The silence in the war room was a physical presence, thick and smothering. The shouts from the courtyard had been silenced by Ronan's enforcers, but the tension hadn't dissipated; it had been driven underground, a poison seeping into the foundations of the Keep. Kael stood with his back to the room, staring at the map. The pins marking troop placements, supply lines, enemy positions—they all felt like a child's game now. He was playing checkers on a board where someone had just introduced the concept of gunpowder.

Lyra's broadcast hadn't just been words. It had been a key, turning a lock deep inside him, and a door he hadn't known was there had swung open to reveal a bottomless pit. His father hadn't been a hero defending his people. He'd been a useful idiot, a blunt instrument wielded by the ghost of a long-dead ideology. The Draven name, the legacy he'd carried like a suit of armor, was rusted through, worthless.

"The shield prototype is stable," Elias said from behind him, his voice cautious, probing the edges of Kael's stillness. "We can maybe build three more within the day. The power source is the real bottleneck. The crystals in the schematics… we have nothing like them."

Kael didn't turn. "And the broadcast?"

Ronan answered, his tone grim. "It's everywhere. Our scouts report confusion in the Northern forward camps. Some units have broken formation, arguing. But their command structure is holding. For now."

"The Citadel has pulled back their legion escorting the drills," Valen added, stepping into the room. He looked older, the news having carved new lines into his face. "They've abandoned Alaric. Left him to swing in the wind."

A strategic opportunity. A weakened enemy, a fractured alliance. Any other day, Kael would have been planning a decisive strike. Now, the information landed on him with all the impact of a feather.

"And the Crimson Paw?" Kael's voice was flat.

"They're… quiet," Ronan said. "Too quiet. It's not acceptance. It's the calm before the storm. They heard that broadcast and they know now, for a fact, that everything they were ever taught about why they were oppressed was a lie. That kind of truth doesn't make men grateful. It makes them furious."

Kael finally turned. The fury they all expected was absent. In its place was a hollowed-out calm that was far more terrifying. His eyes, usually bright with silver intensity, were dark, like tarnished metal.

"They are not our problem," Kael stated.

Ronan blinked. "Alpha, with all respect, they are inside our walls. They are absolutely our problem."

"No," Kael said, his gaze sweeping over them. "The shield emitters are not our problem. The Citadel's retreat is not our problem. The muttering in the courtyard is not our problem." He walked to the table and swept a hand over the map, sending pins scattering. "There is only one problem. In thirty-four hours, a man who believes my mate is an abomination that must be erased from history is going to use giant drills to dig her out of a mountain and kill her."

The finality in his voice silenced the room.

"So we stop him," Elias said, his voice tight with a brother's fear.

"How?" Kael asked, the word a soft challenge. "We have a handful of shields against weapons we can't comprehend. We have an army that is questioning why it should fight at all. We have allies who have abandoned us, and strangers who offer cryptic advice." He looked at Elias, then Ronan, then Valen. "The old rules are broken. My father's war is over. The new one started the moment that broadcast ended. And I do not know the rules of this one."

He was admitting it. Out loud. The unthinkable. The Alpha did not have the answers.

The bond pulsed then, not with Lyra's fear or her resolve, but with a simple, stark image. It was her hand, resting on the Vault's console. And superimposed over it, a memory. His own hand, covering hers on the war table, the first time she had ever suggested a strategy to him. The memory was laden with her feeling—not of love, but of trust. A belief in his strength, yes, but more importantly, in his ability to adapt.

It wasn't a plea. It was a reminder. You are not your father.

The hollowness inside him cracked, and something else, something raw and new, began to flow into the space.

"Ronan," Kael said, his voice gaining a sliver of its old command. "Bring me the Crimson Paw spokesmen. Not the fearful ones. Bring me the angriest ones. The ones who look like they want to burn this whole Keep down."

Ronan's eyes widened slightly, but he nodded. "As you command."

"Valen. Take the shield prototype. Take our best trackers. I don't want three more in a day. I want one, fully powered, in the hands of the scout closest to that mountain in twelve hours. I don't care how you do it. Steal the power from the Keep's own lights if you have to."

Valen, a man of pure action, looked relieved to have a direct order. "It will be done, Alpha."

When they were gone, Kael turned to Elias. "The data chip. The history. Is there anything in there about them? About the Purists? Not their ideology. Their weaknesses. What did they fear?"

Elias looked startled, then thoughtful. "I… I don't know. I was focused on the technology, the unification…"

"Look again," Kael said, his voice low and intense. "Alaric isn't a god. He's a man. A man clinging to a story. What happens to a man when his story starts to fall apart?" He leaned forward, his eyes locking with Elias's. "My mate just showed the entire world that his story is a lie. He will be desperate. Reckless. A cornered animal is dangerous, but it also makes mistakes. Find me the mistake."

---

In the dim, frozen camp, Finn's fingers were numb, but his mind was on fire. Liana's data chip was a treasure trove of intercepted Northern communications, all garbled and chaotic thanks to his Gorgon's Gaze. He wasn't breaking encryption; he was piecing together patterns from the digital wreckage.

"They're scared," he muttered, more to himself than to Liana, who was sharpening a curved blade with a steady, rhythmic scrape of stone on steel.

"Everyone is scared, little fox. The trick is to be less scared than the other guy."

"No, I mean… their command chatter. It's not just confused. It's… reverent. They keep using a word. 'Keth.' It translates to… 'The First Stone.' They're not just calling it an archive. They're calling it a blasphemy."

Liana stopped sharpening. "A holy war. That makes them more dangerous, not less."

"Maybe," Finn said, his eyes scanning the lines of code. "But it also makes them predictable. Look." He pointed to a fragmented logistics report. "They're rerouting all non-essential power to the drill sites. Even life support in the lower sectors is being dialed back. It's all or nothing. They're not just trying to break in. They're trying to erase her. It's a ritual."

A slow smile spread across Liana's face. It was not a nice smile. "A ritual requires focus. A single point of failure." She leaned over his shoulder, her scent of dry sand and sun-warmed stone a strange comfort in the freezing air. "Find me the heart of their power grid. The altar where they're pouring all their faith."

---

Kael looked at the three Crimson Paw men standing before him. They were exactly what he'd asked for: hard-eyed, scarred, their bodies held with the tense readiness of men who expected a trap. The oldest, a man named Grynn with a salt-and-pepper beard and a missing eye, met Kael's gaze with open defiance.

"You heard the voice from the mountain," Kael began, not from the head of the table, but standing before them, an equal distance away.

"We heard a voice," Grynn corrected, his voice a gravelly rumble. "Doesn't mean we believe it."

"You should," Kael said simply. "Because the man who murdered your Beta, Thorne, believes it. He believes it so deeply he's willing to tear down a mountain to silence it. He believes that the blood that runs in your veins, and in mine, is a stain that needs to be scrubbed from the world."

He saw the flicker in Grynn's eye. The anger was there, a banked fire.

"For my entire life," Kael continued, "I believed my father was a great man. I built my world on his legacy. Today, I learned he was a pawn in a war he was too stupid to understand. My world is ashes." He took a step closer. "Your world was already ashes. Now you know who lit the match."

"What is your point, Draven?" Grynn spat. "You want us to fight for you now? To die for the Alpha who crushed us?"

"No," Kael said, and the word hung in the air, shocking them into silence. "I don't want you to fight for me. I want you to fight for the woman in that mountain. The one who just told the truth that both our peoples were too blind, or too proud, to see. The one Alaric wants to kill for it."

He let that settle. He was not asking for their loyalty to Silverfang. He was offering them a cause. A real one.

"The Northerners are vulnerable," Kael said, his voice dropping, becoming conspiratorial. "Their faith is shaken. Their human allies have abandoned them. They are putting everything they have into one, desperate blow. They are looking at the mountain." He leaned in. "I need you to make them look at you."

Grynn stared at him, his single eye searching Kael's face for the lie. He found none. "What are you proposing?"

"Take your people. Not as conscripts. As your own force. Hit their supply lines. Not to win a battle. To create a distraction. To make them turn their heads. To be the thorn in their side that they cannot ignore."

It was a gamble of monumental proportions. He was handing a weapon to a former enemy and pointing them at his greatest foe.

Grynn was silent for a long moment, his gaze drifting to the scattered pins on the map. He looked back at Kael, a new, grudging respect in his eye. "You're not your father, are you, Draven?"

"No," Kael said, the weight of the new crown he had just forged for himself settling on his brow. It was heavier than the old one. "I am not."

The Alpha was learning. The rules were different now. And his first move was to set the board on fire.

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