Two weeks of walking. Two hundred miles. To reach a compound they'd never seen, led by a woman they'd never met, because something in their wolves told them this was the direction.

Not because of me. Not because of the evidence I held or the walls we'd rebuilt.

Because of Lily. Because of what lived inside her, the thing that loosened something wolves hadn't known was compressed. It was spreading through bond networks she didn't control, waking up in wolves she'd never met. A door had opened. And they couldn't pretend it was still shut.

"Let them in," I said. "Same protocol. Sera's team evaluates. Housing with the north group until integration."

The scout left. I stood at the table and looked at the map.

Three more wolves. Thirty in five weeks. And somewhere out there, in packs connected to the bond network, more wolves were feeling the same loosening. The awareness that the obedience they'd given their Alphas wasn't instinct. It was suppression. And suppression was a choice someone else had made for them.

How many more could we hold?

Torren found me an hour later. The clipboard was in his hands, and his face had the look I'd learned to read over three years. The one that said the numbers were about to ruin my evening.

"Supply report," he said.

I took the clipboard.

Food: four months at current population. Three months if arrivals continued at the current rate. Two and a half if the rate increased.

Medicine: six weeks. Isla was stretching everything. Some of the herbs she needed didn't grow in our territory, and the trade routes Council had severed during the embargo were still severed. Nobody had reopened them. Nobody was going to.

Building materials: enough for the current expansion. Not enough for the next one.

"Four months of food," I said.

"Three, if we keep adding wolves at this rate."

"Can the gardens scale?"

"Maren's working on it. But gardens take time. Months. And the wolves arriving need to eat now."

I set the clipboard down. We were standing. We were growing.

And we were running out of time.

The evidence was in the lockbox under the floor of this room. The photographs of the original extermination order. Forty-seven names. Ages. Execution directives. The proof that Council's entire civilization was built on the murder of children who carried the same ability that lived inside my daughter.

I'd held it since the command room raid. Through the political war, the siege, the south gate. Held it because the truth needed something to land on. A structure. An alternative. A place for wolves who'd lose everything when the system collapsed.

We weren't ready. Not enough food, not enough medicine, no framework for what came after.

But the world was coming to us anyway. Three wolves at the eastern border. The loosening spreading through bonds I couldn't see, reaching wolves I'd never meet. The current was moving faster than my preparation. Faster than my plan.

If I waited until we were ready, we'd be buried under wolves we couldn't feed. If I released the evidence now, the world would crack open.

Torren was watching me. He knew. He always knew.

"We need to release the evidence," I said. "Now. Before the world comes to us and we have nothing to catch it with."

He didn't argue. He didn't ask if I was sure. He picked up his clipboard and started making a list, because that was what Torren did when the world changed. He made a list of everything the change would require.

I walked to the window. Evening light. The yard below. Lily was there, sitting on the steps with her wooden animals lined up beside her. The wolf, the bird, the bear. She was drawing. The constellation, wolves scattered around three shapes at the center. The same drawing she'd been making for weeks, but larger now. More wolves in the constellation. More shapes coming toward the center from every direction.

She looked up. Saw me in the window. Waved.

I waved back.

Eight years old today. Drawing wolves. The reason three strangers had walked two hundred miles. The reason everything was about to break open.

My daughter. Who liked wooden animals and imaginary candles.

The world was coming for her.

And I was going to make sure, when it arrived, that there was something worth arriving to.