The Compound didn’t sleep.
Even in the dead of night, it hummed with quiet movement — footsteps in distant corridors, low voices behind reinforced doors, the faint hum of generators buried beneath the foundation. It felt alive, like a beast with steel bones and stone skin.
Lucien walked beside me through the main hallway, his hand resting lightly on my back. Not possessive. Not controlling.
Anchoring.
Rhett followed a few steps behind, silent as always.
Cole walked ahead, scanning every doorway.
Jax wandered somewhere between them, humming under his breath, hands shoved in his pockets.
We reached a large steel door at the end of the hall.
Lucien stopped.
“This is the War Room,” he said.
My pulse quickened. “War Room?”
Cole typed a code into the keypad. “Operations center. Strate
