The border alarm goes off at dusk.
Three weeks after the safe house conversation ended at a corridor window with nothing resolved.
Not the slow, rolling pulse that means patrols have spotted something worth watching. The sharp, three-beat sequence that means the thing they've spotted is already inside the outer perimeter.
I'm in the training yard when it hits — mid-stretch, trying to work the bruising out of my ribs from last night. The sound cuts through the air and my mark detonates before the third beat lands.
Not a flare. Not a warning hum.
A full, white-hot ignition up my arm.
I'm already moving before I've decided to.
***
The eastern border is a tree line three kilometers from the compound wall, where the pack's territory bleeds into a stretch of city-owned green space that h
