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“I looked at her, standing in the position I needed to survive, and I hated her for it.” She swallowed. “I didn’t understand what she had. I didn’t understand why you looked at her that way. I thought love was a word people used when they wanted leverage.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m sitting in the dirt with a bleeding leg because a man touched my face gently and I couldn’t handle it.” She laughed. It was wet, ugly, honest. “Chris cleaned a wound on my shin. I kissed him. It was soft. He looked at me like I mattered, and I ran away.”

Kahn studied her for a long moment.

“When Caitlynn and I first started,” he said, “I told her I wouldn’t have chosen this. The bond. Her. I said it to her face, meaning every word.” He paused. “And then, one day, I looked at her and realized… I was lying blatantly.”

Her hands stilled on her thighs.

“Being gentle with someone is terrifying when you’ve spent your life around people who used gentleness as a trap,” he said. “There is no trap with Chris. You know that.”

She did. She’d known it since the night he’d sat with his back to her wall, watching the treeline until morning. Since the kitchen where he’d cut sourdough and pushed it across the table. Since twenty minutes ago, when he’d pressed antiseptic to an open wound with hands that shook from tenderness.

“I don’t know how to love someone without armor on,” she muttered, her voice soft.

Kahn leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“Nobody does, the first time. You learn it by doing it badly, then less badly. Eventually you wake up one morning realising you slept through the night because the person next to you made the dark feel safe.” He held her gaze. “You deserve that. What your father did to you doesn’t get to decide what you’re allowed to have.”

Through the bond, Chris had stopped running. She could feel him, far away, his hurt settling into the steady, patient ache she recognized. The one that said, I’ll be here when you come back.

“I need to go back,” she said.

Kahn stood. Offered his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up.

They walked back toward the compound in the fading light. At the east gate, he stopped.

“Sloane.”

She turned.

“He’s not your father. None of them are.” His voice was quiet, firm. “You’re allowed to put the armor down.”

She held his gaze. Then she nodded, once, and walked through the gate toward the bond humming low in her chest, toward whatever came next.

Chapter 29 - Chris

The eastern breach hit at 4:17 in the morning.

Chris heard the ward line tear before the alarm caught up. A wet, concussive sound, then the klaxon punching through the compound in amber pulses.

Kahn was already ahead of them, shifting mid-stride, two hundred and forty pounds of Alpha hitting the ground at a sprint. Dark shapes poured through the eastern gap. Chris counted fifteen, then twenty, funneling through the torn ward in tight, rehearsed spacing.

Viktor grabbed his arm. “With me. Eastern flank.”

Chris shifted. He hit the flank beside Viktor, driving into the column’s edge, scattering the lead wolves before they could fan out. A brown wolf came at his left. He pivoted, caught it across the muzzle, sent it spinning. Another lunged from behind. He twisted, jaws closing on fur, wrenching, releasing.

Kahn was thirty yards ahead, cutting through the main body. Patrol wolves held a line on the right. The eastern front was holding.

Then the second alarm hit. Residential compound. Different pitch, closer.

The bond flared bright in his chest. Sloane’s presence spiked with a focus so sharp it cut through the chaos, bright with readiness.

He turned from the eastern line.

Viktor’s howl carried across the field, granting him permission to go.