Chapter 135

The attack came before sunrise.

I was asleep beneath warm furs with Levy tucked against my side, and Soryn’s tail curled around my ankle when the horn screamed through the Tiger Tribe. Not the deep ceremonial call I knew from festivals. Not the welcoming sound that had announced Aureon’s return. This was sharp and urgent and terrified.

My eyes flew open.

Another horn answered from near the outer wall. Then another. I could hear shouting outside, running feet, children crying, the distant roar of beastmen. Then a violent impact shook our wooden walls.

BOOM.

I froze. Soryn’s head snapped toward the doorway.

Another impact followed. BOOM. Something enormous was striking the gates.

"No." My stomach dropped.

Soryn uncoiled and moved toward the nest where seven eggs rested between warmed stones. Safe for now.

Ravin burst through the doorway chest heaving, golden hair wild, but his amber eyes held no fear. "Stonehorns."

My blood turned cold. "What?"

"Dozens of them. Maybe more."

Another crash shook the settlement. Outside someone screamed orders. Ravin’s gaze moved to the eggs, then to me. "Get the children."

That was enough. Everything inside me changed. Sleep vanished and fear became something useful and sharp. I was moving before I realized it, calling for Leon, gathering blankets, shoving supplies into bags while Caelion and Leon gathered cubs. Aureon appeared behind them looking furious, not worried, not confused, but absolutely enraged.

"They’re here to attacked my tribe." Another impact struck the outer gate. "How dare they."

I grabbed his arm before he could turn. "The children first."

The horns were still screaming when Aureon spun toward the window, his stripes bristling with the electric tension of imminent violence. "The underground shelter," he said, his voice carrying that strange mixture of urgency and absolute calm. "My father had it built into the bedrock beneath the central hill after the last border war. Birthing caves reinforced with stone walls and two separate guarded entrances. Exactly for situations like this."

I was already moving, gathering blankets, my mind cataloging what we would need for frightened children and nursing mothers. "Then that’s where the children go. I will stay here to help you guys. With my power, with what I can do, there will be less death on our hands. But the kids need to go now."

Aureon’s head snapped toward me, his eyes widening. "Krys, no. You need to go with them."

"Absolutely not," Ravin growled, stepping into my path. "You are not staying here where the fighting will be thickest."

I cut them off with a sharp gesture, my voice hardening into something that accepted no debate. "I am the only healer among you who can mend wounds in seconds. Every minute I spend hiding is a minute someone bleeds out who didn’t have to. We are not discussing this."

Soryn decided there was no time to waste. At the end of the day, our children came before everyone else. I knew I would be fine. My other mates would keep me safe. He swept all seven serpent eggs into their woven baskets with one fluid motion, his tail coiling protectively around the containers as he straightened to his full height. "I’m going with them," he announced, and there was something in his voice, a low thrumming resonance that made the air itself vibrate, that allowed for no argument. His emerald eyes found mine, held them with an intensity that spoke of sleepless nights and the particular madness of new parenthood. "I won’t leave our clutch with only guards between them and whatever’s coming. I won’t leave any of the children with only strangers to protect them if the walls breach."

He turned toward Levy, Niku, Sikai, Atlas, Chase, Ryder, Jasper, Zarek, Tavren, and Kaizon were already stirring from their beds, confused and frightened by the horns. "All of you," Soryn commanded, his voice carrying the authority of a father who would tolerate no disobedience. "With me. Now."

Ravin opened his mouth to protest, but the words died unspoken. He saw the same thing I saw, the way Soryn’s scales had shifted to defensive patterning, the way his claws had unconsciously extended to curl around the basket handles. This wasn’t a male asking permission. This was a father drawing a line in the sand.

"Keep them safe," Ravin said instead, his voice dropping into that register of command that made subordinates snap to attention. "If the outer walls fall, if the inner courtyard is breached, you become the wall. You understand? Those children don’t see a single enemy. Not one. It’s crucial that you are with them, with the females and the children. You’re not being excluded from battle, Soryn. You’re being trusted with the only thing that matters if we lose."

For a moment, nobody breathed. Then Soryn nodded, once, sharp and decisive. "The eastern entrance is closer to our quarters. I’ll take the clutch and all the children through there. The western entrance can handle the mothers and elders."

"Go," I said, and though my voice was steady, my hands trembled slightly as I pressed a kiss to Soryn’s jaw. "Guard them."

He was gone in a ripple of scales and shadows, the baskets cradled against his chest like precious cargo, herding our ten children ahead of him with his tail, already hissing orders to the guards at the door. Levy looked back at me once, her small face pale but brave, before disappearing into the corridor with her brothers.

Then came the chaos.

It was not the screaming panic of the unprepared. It was the controlled, desperate efficiency of a people who had done this before, who had packed their lives into bags while fire burned in the distance, who knew that speed meant survival. Mothers shoved dried meat and waterskins into pouches while elders moved toward the western entrance. Newborn cubs wailed in counterpoint to the loud horn calling warriors to arms. Caelion moved through the remaining quarters like a force of nature, helping the last few stragglers toward safety while Leon created a cordon of dark shadows that seemed to swallow the frightened, guiding them toward the hidden passages.

I worked on autopilot, my training sorting fear into action. Bandages. Feverfew for the inevitable stress sickness. A bone saw, because I knew what siege warfare meant. I had shoved the last packet of yarrow into my medical bag when the sound came, a splintering, thunderous crack that vibrated through the stone floor and up through my boots.

My heart lurched into my throat. "They’ve breached the gate?"

Aureon went utterly still, his head tilting like a predator scenting wind, his tiger senses parsing the distant sounds of destruction. "Outer barricade," he said, and though his voice was level, his pupils had blown wide with adrenaline. "The first wall is down."

"That’s not much better," Leon muttered from the doorway, his shadows coiling around his arms like living armor.

Eryx appeared then, moving with that fluid, economical grace that marked him as a warrior who had seen too many battles. He carried a sword that looked almost natural in his hand. He wasn’t bleeding yet, but readiness radiated from every line of him, a coiled spring waiting for release. "Stonehorns are coming from the northern road," he reported, his voice clipped with urgency. "Two columns, moving fast."

Veylan stepped into the doorway behind him, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.

The wolf’s face was carved from ice, his expression shuttered and remote, and when his eyes found Eryx standing not three feet away, something flashed across his features, pain perhaps, or regret, before the wall slammed back into place. He walked past his brother without a word, without a glance, moving directly to where the last remaining cubs were being herded toward the passages. He crouched, helping a trembling little one with gentle hands that belied the violence in his eyes.

Eryx watched him go, his jaw tightening with the effort of restraint. "Veylan," he said softly, a plea wrapped in a single name.

Nothing. Veylan busied himself with the child, murmuring something that made the little one’s tears slow, and the moment stretched into an ache that I could feel in my own chest.

Eryx exhaled through his nose, visibly shelving the personal for the immediate. "I counted at least sixty in the vanguard," he continued, his professional mask sliding back into place. "Possibly more behind them, using the tree line for cover. They’re not scouting. They’re marching."

Aureon’s curse was low and vicious. "Why? What could possibly justify..."

"They’re carrying blood banners," Eryx said, and the words landed like stones in still water.

The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the distant thunder of the Stonehorn drums and the whimper of a frightened child somewhere in the distance.

I looked from face to face, reading the horror in Aureon’s tightened jaw, the grim resignation in Ravin’s crossed arms, the way Caelion’s hand had gone to his trident with unconscious readiness. "What are blood banners?" I asked, and I hated how small my voice sounded, how desperately I wished I didn’t need to know.

Aureon turned to me, and in his eyes I saw the pain from losing people he cared about. "A vengeance march," he said, the words heavy with history. "They paint their banners with the blood of their dead and swear not to sheathe their weapons until they’ve taken equal measure from the ones who wronged them. It’s not war, Krys. It’s extermination."

My stomach dropped into my boots, a cold weight of understanding settling over me. "For the Stonehorns we killed on the road? The ones who attacked first?"

Eryx nodded, but it was Veylan who answered, his voice flat and terrible as winter wind across gravestones. "They’re here because of that leader we killed."

The Stonehorn warlord who had tried to steal the alliance supplies, whose warriors had nearly killed Veylan and Eryx, the male my mates had been forced to kill on that blood soaked road.

I stared at Veylan, at the way his shoulders had drawn up around his ears, at the white knuckled grip he had on his weapon. "They came all this way for him? One male?"

Veylan’s expression darkened, something ancient and predatory moving behind his eyes. "Stonehorns remember blood," he said, and his gaze drifted toward the window, toward the sound of another violent crash as something heavy struck stone. "And they always collect their debts. With interest."