"Bring her to me," I said.

* * *

They brought her.

Darya walked into the command room between two of Torren's wolves. Her face was calm — not the calm of innocence, but the calm of a professional who had been trained for this moment. She scanned the room. Me at the table. Kieran by the wall. Torren at the door.

Her eyes found the communication device on the table. She stopped scanning.

"Who sent you?" I asked.

She didn't answer. She looked past me, to where Lily was standing in the doorway. Torren had tried to keep Lily away, but Lily had come on her own, the way she always did when something involving her wolf was happening in the command room.

"How did she know?" Darya asked. Not defiant. Genuinely confused. "I was clean. My cover was solid. My background checked out. How did a child know?"

I didn't explain. I wouldn't give Council that intelligence. Darya could go back and report everything she'd seen about the territory, the alliance, the patrol schedules. But she would not go back with information about how my daughter's wolf worked.

"You're leaving," I said. "Now. No escort. No violence. You walk out the gate and you don't come back."

Darya looked at me. Then at Kieran — recognition in her eyes, the faint respect of one intelligence professional acknowledging another. Then at Lily, who stood in the doorway watching her with silver-threaded hair and silver-calm eyes and the quiet attention of a child who could see something inside her that nobody else could see.

"She's remarkable," Darya said. "You should know — my report will say that."

"Get out."

She left.

* * *

Sera found me within the hour.

She came through the door like a storm front — contained, but barely. Her wolves had heard. Everyone had heard. A spy in the camp for six weeks, eating their food, learning their secrets, reporting to the people who wanted to destroy them.

"You let a spy live in our camp for six weeks," she said.

"Yes."

"She had our patrol schedules. Our supply numbers. Lily's daily routine. Six weeks of intelligence on a silver platter."

"Yes."

"And you know how we caught her?" Sera's voice was tight. Controlled. The anger of a leader who'd been exposed and knew it. "Not our security. Not our scouts. Not the surveillance you had Torren running on her. A seven-year-old caught her. Because the seven-year-old could feel that her wolf was wrong."

I didn't respond. Because Sera was right. Our security had failed. Torren's watch had failed. The vetting process had failed. Everything had failed except a child's instinct.

Sera looked past me. Lily was still in the doorway. Drawing on a scrap of parchment with her charcoal, sitting cross-legged on the floor, apparently oblivious to the adults talking about her.

Sera looked at her for a long time. Not the way she'd looked at Lily before — with the careful distance of an Alpha who respected another Alpha's child but didn't invest in the specifics. This was different. This was the look of a woman recalculating.

"When you told me Council was afraid of what she represents," Sera said, "I thought you were being dramatic."

"And now?"

Sera looked at the communication device on the table. The Council codes. The intelligence reports. Then back at Lily.

"Now I think you might be understating it."

She left. The door closed behind her.

I looked at Lily. She held up her drawing. Three wolves. The same three. Gray, black, small silver.

"Is the bad wolf lady gone?" she asked.

"She's gone."

"Good." She went back to drawing. "Her wolf was making my wolf tired."

I sat at the table. The communication device in front of me. Kieran's protocols, used against us. Sera's trust, fractured and re-forming around a new understanding. And my daughter on the floor, drawing wolves, tired from the effort of feeling something no one else could feel.

Six weeks. We'd been infiltrated for six weeks and the only alarm that worked was seven years old and weighed fifty pounds.

I needed the Ashford Archives. I needed facts. I needed proof.

Before the next spy came. Before Aldric sent something worse than a woman with a scar and a well-crafted lie.