(Rhea POV)

Dawn. The south gate.

I woke Lily before first light. She came out of sleep the way she always did — slowly, the wooden wolf clutched against her chest, her eyes finding mine before they found anything else.

"Is it time?" she asked.

I'd explained it to her last night. Not everything — not the extermination order, not the genocide, not the Category Zero designation. The things a seven-year-old needed to know. That there were wolves outside the wall who were scared of her. That their wolves were being told to do things their wolves didn't want to do. That I was going to ask her to stand near them and be herself — nothing more. Just be near them.

"Are you sure?" she'd asked.

"Only if you want to."

She'd thought about it. The thinking of a child — not political, not strategic. The thinking of a girl who could feel other wolves' emotions and who'd been told that feeling them wasn't wrong.

"Their wolves are tight," she'd said. "The ones outside the wall. I can feel them sometimes when the wind is right. They feel like they're being squeezed."

"They are."

"I can help with that."

Not a boast. Not courage performed for her mother's benefit. The simple statement of a child who could feel pain in other wolves and wanted to make it stop.

Now it was dawn and she was awake and we were walking through the compound in the gray half-light, past the buildings where wolves were sleeping, past the command room, past the armory, toward the south gate where the containment team had been camped for weeks.

Kieran was already there. He'd been there since before dawn — checking positions, talking to Torren, running the perimeter one last time. When he saw us, he crossed the yard in three strides.

He knelt in front of Lily. Eye level. The way I knelt.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You know what's happening?"

"Mommy told me. There are wolves outside who are scared. I'm going to stand near them."

"That's right. And I'm going to be right behind you. The whole time."

"I know." She held up the wooden wolf. "Can I bring him?"

Kieran looked at Soren's carving — the wolf shaped from heartwood, the object that had become Lily's constant companion. Worn smooth. Held in a small hand.

"Yeah," he said. "Bring him."

He stood. Looked at me. The look of a man who was about to let a seven-year-old walk toward four specialists with silver-alloy equipment because the woman he loved had asked him to trust her, and he did, and the trust was heavier than the fear.

"Torren has archers on the wall," he said. "Twelve. Covering the full approach. If anything goes wrong—"

"Nothing is going to go wrong."

"If anything goes wrong, the archers fire and I pull her back. That's the protocol."

"That's the protocol."

He looked at Lily one more time. She was watching the gate — the closed gate, the wooden barrier between the compound and the open ground where the containment team was camped.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Ready."

I took her hand. My left hand, her right. Her other hand held the wooden wolf.

"Open the gate," I said.

Torren's man pulled the bar. The gate swung outward. The dawn light came through — pale, thin, the light that exists before the sun clears the tree line.

We walked through.

* * *

The containment team was moving before we cleared the gate.

Four specialists. They'd been waiting for an opportunity, and a mother walking out of the compound with the target child looked like one. They advanced from their position in the tree line — professional, spaced, the formation of wolves trained for exactly this kind of extraction.

Silver tools visible. Suppression harnesses. The equipment designed to contain a Firstborn carrier — based on six hundred years of theoretical preparation for something that hadn't existed in living memory.

They moved fast. The distance between the tree line and the gate was two hundred meters. At their pace, they'd reach us in under a minute.

I didn't move. Lily didn't move. We stood at the gate — mother and daughter, hand in hand, facing four specialists who were crossing the open ground with the focused efficiency of wolves executing a mission they'd been training for their entire careers.

Kieran was behind us. I could feel him — not his wolf, just his presence. The particular weight of a man standing close enough to grab Lily and pull her back in one motion, every muscle ready, his body the last line of defense between his daughter and the system that wanted her.

The containment team reached one hundred meters.

"Mommy," Lily said. "They're scared."

"I know."

"Not the people. The wolves. The wolves inside them. They're being pushed."

Seventy meters. I could see their faces now. Professional. Controlled. The faces of specialists doing a job — not angry, not cruel. Trained. Following orders the way trained wolves followed orders, because the structure told them to and the structure was all they'd ever known.

Fifty meters.

"Can I help?" Lily asked.

I looked at my daughter. Seven years old. Silver scars almost gone — the marks that Vera had put on her in the silver room, fading month by month, the evidence of five years of captivity being slowly erased by the body that had survived it. The wooden wolf in her hand. The silver threads in her hair catching the first edge of sunlight.

"Yes."

Lily stepped forward. One step ahead of me. Still holding my hand but leading now — the child in front, the mother behind.