Page 122 of Nikolay

Wrecker leaned forward with both hands on the wood, tattooed forearms taut beneath rolled sleeves, his stillness too deliberate to be mistaken for calm. Maddie's best friend Parker and his mate was typing on a laptop nearby. They were working on breaking down Ironwood's security systems. Arsenal said very little by habit and nothing now, though his gaze kept moving over the room, over doors and corners and the map, tallying risks. Gunner rolled one shoulder and then the other as if preparing for impact, his size making the chair beneath him look temporary.

The scarred giant, Big Papa, stood rather than sat, one boot heel tapping a slow, measured rhythm against the stone floor, each sound so steady it might have been mistaken for prayer, and if you knew the man, it might just have been. His mate, Maddie's friend, Aspen, the dark-haired, green-eyed bakery owner, who also happened to be a witch and angel hybrid, stood near him—beautiful and confident, Her tiny familiar, a prairie dog dressed in a jacket and bow tie, sporting a small pair of glasses was perched on her shoulder. He was uncharacteristically quiet this morning.

Near the wall, Doc held himself apart with his arms crossed over his chest, hybrid silence wrapped around him like another layer of skin. He looked less restless than the wolves because he had learned to carry his storms inward. That did not make him less dangerous.

I knew because I was doing much the same.

Bronc’s finger moved over the map again, tracing and retracing the same approach routes until I could have drawn them with my eyes closed. Ironwood’s known perimeter had been marked in black and red: main gate, outer fencing, private access road, treeline, probable camera placements, service structures, blind zones they hoped were blind and did not yet know. Someone had sketched elevations in one corner. Taras had added neat symbols in pencil. Parker, Wrecker’s mate and Maddie’s best friend, had apparently supplied the satellite overlays; their clean printed lines looked almost obscene atop parchment-colored paper weighted by a silver dagger older than the United States.

Bronc broke the silence. “Simple plan is still the best plan until somebody gives me reason otherwise.”

He flattened his hand over the map near the front gate. “I go to the gate. I demand my sister. Sage Lynch either produces her, or I produce consequences.”

Clean. Simple. Savage in the old wolf way, for all that it sounded almost civilized.

No one interrupted, so he went on.

“Her phone’s been dead since yesterday.” The words came more tightly then. “Not ringing. Not going to voicemail. Dead. We’ve called Lynch through every number we have. He’s ignored all of it.”

Wrecker’s knuckles cracked against the table’s edge. The sound was small, sharp, ugly.

I kept my gaze on the glass while the bond twisted again. It had done that all morning—tightened, thinned, gone distant, then surged close enough to make my teeth ache. There were moments when I thought I caught an impression not even clean enough to call emotion. Warmth. Fatigue. Then wrongness again, as if something stood between us and laid a hand across her throat. I had lived too long not to frighten easily. What I felt now was not fright. It was the slow dismantling of certainty.

I should have gone after her sooner. I should not have let pride put an hour between my realization and my action, let alone a night.

The old wound in me—bloodline, class, species, all the ugly architecture of inherited arrogance—had cost us this room.

Bronc was still speaking. "If she’s there by choice, she can walk out with me and this ends civil. If she’s not…" His finger pressed harder into the paper, right over the gate. "Then he gets one warning."

One warning.

From another man, the phrase might have sounded theatrical. From Bronc, it was simply policy.

Maksym’s expression remained unreadable. “And if he has already moved her before you arrive?”

“Then we know what kind of game he’s playin’.”

“We already know,” Wrecker said.

“Yes,” Taras said without looking up from his notes, “but confirmation affects timing.”

That was Taras in all things. Precision where others preferred heat.

Lucia’s gaze cut briefly to me, then away. Not pity. Not accusation. Merely acknowledgment, which hurt more.

Juliet spoke quietly, but every man in the room heard her. “Maddie wouldn’t cut contact with her family. Not like this.”

Bronc’s jaw locked. He gave a single nod.

It should have eased something in me to hear the certainty from ones who loved her. Instead, it sharpened the blade already under my ribs. Because I knew it too. Beneath all my resistance, all my cultivated insult and restraint, I had already learned the shape of her enough to know that silence was not hers. Maddie pushed, laughed, argued, and bit when bitten. She did not disappear politely.

I turned from the window then, because if I did not speak immediately I might lose the nerve to do it cleanly.

Every eye in the room turned to me as I crossed to the table. The old boards gave back my weight with muted complaint. I planted both hands on the carved edge opposite Bronc and looked directly at him.

“The blood in this room stays clean,” I said.

My voice came out flatter than usual. That cost me more than anyone there likely understood. I was the one who softened, mediated, found the angle from which men could keep both dignity and peace. There are moments, however, when diplomacy curdles into cowardice if allowed to continue.