Smoke hung low over the yard like a wet shroud. Men and wolves moved through it with the slow, necessary movements of people who had already given up the luxury of fear. The barricade sagged in places; timber smelled of singed hair and old rope. Blood dried in dark ribbons along the planks.
Riven stepped down from the centre beam with that unhurried, terrible calm he always wore. When he spoke, the yard fell to it as if it were an order from the sky. "Report," he said.
Garrett answered, voice rough as gravel. "Twelve gone. Seven too bad to stand yet. Three bitten." He spat the words like an insult. The numbers landed and made the air heavier.
The three bitten were brought forward on hands that trembled. Their faces were pale, their bandages soaked through, eyes rimmed with a panic that hadn't yet learned resignation. One of them whispered, "Do what you must. I don't want—" He broke off into a ragged breath.
Riven didn't pity them. He didn't need to. He was a man of practical mercies. He stared, the golden light of his eyes a steadiness in the smoke. "You are already lost to the change," he said plainly. "Left alone, you will fall into the gorge before dawn. There is another way. Submit to the pack. Swear fealty. I will make you noble. You will wear the wolf's name and keep your mind. You fought with us. Defended our families when you could have run, I ow you this much."
It was not a sermon. It was a law laid out in the middle of ruins.
The first bitten folded to his knees before the words finished, fingers scraping the grit as relief and fear braided on his face. The second dropped beside him, a sound like choking prayer. The third hesitated only long enough to glance at Elara — searching, perhaps, for a human nod — and then followed the others down.
Riven moved with the speed of someone practiced in ending things quickly. No ceremony, no drawn-out ritual. He took the first by the shoulder; his teeth sank, not with malice but with purpose. Light flared—gold, raw—and the man's scream altered, becoming a ragged exhale as the change settled. When it was over the man lay shaking but alive, the savage thirst gone where the pack's binding had closed.
Two more. Bite, light, breath. Each time the pack bowed their heads, solemn and wordless. Around them, the humans watching let something like hope leak into their faces. Fear of the bite had been a constant shadow; seeing that it could be answered by a choice — rough and costly, but a choice all the same — gave them a new shape to stand behind.
Elara stood very still while it happened. The silver in her blood hummed like a metal string. Part of her felt the turning as if it were a tide and she was at the shore, unable to stop it but unable to look away. She did not speak. She did not intervene. She let the pack do its work and held the image of the saved men in her head, making room for something like relief.
Jonah watched from Torvee's side, eyes glassy. He whispered, "I want to be like that," the sentence half awe, half fierce wanting. Torvee tightened her hand on his shoulder and said only, "Later." He nodded, throat working.
Caleb stood back, jaw tight, fingers worrying the strap of his bow. He did not step forward with the others to witness; he watched Riven and the three turned with a look that made Elara's skin go cold — not of scorn, but of a worry that held its breath. She could feel the small tremor of unease that lived between them, an island of distrust she didn't have time to map now.
When Riven straightened the three new nobles, he addressed the yard. "This is the path." His voice carried, not harsh but immovable. "The pack protects its own. If you choose to stand beneath our walls you choose the rules. We will not let feral blood take you and tear you into beasts. If you give us your oath, you live. If you refuse, we will not allow corruption to spread."
There was a silence after that which was not empty. It was full of choices, of people weighing what survival meant and what it cost. A woman near the rear—hair streaked with grey, hands still trembling—whispered, "We don't have to be afraid anymore." The words rolled through the yard like a small bell.
Something shifted. Backs that had been bent by terror straightened a fraction. Men who had been ready to desert their posts out of panic steadied their grips. The knowledge that there was a second chance bred a different sort of courage: risky, resolute, raw.
Garrett moved among them, checking wounds, barking short orders. Amber set a hand on the shoulder of one of the turned, steadying him as he tried to rise. The fae tended the worst injuries with exhausted hands, their green light flaring and then dimming as they poured themselves into bodies that still wanted to live.
Riven walked to the lip of the yard and looked up at the cliff face. Up there the world was a raw, indifferent stone wall that had just spat out enough death to flatten two villages. He did not need to shout for the men to follow; they clustered behind him, waiting.
"We cannot hold like this forever," he said. The sentence was a fact that had the shape of a verdict. "Each wave takes more. Each time we pluck survivors out of the mouth of madness, there will be fewer of us left to stand." He let that settle in the cold air.
Garrett's reply was a hard, short sound. "Then we end it."
Riven's gaze took in the gorge, the narrow mouth where the ferals poured, the overhangs the climbers had used. "We break the river," he said. "We collapse that throat so nothing can spill through it again. We bury their path under stone and make this a closed wound."
The idea landed like thunder. Some faces paled. Others, exhausted, looked at the cliff with something like hungry relief — if you could stop this, you could live through the next moon. Elara's silver thrummed at the idea, urgent and cold.
"We will need supplies," Garrett said immediately. "Oil, drums, wedges, something to make the rock give. A strike team to place charges or pits—whatever the old ways call them. The rest of us hold the line while they work."
Riven's nod was small but decisive. "Elara," he said, and the name drew every eye, "you will lead the strike. You know the mountain. You moved like the seam was in your bones tonight. Take those you trust. Move quiet. Collapse the mouth. If it means any of you do not come back—so be it. We buy ourselves a future."
The yard swallowed the words. They tasted like iron and salt and necessity. Elara felt the weight of them, the gravity of the choice laid on her shoulders, and something cold and resolute answered inside her.
Jonah's whisper came, barely audible: "Don't die."
She met his eye and nodded once, because that was the only promise she could make then. Caleb's fingers tightened on the bow at his back — a silent, almost reflexive vow that he would not let her go alone.
Riven looked down at the men and women gathered there — wolves, shifters, fae, humans who had chosen this life. The flicker of hope that had passed like a torch among them steadied into something harder.
"We bury the gorge," he said. "Tonight, if we can. If not tonight, in the next wind. Prepare."
They moved then, not with the adrenaline of panic but with the grim, careful haste of people who had been given a chance and intended to take it. The cliff awaited; the gorge waited; the moon watched, high and indifferent.