NEVA POV
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My wolf was right about the window.
I know this because at some point in the small hours, the window I'd left open carried a sound that didn't belong to Ashveil's ordinary night — not loud, not dramatic, the specific wrong note of something present that shouldn't be.
Ryke heard it before I said anything.
He was already sitting up.
"Perimeter?" I said.
"Silo would have flagged it." He was already reaching for his phone. "Not the perimeter."
My wolf: *The north channel. The registered comms system.*
"Someone's used the compound comm," I said.
He looked at his phone.
Mitch's message, timestamped seventeen minutes ago: *Incoming registered comm request. Unfamiliar identifier. Territory origin: Vrel.*
Vrel.
I was out of bed before I'd fully processed why that specific
