some in jeans and boots. Two of the women are already pulling crates from the back of the last Escalade. Food. Clothing. Cases of water. Blankets.
Erik brought provisions for his people and for the humans in the beds.
He finds me in the corridor outside the wing.
“How bad?” he asks.
“Forty-seven. Including children.”
His jaw tightens. He looks through the window at the beds. At his pack members who are still inside, moving between patients, carrying water, holding a child who fell asleep on a wolf’s shoulder three hours ago and hasn’t been put down.
“I brought a relief rotation,” he says. “Fresh wolves. Food and clothes for everyone. My people can take over in the wing when yours go dormant.”
He turns to the wolves inside. “Relief’s here. Rotate out.”
The young man beside the child’s bed doesn’t move. The child’s hand is curled around his wrist. Even in sleep. Even hours later. A second wolf, sitting on the floor beside a sleeping woman, looks up at Erik and stays where he is.
Erik watches them for a long moment. Then turns back to me.
“Or don’t,” he says quietly.
He turns to the relief wolves in the corridor. “Get the ones who are staying fed and changed. I’ll handle the rotation.”
The women take over supply distribution without being asked. Clothing sorted by size. Food portioned for humans who haven’t eaten solid food in months. One of them kneels beside a bed with a bowl of broth and the patience of someone who’s done this before. They change in the corridor. T-shirts and jeans replacing borrowed scrubs. One wolf pulls on a hoodie and goesright back to the bed where a woman is sleeping with her hand hanging off the mattress. He sits on the floor beside the bed and stays.
Dawn approaches. Julian closes his laptop and heads to his quarters. Marcellus hands the perimeter to Erik’s wolves and walks to his quarters. The rotation guards finish their rounds, log their positions, and go down for the day.
Elena briefs Dalton on every patient, bed by bed, before she leaves the wing. His human staff are already in position. She walks to her quarters without looking back.
The wolves hold the line.
The fresh rotation integrates into the wing. Erik himself takes a position at the compound’s south entrance. One of the relief wolves patrols the perimeter in wolf form, a gray shape moving through morning fog.
Vampires sleeping. Wolves guarding. Humans healing.
The prototype for every safehouse we’ll need before this war is over, built in a single night by people who didn’t wait for someone to propose it.
Alexei is still awake. Every other vampire in the compound went down. He didn’t.
He’s sitting in the corridor outside the wing with his back against the wall. A child laughs at something a wolf does in the hallway. Alexei’s face changes. Just for a second. Then it’s gone.
I walk over and sit beside him.
“You’re awake.”
“I don’t go dormant.” He says it the way he says everything about what Konstantin did to him. Flat. Like he’s reading from a file.
“Since when?”
“Since the modifications.” A pause. “I haven’t slept since. Not dormancy. Not sleep. Nothing.”
“That’s how you recorded everything,” I say. “Twenty-four hours a day.”
He nods.
