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She’s at the base of the tree. Arranged there. Not the chaotic evidence of a fight but something more deliberate. The worst part is that I know exactly who it is even through the bruises and swelling.

Lena Voss.

She’s wearing a grey jacket with silver buttons.

Three of them are missing.

I stand there, looking at her, for a long moment. The trees are unmoving. The morning light comes through in cold shafts and lands wrong on everything.

Another woman, I think. Another woman who grew up in the shadow of power-hungry men with nowhere safe to land.

She’d come to us because she thought we were the safe option. The new pack. The better leadership.

And some broken, guilty part of me thinks we failed her.

“Mia.” Nash’s voice is quiet. He’s beside me. I don’t know when he moved, but he’s here. Not touching me. Just…present.

“It’s one of the defectors,” I say. My voice sounds like someone else’s. Flat. Factual. The part of me that shuts down in order to function already pulling the levers. “Lena Voss.”

Nash looks at the buttons in his hand. The ones Echo has been bringing him since we arrived. He looks at Echo. Looks back at me with an expression that tells me he’s made the same calculation I just made.

“He’s been bringing them to us,” I say.

“Since we first got here,” he says grimly.

“He was trying to tell us.”

Echo makes a small sound. Not his usual commentary. Just acknowledgment. Like even he understands the weight of this moment.

“Why get so worked up now?” Nash asks. “If he found her days ago.”

Without any answers, I crouch beside Lena.

I don’t touch anything because we’ll need to document this properly for evidence’s sake. We'll need to send reports to Lexi and Grey and Camila. We’ll need to do everything correctly and carefully because she deserves that much. But I look at her. I make myself look.

I see you, I think. I’m sorry I didn’t see you sooner.

“She didn’t die here,” Nash says quietly from above me. “She was placed.”

“I know.” I stand. “Which means⁠—”

“Someone was here recently enough to do that.”

The realization moves through me like cold water.

We’ve been sitting on that hillside in the afternoon light, pressed shoulder to shoulder, thinking we were the ones doing the watching.

We weren’t.

“He knew we were here,” I say.

“Yes.”

“This whole time.”

“Yes.”

The word leak sits between us like something physical. Someone in that meeting room told Ramsey we’d come here. Someone who knew the coordinates, the mission, the timeline. Someone close enough to be trusted with all of it.