NEVA POV
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Two and a half days at the pace Ziko had planned meant almost no real rest — brief stops for fuel and food, sleep taken in shifts while the convoy kept moving, the specific grinding exhaustion of a journey undertaken with real urgency rather than careful preparation.
My wolf ran alert nearly the entire way, occasionally flickering into the low warm register that meant she was drawing on reserves rather than genuinely calm.
*How is she,* my wolf asked, meaning Talia, the girl neither of us had met yet.
I don't know, I said. We won't know until we arrive.
*I keep thinking about what it would have been like,* my wolf said. *If nobody had come for us. If the break had happened somewhere without Ryke, without the compound, without anyone who understood.*
I thought about that
