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He stood too, facing her. In the grey light, she looked tired. Not the exhaustion of the fight itself but the older kind, the kind that came from carrying knowledge about someone who would never stop coming.

“Your father’s been watching long enough to learn our response times,” Chris said. “He knows how fast Viktor deploys the rotation. He knows which gates pull the most manpower. Tonight was a measurement.”

“For next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

She looked at him. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

“It’s not a nice thing to say. It’s what I’m going to make happen.”

The patrol office was crowded by the time they got there. Kahn stood at the map table, arms folded, his face carrying the flat expression that meant he was angry and had decided anger wasn’t useful yet. Viktor was beside him, marking the breach points on the territory map with red pins. Caitlynn sat at the communications desk with Elianna asleep against her chest, her free hand taking notes. Gideon stood by the door, grey-haired and grim.

“Two simultaneous breaches,” Viktor began. “East gate: six wolves, coordinated approach through the drainage culvert. They tripped the ward alarm but were inside the perimeter before the first responders reached position. West fence line: five wolves. Wire-cut entry. Three-second offset from the eastern breach.”

“Response time?” Kahn asked.

“East team had contact in ninety seconds. West was held by Sloane alone for just under two minutes before Chris arrived.”

The room absorbed that. Chris watched it happen, watched the information land on faces that had spent two years learning to dismiss Sloane as a cautionary tale. Two minutes alone against five coordinated attackers, and she’d held every one of them off the residential path.

“The eastern group retreated on a whistle signal,” Viktor continued. “Three short bursts. The western group pulled back within seconds of the same signal. Coordinated withdrawal.”

“That’s a command structure,” Kahn said.

“That’s Marcus’s doctrine,” Chris said. Everyone looked at him. “Split the defense, test response time at both points, measure how fast the reserves deploy, withdraw before you take real losses. Marcus ran the same drill against the Northern Ridge pack eight years ago.”

“Marcus is dead,” Gideon said simply.

“Marcus is. His playbook isn’t.”

Kahn’s gaze was steady. “You think Garrett has access to Marcus’s operational material?”

“I think someone in Garrett’s group fought under Marcus or trained with someone who did. The approach geometry, the staggered timing, the tool-cut entry. This isn’t a man throwing bodies at a fence. This is a plan.”

“What’s the plan for?” Caitlynn asked, frowning. “This has to be more than you, Sloane. He could have kidnapped you, had that been what he wanted to do.”

Sloane stepped forward. The room tightened. Chris could feel it, the automatic flinch some of them still had when she spoke in these rooms.

“Inventory,” she said. “How many wolves we can field. How fast we can split our strength. Where the gaps open when we commit to one side. He’s not trying to get in tonight. He’s building a picture of what it’ll take to get in the night; he means it.”

The silence that followed was the useful kind. The kind that meant people were listening.

“New rotation as of tomorrow,” Kahn said. “Double coverage on both breach points. I want the patrol teams running dual-front response drills every forty-eight hours until I say otherwise.” He looked at Viktor. “Pull Garrett’s banishment file. Everything we have. I want to know every wolf he’s had contact with since he left this pack.”

“Caitlynn,” Kahn turned toward his mate. “The ward anchors.”

“Already in progress. Sloane identified a weather-dependent vulnerability in the detection grid. I’m rebuilding the relay at anchor twelve Thursday. It’ll close the gap.”

Kahn looked at Sloane when Caitlynn said her name. It was brief, and Chris couldn’t read it fully, but it wasn’t hostility. It was recalculation.

The briefing broke apart. Wolves filtered out. Chris stayed until the room emptied, then went to find Sloane.

She was outside the patrol office, leaning against the stone wall. The sky had turned from grey to pale blue while they’d been inside. She had her arms around herself, not crossed the defensive way she did in briefings, but wrapped, as though she was cold, or keeping herself together through a seam that was threatening to give.

“You held the west line alone,” he said.

“I was there. It made sense to hold it.”