Page 38 of Warded By His Wolf

She blinked. Whatever she’d braced for (argument, careful handling) it wasn’t that.

“I’ll make the calls. Tara first, then Gideon. Roan can authorize the counter-intelligence protocol by nine if we move now.”

Something flickered across her face, not relief, not gratitude. The expression of a person who braced for pushback and found solid ground instead.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. This is going to be a long day.”

The agency mobilized around her testimony with a speed that was its own form of validation. Gideon had the archive material within the hour. Tara began corroborating the vision record against extracted timestamps before nine. Roan authorized the protocol with a single question, Status on the seer?, and my answer was immediate: She’s running point on the documentation. Adjust protocol accordingly.

Roan’s silence lasted exactly one beat. Then: Understood.

Third time. The word was becoming its own file on me, and I let it.

By midmorning Ivy was at the table with Tara on the video channel. Three hours of testimony flowed between two women who had decided this mattered and were not going to waste time being delicate about it. I kept myself useful in ways that didn’t require hovering, sensors, perimeter feed, weapons check.

Through the bond I tracked her. The small bright flares when Tara confirmed another timestamp. The steady burn underneath. She didn’t preface a single observation with it’s probably nothing. She didn’t stop mid-description to test whether the words were worth the cost.

At one point Tara looked up from her notes and said, with the warmth she reserved for people she’d decided were worth it: “This is the clearest seer record we have ever processed. I want that in the file.”

Through the bond I felt the flare, small, bright, something Ivy hadn’t let herself feel about her own gift in three years.

I turned toward the window so she wouldn’t see my face.

By midday the counter-intelligence file was substantive enough that Gideon confirmed it would hold. It was a documented chain connecting Miriam’s actions to faction directives across three years. It was built in the same institutional language the faction had used to dismantle her, turned back on them. Ivy signed her name at the bottom of the final summary without hesitation.

At two, Caleb Thorne joined the secure call.

His voice came through with the measured weight of a man who had been thinking three steps ahead of every conversation for a decade. He asked three questions (sharp, strategic) and Ivy answered all three without hedging.

Then he said something I hadn’t expected.

“We have been looking for someone who could see what you see for two years. You have been trying to report it for three.” No emotion in the delivery, which made it land harder. “I am sorry it took us this long to listen.”

Ivy didn’t cry. Her hands stayed flat on the table, her shoulders straight, and through the bond I felt something shift, not relief. More like the grinding sound a lock makes when the right key finally turns.

“Then use it,” she said.

“We already are.”

The call ended. The afternoon settled into a brief, strange calm, the kind that follows completion and precedes impact. I went to the porch. She followed.

We stood at the railing watching the tree line in the flat gray light. Noah had checked the perimeter twice since morning. Jace had been out since noon, running the south approach in fur. The house was as secure as I could make it with a tracker who already held our coordinates.

My hand found the back of her neck: over the mark, over the silver curve that was the physical record of a choice made at midnight in a storm. She leaned into it without thinking.

“They’re coming to take you,” I said quietly. “Not hurt you. Take you.”

“I know.”

“That’s worse. Containment specialists don’t make the mistakes assault teams make. They’re patient. Methodical.”

“I know.”

She didn’t look afraid. The fear was there (I felt it through the bond, a low current) but it wasn’t running anything.

“What happens if they get through?” she asked.