Kael's knuckles were bone-white where they gripped the stone windowsill. The storm had properly set in, a howling grey beast that smothered the world beyond the glass. Two days. Forty-eight hours since he'd walked away from that god-cursed mountain, and the silence from the retrieval team sent to fetch Finn was a physical weight in the room.

The war room felt different now. Smaller. The maps on the table weren't just parchment and ink; they were lies. Every border, every alliance, every scrap of history he'd built his life on was a story told by the winners of a war he never knew was fought. The holographic schematics from the data chip glowed mockingly, showing him shields that could stop energy fire, comms that could whisper across continents. Power he couldn't use because the key to it all was buried under a mile of ice.

"They're late." Ronan's voice was a low rumble from the doorway. He didn't need to specify who. The failure hung between them, another crack in the foundation.

"The storm's a bastard," Kael said, not turning. It was an excuse, and they both knew it. Valen's team were arctic wolves, born to this. A little snow didn't explain a twelve-hour radio silence.

"The Crimson Paw elders are in the great hall," Ronan continued, his tone carefully neutral. "They're… nervous. They keep asking about the terms. About how many of us will be 'absorbing' them."

Kael finally turned. The strain was carving new lines around his eyes. "They should be nervous. Their leader's throat was slit by our mutual enemy. They don't get to come crawling to us for shelter and then question the roof we offer." He pushed off the windowsill, the movement tight with restless energy. "Where's Elias?"

"With the engineers. They're trying to make sense of the power-core schematics. They keep arguing about crystalline resonance and something they're calling 'unified field theory.' It's like listening to cats fight in a sack."

A ghost of a smile, bitter and thin, touched Kael's lips. "Let them fight. Maybe one of them will accidentally invent a way to light the Keep without setting it on fire." His gaze drifted back to the window, to the north. The bond was a constant, low-grade ache, like a tooth that had been punched loose. He could feel Lyra's focus, a diamond-hard concentration that left no room for him. No room for the messy, desperate love clawing at his ribs. She was building something in there. Or preparing for a siege. He didn't know which, and the not-knowing was a special kind of hell.

"She's safe, Kael," Ronan said, reading his silence. "Safer than we are out here."

"Is she?" Kael's voice was quiet, dangerous. "Or is she just the prize in a box, waiting for a bigger monster to come along and break the lock?" He slammed his fist on the table, making the hologram flicker. "I left her there, Ronan. I walked away."

"You followed a strategic retreat with two-thirds of your objective achieved," Ronan corrected, his Beta's pragmatism a wall against Kael's guilt. "A leader makes the choice that saves the most lives. You brought her brother home. You brought this," he gestured at the schematics, "home. She made her choice to secure the rest."

"Her choice," Kael echoed, the words tasting like ash. He was the Alpha. His word was law. But how did you command someone who'd been handed the keys to a lost civilization? How did you say 'come home' to a woman who'd just been made queen of a library full of ghosts?

The door burst open. Valen stood there, and the look on his face told Kael everything he didn't want to know. The big enforcer's cloak was crusted with ice, his face raw from the wind. He didn't salute. He just stood there, breathing hard, his shoulders slumped in a way Kael had never seen.

"The team?" Kael asked, his voice dangerously calm.

Valen's gaze dropped to the floor. "We found the blind. It was… cleaned out. No bodies. No Finn. But we found this, half-buried in a drift." He held out a mangled piece of blackened metal and wiring. The casing was scorched, one side melted into a slagged mess. It was the core of a Silverfang comms unit, deliberately fried from the inside out.

Kael took it. The metal was cold, lifeless. "Explain."

"There was a fight. Or… something. Tracks everywhere. Northern boot-prints, our guys' prints… and a third set. Lighter. Narrow. Never seen the make before." Valen swallowed. "And we found Gunnar's knife. Sticking out of a snowdrift a quarter-mile away. Clean. No blood."

The silence in the room was thick enough to choke on. Gunnar, the veteran who'd called Lyra 'bewitched,' wouldn't have abandoned his weapon. Not ever.

"The third set of tracks," Ronan prompted, his voice tight.

Valen shook his head, a slow, bewildered motion. "They just… vanished. Like they were never there. It's like the storm itself swallowed them."

Kael's fingers tightened around the ruined comms unit until the sharp edges bit into his palm. Finn was gone. Not dead. Gone. A full team of his best warriors, vanished. And a stranger had been at the scene.

The Southern clans. The voice on the comms. They weren't just listening. They were here. On his territory. And they had taken one of his people.

The fragile control he'd been clinging to shattered.

He threw the ruined comms unit against the wall. It shattered into a dozen pieces that skittered across the stone floor. "Get out," he growled at Valen.

The enforcer flinched and retreated, pulling the door shut.

Kael turned on Ronan, his eyes blazing with a silver fire. "You see? You see what happens? I try to play this new game with its ancient rules and what happens? My mate is a prisoner in a mountain. My spy is in the wind, probably in the hands of some desert witch. And my warriors are… gone." He paced the length of the room, a caged animal. "This 'truth' is a poison. It's unravelling us from the inside out."

"It is the truth nonetheless," Ronan said, standing his ground. "Ignoring it won't make the Northern drills stop. It won't bring Finn back."

"I don't care about the truth!" Kael roared, the sound echoing in the confined space. "I care about my pack! I care about my mate! I am the Alpha of Silverfang, not some… some archaeologist digging up dead gods!" He stopped, his chest heaving. "She asked me to trust her. And what has it cost us? What's next, Ronan? Will the very stones of this Keep rise up and tell me I'm living in a lie?"

The door creaked open again. Elias stood there, his face pale. He'd clearly heard the shouting. In his hands, he held a small, hastily assembled device—a metal box with a glowing crystal at its center, wires snaking out of it like metallic veins.

"We, uh… we got the shield emitter working," Elias said, his voice hesitant. "A small one. Just a prototype."

Kael stared at him, the anger still a live wire in his veins. "And?"

Elias swallowed. "We tested it. On a crossbow bolt. It worked. The bolt… it just stopped. Fell to the ground." He held the device out. "It's real, Kael. The power in that chip is real."

Kael looked from the humble, glowing device in Elias's hands to the grand, impossible schematics on the table. The truth was a poison, but it was also a weapon. A weapon he desperately needed.

The fight went out of him, leaving behind a cold, hollow exhaustion. He walked to the table and picked up the data chip again. It was warm, humming with a latent potential that felt both alien and familiar.

"The Crimson Paw," he said, his voice flat. "Tell them the terms are this: total fealty. Their fighters are integrated into our ranks under Valen's command. Their elders advise, but they do not command. They get our protection. They follow our laws. And the first one who looks at me sideways answers to Ronan."

Ronan gave a sharp nod. "Understood."

Kael's gaze was still locked on the chip. "And find out everything you can about the Sun-Kissed Clan. Their customs. Their politics. What they want." He finally looked up, his eyes haunted. "If they've taken Finn, they've made this personal. And if they think they can just slip through my territory like ghosts…" He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

The Alpha had a new enemy. And for the first time, he was facing a fight where his strength, his rage, his sheer will, might not be enough. He was playing a game of shadows and history, and he was losing.

He was learning the hard way that some truths, once uncovered, don't set you free. They just show you the bars of a cage you never knew you were in.

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