Page 67 of Impawssible Magic

ASLAN

Cleanup takes the better part of an hour. Wolves securing prisoners, Torin directing the wounded to Anouk, Rhodes barking about chain of custody like paperwork still matters in the middle of a battlefield. Leire stays close, steadying a shaking Network recruit, checking the wards that held—present in a way that lets my guard ease for the first time in days.

I let it ease. That’s my mistake.

I know the moment she’s taken.

Not through any magical awareness, but through instinct honed over years of hunting, of protecting, of being the predator in any given room. One second the pulse of her presence is steady in my awareness, that compass pointing north. The next⁠—

Gone.

I spin away from the Preserver I’ve been interrogating, leaving Caius to handle the cleanup. The wolf alpha calls after me, but I’m already moving, already shifting, clothes shredding as the tiger tears free and hits the ground running.

She was right there. Right there, in the aftermath of battle, surrounded by Network fighters. Safe.

But safety is an illusion when ancient conspiracies are involved.

I run.

The second wave hit during the chaos.

I reconstruct the trail as I hunt—scattered scents, disturbed mist, the metallic tang of fresh blood that isn’t Leire’s but belongs to two of our wolves who tried to stop them. The scent trail paints a picture: they came from the east, from a position we hadn’t scouted, moving with military precision while the Network was focused on securing Iskra and cataloging the fallen.

They planned this. The first attack was the distraction. The real objective was extraction.

Contingency protocol. The kind of operational thinking that comes from centuries of practice. They’d known a frontal assault might fail—had positioned a second group with extraction orders before the first ever moved. Which meant someone with command authority had been watching Mistvale’s response patterns long enough to predict exactly how we’d organize during cleanup.

Someone who’d been here, or had contacts here, feeding information back. Another loose thread Caius would need to find and pull.

Clever.

My tiger snarls appreciation for their tactics even as he vows to tear out their throats. We respect intelligent prey. We respect them right up until the moment we catch them.

And we catch them.

The trail leads toward the Warding Line. Of course, it does. Past the boundary, Mistvale’s protections end. Past the boundary, I’m just a tiger and she’s just a witch and whatever help might be coming won’t arrive in time.

The mist thickens as I run, pooling around my paws, golden where it catches the fading light. Evening is settling over the town. Somewhere behind me, I hear Torin roaring orders, organizing pursuit. Caius will have the wolves fanning out.

None of them will reach her in time.

This is mine to do.

The first Preserver dies without knowing I’m there.

He’s positioned as a rear guard, watching the trail behind him while his companions drag my witch toward the boundary. Sloppy. A real predator watches everything.

I come out of the mist like a freight train made of fur and fury. My jaws close around his throat before he can scream. Cartilage crunches. Blood sprays hot across my muzzle. He goes down, and I don’t slow.

One.

My tiger counts. Keep track. We’ve done this before—hunted, eliminated, protected. But never with this fire burning in my chest. Never with my mate’s life hanging in the balance.

I catch her scent on the wind. Sage and lavender and fear—sharp, acrid fear that makes my lips peel back from bloody fangs. She’s afraid. They’ve hurt her or scared her badly enough that I can smell it from half a mile away.

Someone is going to pay for that.

The second Preserver sees me coming.