The ward broke at an hour the compound had finally accepted as rest.
Not shattered — that would have been noise, disruption, the kind of alarm that woke everyone. It dissolved. The slow, careful dissolution of something that had been worked at with patience and precision, the way you pick a lock rather than break a door. Maren's ward was exceptional. Whatever took it apart was more than that.
I felt it through the pack bond a half-breath before the alarm reached consciousness — a cold gap where warmth had been, the specific absence of a thing that had been present and was suddenly not. My wolf was on her feet before I was.
Darius was already awake.
He was always already awake in situations like this — the Alpha's particular vigilance, the monitoring that never fully shut down. He was a
