Page 161 of Knot Their Soldier: Part Three

It's time.

Knox turns and grabs the nearest runner by the shoulder as the man rushes past. "Recall Prime Alpha Zero from the front line. He is taking command of the fortress. Now."

The runner nods and tears off.

Knox meets my eyes for a second and clenches his jaw.

"Let's join the fight."

Chapter Forty-One

Halley

The front line reeks like a slaughterhouse.

Knox leads me toward the barricade with Shade close at my shoulder, and every step strips away the distance that protected me on the wall. From above, the battle had looked terrible, but contained: smoke, movement, flashes of gunfire, soldiers reduced to dots on a road.

Down here, they have faces.

Enemy bodies are piled at the entrance to the road to Blackgate. Some hang over the barricade while others lie twisted in the dirt with rifles still trapped under their hands.

It stinks of death. The air carries sweat, spent explosives, ruptured bowels, and fear. It coats my tongue and cloys in my sinuses.

The enemy is still regrouping, unseen through the haze of fallout, but every so often, a rifle pops when one of them drifts too close, and another body drops to the ground.

We're hovering in the eye of the storm, and it's filled with both dread and anticipation.

Our Alpha soldiers rest in bloodied armor with their faces streaked with grime. Their bodies are marked by violence that would have killed them if they couldn’t heal supernaturally fast. There are bullet wounds knitting closed under torn uniforms, their skin dragging itself back together in ugly, angry seams.

The ones who cannot heal are laid in a row at the base of the cliff.

Someone has taken the time to arrange them respectfully, and evidence of care in such a forsaken place somehow makes my heart hurt worse. Their boots point toward the road, and their blood runs downhill in thin lines. A few faces are familiar beneath the dirt and damage, though some are only recognizable by the callsign stitched to their combat vest, or the last lingering notes of their scent.

A bullet through the temple. A leg blasted to shreds up to the hip. A throat opened too deep to close. One body has no head at all.

Alpha healing means nothing when there is no blood left to pump or body left to save.

My stomach rolls as I look from our dead to the road below, where the Humans are pulling themselves back into formation.

If this is what they did while their full attention was still on the Pass, how will we survive when they come at us with everything they have?

But as I take the battlefield in with new eyes, I realize we might just stand a chance.

The Blackgate road branches left from the approach to the Pass, then climbs along the side of the mountain. At the first barricade, it's barely wide enough for eight Humans to come at us shoulder to shoulder. The ground is steep with broken loose rock that slips under boots. There are channels carved into the dirt by rain, and large protruding rocks waiting to trip anyone who moves too fast.

The road cuts along the mountainside, boxed in by cliff wall on one side and a deadly drop on the other. A steady bend in the road blocks clean shots from below and keeps the Humans picking us off from a distance. If they want Blackgate, they have to climb into this narrow stretch and fight for every step.

The tactic is as clever as it is brutal.

A familiar pulse flares through the bond a split second before I see them.

Blaze appears first, vaulting the barricade gracefully, his armor dusted white from the collapse and darkened in places with blood that I hope is not his. Viper is right behind him, heavier and slower, landing with his rifle clutched in his hands. As he approaches, he slings it over his back and opens his arms with a wide smile.

My knees almost buckle with relief.

Viper cups the side of my neck with one gloved hand and presses his helmet against mine for half a breath.

"Hi," Blaze says, like he's a young Alpha shy around his mate, instead of a battle-worn soldier who probably killed dozens in the last hour alone.