Chapter 179: RETREAT

VICTOR

I had not planned to stay the full twenty minutes.

That is the part nobody standing on that wall understood and Rowan, smart as he was, would spend the next three days trying to figure out.

He would pick through every word I put through that radio, every second of the withdrawal, every detail of how my men walked when they left, and he would build a theory about what had changed. He would be wrong. Nothing changed. Everything went exactly the way I intended it to go from the moment I drove that car onto the grass this morning.

I did not come here for Freya.

Freya was a conversation I needed to have eventually and a problem I needed to solve eventually but not today. Today was a test. Today I needed to know how a twenty-six-year-old acting Alpha performed under pressure with no father, no Ryker, and the wrong gate to watch. Rowan performed well. Better than his father at that age, which I noted and intended to use later.

When Ryker came over that wall I was not surprised. I had done the math before I arrived. Ryker would make it back in time if he pushed hard enough and Ryker pushed hard enough for everything. He was the only one of the three wolves I had trained who had ever pushed hard enough to actually concern me.

I told my man to pull the men back and I got in the car and we drove.

That was it. That was the whole of the retreat. Not because Ryker scared me. Because I had already gotten what I came for, which was information, and because there was a second operation already running that had nothing to do with the north gate and everything to do with the woman in the Luna’s room who had no idea what her own bloodline meant.

I did not need to be at the gate for that part.

My phone buzzed on the seat beside me fifteen minutes out and I picked it up and Lila’s name was on the screen and I answered without greeting her because we did not do pleasantries, Lila and I. We did information.

"It didn’t happen today," she said.

"No."

"You sound unbothered."

"I am unbothered." I watched the trees going by outside the window. "Today was not about today."

A pause on her end. The sound of her thinking, which I recognized — she thought with a particular quality of silence that was different from her listening silence. "Ryker made it back."

"He did."

"That wasn’t in the plan."

A slight adjustment. Not a failure. "It doesn’t change anything material."

She was quiet for a moment. I let her sit with it. Lila did not like being reminded of things she had not predicted. It made her careful, which was useful, but it also made her sharp in a way that cut inward sometimes.

"The room was empty by the time your men pulled back," she said.

"I know."

"She went back inside after the threat assessment on the wall. Nia was with her."

"Where is she now?"

Lila’s voice shifted. Just slightly. The particular quality her voice took on when she was about to give me something she was pleased with. "Her room. Nia left an hour ago to check on Cole."

I did not say anything.

"She’s alone," Lila said.

I looked out the window at the road.

Consider the information.

Everything else I had been building for eleven years — the bloodline research, the Stormshadow lineage maps, the three women before Amaris who had the markers and hadn’t had them strongly enough, the mating ceremony where Corvin’s blood had stayed red against hers and everyone in that room had called it an anomaly and moved on.

I had not called it an anomaly.

"You’re not going to do anything yet," Lila said. Not a question. She knew me well enough to know that already.

"No."

"You’re going to make them wait." Her voice had an edge of something that was almost admiration. Almost. "You’re going to let them sit with today and think they won and then—"

"Lila."

She stopped.

"Stop enjoying yourself out loud," I said. "It makes you sloppy."

Then that particular sound she made that was not quite a laugh. "You’re the only person who talks to me like that."

"That is probably why you answer my calls."

She exhaled. I heard movement on her end. "The brother knows," she said. "Ryker. He knows you didn’t come for Freya."

"He was always going to know," I said. "Ryker is the only one of those three wolves who thinks the way I taught him to. That is not a surprise. It is a timeline adjustment."

"He’ll tell Rowan."

"He may already have." I turned the phone to my other hand. "Rowan knowing does not concern me. Rowan knowing and having enough time to act on it does."

"And does he."

I looked at my watch. Twenty hours until Corvin was back inside those walls. Twenty hours in which a pack that had been distracted all day would begin settling back into routine, people would stop watching every shadow, sentinels would rotate out, and a woman alone in a room had nothing to do but wait for tomorrow.

"No," I said. "He doesn’t."

Lila was quiet for a moment. She was pleased.

"I’ll be at the east gate dinner in three days," she said. "The one Marco organizes for pack reintegration after a threat assessment. I’m on the list."

"I know you’re on the list," I said. "I put you on the list, I have men everywhere."

"Of course you did." Another almost-laugh. "You want me inside."

"I want you exactly where you are." I put the phone down. Picked it back up. "And Lila."

"Yes."

"Don’t touch her yet." My voice did not change. It never changed when I said the things that mattered most. "Not until I tell you to. I need her unaware and undamaged and I need her to trust the people around her when the time comes."

A pause.

"She trusts Nia," Lila said.

"Then stay close to Nia."

I ended the call.

The road straightened out ahead and I let my head fall back against the seat and looked at the roof of the car and thought about a woman with the oldest bloodline in three generations sleeping in a room she didn’t know was already being watched.

Corvin thought he had hidden her.

He thought bringing her here, putting his title on her, putting his ring on her finger, had made her safe.

He had never understood that the safest-looking rooms were always the ones already inside the trap.

Twenty hours.

I closed my eyes and let the road carry me.