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“How many?” Kahn asked.

“Conservative estimate puts his group at thirty, maybe thirty-five. We’ve been planning for fifteen.”

The number sat heavy in the room. Chris saw it land on each of them differently. Viktor was already drawing on his overlay, recalculating defensive positions. Caitlynn’s hand had tightened around her mug. Kahn’s expression hadn’t changed, but his breathing had.

“They’re not random recruits,” Gideon continued. “This is deliberate. Garrett spent years collecting men that packs threw away. Men who lost rank, lost status, lost everything that gave their lives structure. He rebuilt that for them. Gave them purpose, a target, a reason to believe the packs owed them redress.”

“A coalition,” Viktor said.

“A vendetta.” Gideon looked at Kahn. “They’re working together because they share a common enemy. The packs that exiled them. Garrett gave them a frame for their anger, told them they could take back what was stolen. Hit the packs that humiliated them. Pick them off while they’re isolated.”

“Starting with us,” Chris said.

“Starting with us.” Gideon closed the folder. His fingers stayed on the cover, pressing into the worn cardboard. “Because Garrett has the strongest personal motivation, the most detailed knowledge of a pack’s interior, and the patience to wait until he had enough bodies to act on both.”

“What’s his endgame?” Caitlynn asked. “Revenge? And then?”

Gideon didn’t answer immediately. He looked at Sloane. The look lasted long enough that Chris felt something shift in the room, a tightening of attention, everyone turning toward the same point without moving.

“The young wolf we interrogated last week,” Gideon said. “Jonas pressed him for three hours. Most of what he gave us was operational. Patrol patterns, supply routes, camp locations. Standard intelligence.” He paused. “But he said one thing that stuck.”

“What,” Kahn said.

“He said Garrett told his people the assault would end with a demonstration. That the whole pack would watch. That they’d see what happened when you let a wolf take what he came for.”

The silence that followed was the wrong kind. Not the useful silence that followed good intelligence, not the focused silence of people processing a tactical update. This was the silence of a room arriving at the same conclusion without wanting to.

Chris looked at Sloane.

She sat exactly as she had before. Same posture, same folded hands, same level chin. The only thing that changed was her color. It left her face in a slow tide, pulling back from her cheeks, her lips, leaving her skin white beneath the blonde hair.

“He wants revenge, he wants to take over the pack, he wants her,” Gideon said. “He wants the pack to watch him take her. In front of everyone. That’s not an assault. It’s a reclaiming.”

Sloane’s chair scraped against the stone. She was on her feet before Chris could register the movement, walking toward the door with a stride that was too fast for control, too measured for panic. She pulled the door open, stepped through it, and let it close behind her.

The room held its breath.

“Go,” Kahn said.

Chris was already moving.

He caught up with her outside the main building. She was heading for the tree line, not running, but her legs were eating ground with a pace that said she didn’t care where she ended up as long as it was far from that room. The afternoon sun threw long shadows across the compound, stretching the buildings into dark shapes on the grass.

“Sloane.”

She didn’t stop.

“Sloane, wait.”

“Go back inside, Chris.”

He matched her stride. She was fast. He was faster, but he didn’t cut in front of her. He walked beside her, keeping pace, keeping distance, his hands at his sides.

“Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her voice was flat. Scraped clean. The voice she used when everything underneath was too loud to let any of it through. “You heard Gideon. You heard what he said. My father wants to drag me out in front of three hundred people as a trophy. That’s the whole campaign. Every scout, every probe, every dead wolf on the perimeter. All of it was so he could walk into the compound, put his hand around my throat, and make you all watch.”

“That isn’t going to happen.”