(Rhea POV)

The tunnel smelled like wet stone and old roots.

I went in wolf form. Faster that way, and the passage was cut for it — low ceiling, packed earth, wide enough for one body moving at speed. I'd dug the first thirty meters myself, the winter after Lily was born. Six years later it ran a quarter mile under the perimeter and opened behind a granite outcrop on the north slope.

Torren had handed me the money pouch at dusk. Silver coins, neutral currency. "Twelve minutes," he'd said. The same number we'd been staring at since day two. Then he'd gone back to the command room to not sleep until I returned.

Midnight. The tunnel was black except for faint gray at the far end. I moved by feel and memory, counting turns. Left at the root cluster. Straight through the narrow section. Right where the old streambed crossed.

The exit was clear. Cold air. Stars. The granite outcrop hid me from the ridge above, and the trees started fifteen meters out — dense pine, old growth, the kind of forest that swallowed sound and movement both.

I listened. Counted.

The patrol had passed four minutes ago. I had eight minutes to clear the ridge and reach tree cover on the far side.

I ran.

I knew this terrain the way I knew my own breathing. Six years of running these hills in the dark. The ridge passed under me in three minutes. The far slope dropped into a creek valley running northwest toward Miller's Crossing, and I followed the water — streambed rocks covered tracks, moving water covered sound.

Twelve miles. Ninety minutes in wolf form on good terrain. The moon was a quarter-slice above the treeline, enough to navigate, not enough to throw shadows.

Mile six. Mile seven. The creek widened and the valley opened. I could smell the trading post before I saw it — wood smoke, horse, the chemical tang of stored medicine. Miller's Crossing was three buildings and a stable, run by a wolf who'd figured out that neutrality was the most profitable position in a world of territorial disputes. She sold to anyone. Her prices reflected it.

I shifted behind the tree line. Pulled on the clothes I'd carried in the pack strapped to my back. Walked in on two legs with silver in my pocket and a list in my head.

The trader was awake. She was always awake — I'd never visited Miller's Crossing at any hour and found the front room dark. She looked at me over the counter with the particular expression of a woman who'd seen enough desperate buyers to know what one looked like at one in the morning.

"Oral antibiotics. Broad spectrum. And wound antiseptic — the real kind, not the diluted stock."

She named a price. I paid it without negotiating. She wrapped the package in oilcloth and tied it tight — waterproof, compact, sized for a wolf's carry pack.

"Siege?" she asked.

"Just restocking."

She didn't believe me. She also didn't care. That was the beauty of Miller's Crossing.

I was back in the tree line in nine minutes. Shifted. Pack secured. Started running.

He was waiting at mile four.

Not on the trail. Off to the side, standing in the shadow of a rock formation where the creek made a sharp turn. Still. Quiet. No armor, no escort, no weapon drawn. Just a man in dark clothes, standing in the forest at two in the morning like he'd known exactly which route I'd take and exactly when I'd pass.

My wolf stopped before I did. Not alarm — recognition. The deep-body awareness that happened only with him, the involuntary silence that I still hadn't found a way to override.

I shifted. He'd already seen me — no point running in a form that couldn't talk.

"You're outside your perimeter," he said. "Alone. In the middle of my operational zone."

"Your operational zone is my backyard. I've been running these hills since before you learned my name."

His jaw moved once. "This is the kind of tactical mistake that ends wars in a single night. You know that."

"Then end it."

Silence. The creek ran between us.

He should have called the patrol. The Alpha of the besieged territory, alone, unarmed, outside her walls — this was the capture that would make the entire operation a footnote. No assault needed. No casualties. Just one wolf in the wrong place, handed to him by her own stubbornness.

His eyes dropped to my shoulder. The tunnel exit had a rough edge I'd meant to fix for two years and never had. Coming through at speed, the stone had caught the old scar tissue from Declan's time — a spot where the skin had never healed right, where any impact reopened it. I could feel the blood, warm and slow, soaking through my shirt.