Chapter 144

**ARIA**

I woke to a sky the color of low silver and the soft, regular breathing of two small lives tucked into the hollow of our bed. Matteo’s head lolled against my collarbone; Leon’s fist fisted and unfisted against my shoulder. The world was ordinary and fragile and utterly mine for a few stolen hours. Outside, patrols moved like quiet weather over the compound; inside, Adam and Austin slept, arm draped over shoulder or waist, solid and warm and impossibly human.

The plan had been a living thing for days—shifting, biding, folding into itself until it suggested, rather than shouted. I felt its presence like a pressure in the air: a certain calm in the community that did not taste like peace but like readiness. They were artists of deception and patience; Adam with his patient grids and Austin with his animal timing. Cassius and Fares had been the hands that made the work happen, Sasha the lightning that would flash when needed. And I—somewhere between mother and signal—had become the quiet fulcrum the strategy needed.

I slid out of bed, careful not to wake Adam. The nursery door was already ajar, and Rosalie was there, hands busy with tea and wards, her face pale and focused in a way I had come to respect as the face of someone who held a private war in her bones. She looked up as I entered and gave me a tiny nod, the witch’s version of a smile.

“It’s time,” she said, not looking at the babies but at the way the air felt. “They’re moving differently. Everything’s aligned.”

I let the words sit like a stone in my stomach. Time moved faster when you held a drumbeat in your ribs. I dressed and gathered Matteo and Leon as if instincts had practiced this quiet theft a dozen times. They were, impossibly, still asleep as I carried them out to the kitchen where Adam and Austin were already awake—two sentries who had chosen the soft posture of morning for now.

Adam looked at me with that look he sometimes reserved for battle plans and for the way I read a room. “How do you feel?” he asked, voice low because the boys slept close enough to hear a pin drop.

"Ready,” I said, though the word tasted like iron and honey. “And scared.”

Austin’s hand found mine and squeezed with the tenderness of someone who could then rip the world apart if needed. “Good scared,” he said. “Useful scared.”

We drank in the ritual of ordinary things—toast, small laughter, the clocked certainty of coffee—because the plan had taught us the power of normality. If Alaric believed his spy network saw a complacent home, he would breathe easier. We wouldn’t let him breathe for long.

At the briefing in the council room, the map was not a map so much as a living diagram. Sasha had taken to calling it a stage. That morning, when Cassius moved markers and Fares adjusted timings, I realized with a calm that was almost shock how much I wanted the trap to work. Not for sport; for a kind of necessary end. Alaric’s offer—his grotesque, bargaining offer to spare the children in exchange for me—still stung like a bite. We had resolved not to answer with fear. We would answer with a plan.

Adam’s voice was steady, authoritative without being ruthless. “We’ll rotate visibility,” he explained, pointing to the sectors where patrols would look obvious and the interiors that would be unusually light. “We’ll leave the southern gate as a visible weakness. Let the rumor mill pick it up. Cassius and Sasha will handle the bait. Fares and his deltas will be in the shadows with the nets. If Alaric moves his hand toward what he thinks is an unguarded prize, we close.”

“You sure?” I asked, needing the confirmation more for my own tremor than for anything else.

He looked at me then, and something like softness cracked his armor. “I’m sure of you,” he answered simply. “Of us.”

We went through the motions. Wards were recalibrated until the magic hummed with a tight, precise note. Alex’s systems—those we could still use—fed false telemetry. Rosalie worked with coven sisters, trading enchantments like lock picks: glamour where needed, binding where needed, a hundred small lies wrapped in old truth.

When night fell, the community became a theater. Lights flickered in patterns we had rehearsed with the care of craftsmen. A patrol was delayed intentionally, its men leaving footprints exactly where we wanted them to. The South Gate showed signs of hurried maintenance and careless logs. A messenger, hand-picked and rehearsed by Fares, let a whispered rumor slip to probable ears before disappearing into shadow.

I felt the plan like the tremor before a thunderclap, a muscle in our collective body flexing for a strike. In the nursery, Matteo kicked, a precise small punctuation, as if to count the seconds; Leon murmured in sleep and reached for his brother with a reflex older than calculation. Watching them, my love became a blade and a shield at once. I felt that in my throat and in the marrow of my bones.

Around ten, a shadow moved where it should not have. We saw it first on the perimeter cameras—an extra runner, moving with the cautious arrogance of someone certain he could slip past misdirected eyes. He wore the light of confidence. He wore a single emblem we had expected to see on scouts but not at this hour. The bait was taken.

Everything tightened. Fares’s men slid from darkness like wolves folding into a room. Cassius’s silhouette split the night with the clean efficiency of purpose. Sasha’s grin was a thin white line in the gloom; his hand was steady on the net release.

I felt the pull of panic inch at me—where are the children?—and then Adam’s hand on my shoulder, anchoring her and me both. “Stay with them,” he murmured. His voice held order like a sword.

We watched through the cameras—grainy, silver eyes that fed us the picture of the stake we had set. The intruder moved into the space we had suggested. He did not hesitate to reach for what he thought was an unguarded prize. He stepped toward a crate that hid nothing but the illusion of emptiness. He bent. He made the choice.

Then the net fell.

The scene on the feed was choreography and chaos. Shadows spilled into one another. Alaric had placed a spy of his own, clever and fast; the net tore at his plans but not in time to leave every part of the stage untouched. There was a flinch, a sound behind the camera I could not see—a curse, a soft exclamation of surprise—and then a quiet that felt like the calm after a started wave.

We moved. Fares’s men closed in. Cassius took a flank that forced the intruder into the sightlines we had prepared. Sasha released another net, a smaller, more personal trap, and I saw a glimpse of motion near the south fence—two dark shapes shutting down a runner long before he could pick his head up.

For a breath, I thought: it worked. For a thrill of breathless terror and delight, I imagined the curtains falling and Alaric’s face—old, proud, used to being several steps ahead—learning that we had anticipated him.

And then the feed cut. Not by design. An ugly blue flash licked the edges of the frame, and the picture dissolved into static.

In the sudden hush, we were not just strategists but parents and soldiers. Adam swore once, sharp and private. Austin’s jaw clenched until I thought he might crush the wooden chair with his grip. Fares barked a command into his comms, and voices layered into the room—movement, orders, the human percussion of men at war.

Rosalie appeared at my side without sound, her fingers finding mine. Matteo stirred and opened one dark, furious eye, as if to register that the earth had shifted. Leon yawned, tiny jaw working, and then, impossibly, both settled again as if sensing their mother’s pulse and choosing to keep time with it.

I realized then that a plan is never only a plan. It is a promise and a wager and a thing that asks people to place their lives on the line.

“Whatever happens,” Adam said, voice rough, as he gathered the boys to his chest, “we hold.” His eyes found mine, and there was an entire universe of vows in that look.

I nodded, and something in me unknotted. Fear tightened into resolve.

Outside, somewhere in the dark, someone ran to meet what we had set. Inside, Matteo sighed in sleep and the world narrowed to the warmth of two small hearts and the solid, stubborn men who had promised to protect them.