(Rhea POV)

The gate opened. Kieran walked through.

Inside the wall, sixty wolves were standing in defensive positions with weapons pointed at the man who'd been commanding the army on the other side two minutes ago. The archers hadn't lowered their bows. The fighters at the gate hadn't sheathed their blades. The compound smelled like adrenaline and cold metal and the particular tension of wolves who'd braced for an assault and were now watching the enemy commander walk into their courtyard alone.

Kieran stopped three steps inside the gate. He stood still — hands at his sides, no weapon, no sudden movement. The stance of a man who understood that he'd entered a space full of people who had every reason to kill him and was giving them no excuse to do it.

Torren was in front of him before the gate closed.

Not slow. Not dramatic. Just there — blade drawn, six feet of distance, the granite face that I knew better than my own reflection. Six years of Torren. Six years of the man who'd carried my daughter when I couldn't and held every line I'd ever built. He looked at Kieran the way he looked at everything that threatened what he'd spent six years protecting: with the calm, thorough attention of a man deciding exactly how much damage he was prepared to do.

"One reason," Torren said. "Give me one reason I shouldn't throw you back over that wall."

Kieran met his eyes. Didn't step back. Didn't challenge. The steadiness of a man who'd already lost everything and had nothing left to protect except the truth.

"Because Aldric will assume field command within the hour. He won't hesitate the way I did. He'll restructure the assault for maximum speed and he'll add a secondary objective that has nothing to do with your walls." He paused. "I wrote Council's tactical doctrine. Every formation, every breach protocol, every contingency. You need that information. And I'm the only person alive who can give it to you."

Torren held the blade for three more seconds. His eyes moved from Kieran to me — a single look, loaded with everything he couldn't say in front of sixty wolves. The question. The warning. The history.

"Command room," I said. "Now."

The command room table. Map spread. Kieran on one side. Torren and Sera on the other. Me at the head.

Kieran started talking and didn't stop for forty minutes.

Council assault doctrine. The standard formations — column advance, pincer, the rapid breach that Aldric favored for fortified positions. Timing preferences — Aldric wouldn't wait for dawn. He'd reorganize and attack the same day, probably afternoon, using the element of surprise to offset the lost momentum. Patrol rotations, communication protocols, the signal codes that Council used to coordinate multi-vector advances.

Weak points. The supply line ran through a single corridor on the eastern ridge — wide enough for vehicles but narrow enough that a disruption there would force a twelve-hour logistical reset. The northeast flanking company was the least experienced — newer wolves, less cohesive unit discipline. If pressed hard at the point of contact, they'd pull back to regroup instead of pushing through.

Morale factors. The stand-down had shaken the formation. Wolves who'd watched their Alpha King walk away wouldn't fight the same way for the next person who stood behind the table. Some would follow orders. Some would go through the motions. A few — and Kieran couldn't say how many — might not fight at all.

He laid it out the way he'd probably briefed his own officers a hundred times: clear, structured, no detail wasted. Except this time the information was flowing the wrong direction, and the cost of each sentence was another piece of the institution he'd served for a decade being handed to the people it was designed to destroy.

Sera was the first to speak when he finished. "The supply corridor. How many wolves to block it?"

"Eight, if they're positioned right. The terrain funnels traffic through a fifty-meter stretch at the ridge crest. Fallen timber on both sides. No alternate route without going six miles south."

"I have eight." She looked at me.

"Do it," I said. "Kael's section. Move them tonight before the new commander has time to adjust."

Torren hadn't spoken during the briefing. He'd listened. Made notes on the tactical map — small marks in his precise handwriting, positions and timings and the structural details that would become our defensive plan. He'd done his job. He'd used the information.

But when the briefing ended and Sera left to organize her supply line team, Torren stayed. And the look he gave Kieran wasn't the look of a strategist who'd just received valuable intelligence. It was the look of a man who'd watched someone walk into his house and was still deciding whether the door should have been opened.