Chapter 18: The Herding Gambit
The yard exploded into motion the moment Jared's voice cut through the night. Boots pounded across gravel, leather creaked, and the heavy thud of the clubhouse door swinging wide mixed with the distant howl of engines rolling through the eastern tree line. Duncan stood on the porch steps with one hand braced against the rail, the nausea rolling through his stomach in slow, sick waves that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the secret he was carrying.
Sofia moved past him, her knife already in her hand, her grey eyes fixed on the fence line where shadows shifted between the floodlights. Cole and Danny were sprinting toward the east fence, their bodies low and purposeful. Marcus had vanished around the side of the building toward the bikes, and somewhere beyond the yard, the Coyotl were making noise, plenty of it, engines and yips and the sharp crack of what sounded like gunfire aimed at the sky.
It was too loud. Too obvious.
Duncan's eyes tracked the sound, the pattern of it, the way the Coyotl were making themselves impossible to miss. His stomach turned again, but not from sickness. Something else was wrong. He had spent years on the road, years reading danger in the way men moved and the way packs hunted, and this noise was wrong. It was theater. It was a drum beaten to draw the eye while the real strike moved silent and unseen.
He grabbed Sofia's arm before she could reach the front doors. She spun, knife half-raised, then stopped when she saw his face.
"What?" she said.
Duncan kept his voice low, barely a whisper over the chaos. "They're not attacking. They're herding."
Sofia's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"The fence," Duncan said. "The east fence. They're making all this noise to pull everyone there. Look at the pattern. Engines in a line, spread out, keeping distance. That's not a charge. That's a sweep. They want us stacked up on the east side."
He pressed a hand to his stomach without thinking, the queasiness surging, and forced himself to breathe through it. "North ridge. The fence is weakest there. Danny said the posts were rotting three weeks ago, and nobody fixed them because Barrett was supposed to do it and Barrett was gone."
Sofia stared at him. Her jaw worked for a second, then she looked past him toward the tree line, where the noise continued to swell. "You're sure."
"I'm sure."
She didn't ask how he knew. That was one of the things he liked about Sofia. She didn't waste time on questions when the answer was already in front of her.
She turned and shouted, her voice cutting through the yard. "Jared!"
The alpha was halfway across the gravel, moving toward the east fence with the heavy stride of a man who intended to meet the enemy head-on. He stopped, turned, and the floodlights caught the sharp amber of his eyes as they found Duncan on the porch steps.
Sofia pointed at Duncan. "He says it's a trap. They're herding us east."
Jared's expression didn't change, but something shifted in the set of his shoulders. He took three long strides back toward the porch, his boots eating up the gravel, and stopped at the base of the steps, looking up at Duncan with that intensity that made Duncan's chest tighten even now, even in the middle of a battle.
"Explain," Jared said. It wasn't an order. It was a request, and Duncan heard the difference.
Duncan forced himself to stand straight, to keep his voice steady. "They're not trying to break the fence. Listen. That's not the sound of an attack. That's the sound of a distraction. They know we'll pile everyone at the east fence the moment they show themselves. They've been watching us for months. They know how we respond."
He took a breath. The nausea rolled again, and he swallowed hard.
"The north ridge fence is weak. Three rotten posts, right where the ground slopes down behind the generator shed. Barrett flagged it before he was taken. Nobody fixed it because nobody wanted to leave the perimeter after what happened."
Jared was silent for a long moment. The noise from the east continued, the engines howling, the yips and snarls of a pack working itself into a frenzy. But Jared's eyes never left Duncan's face.
"How many do you think are coming up the north ridge?"
Duncan shook his head. "Enough to matter. Maybe a dozen. Maybe more. They don't need to take the clubhouse. They need to get behind you while you're pinned at the fence."
Sofia was already moving, her knife sliding back into its sheath. "I know the ground up there. The slope gives them cover for maybe fifty yards. If they're coming through the weak posts, I can get there before they break through."
Jared raised a hand, and she stopped. He looked at Duncan again, and there was something in his voice that made Duncan's chest ache.
"You saw this."
"I heard it," Duncan said. "I've heard packs hunt before. The noise is always the lie. The silence is what kills you."
Another howl rose from the east, closer this time, and Jared's jaw tightened. He turned to Sofia.
"Take Cole with you. He knows the north boundary better than anyone. Move fast, keep quiet, and if there are Coyotl on that ridge, you hold them at the fence line until I get there."
Sofia nodded once and was gone, running low along the side of the building, her silhouette swallowed by the darkness within seconds.
Jared turned back to Duncan. He climbed two steps, close enough that Duncan could smell the oil and leather and the sharp alpha scent underneath, the scent that made his knees want to give out even now.
"You're staying inside," Jared said quietly.
Duncan opened his mouth to argue, but Jared's hand came up and caught his chin, tilting his face into the light. His thumb brushed across Duncan's jaw, a touch so gentle it was almost painful against the chaos around them.
"I know you can fight," Jared said. "I know you've been fighting your whole life. But you're carrying something, Duncan. I can smell it on you, and I can see it in the way you move. We're going to talk about that when this is over. Until then, you stay behind the doors."
Duncan's throat tightened. He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell Jared that he wasn't fragile, that he had survived alone for years without an alpha telling him where to stand. But the nausea surged again, sharp and sudden, and he had to brace a hand against the railing to keep from swaying.
Jared's eyes flicked down to that hand, then back to Duncan's face. Something passed between them, something unspoken, and Jared's expression softened for just a second.
"Stay alive," Jared said. "That's an order."
Duncan managed a small, crooked smile. "You're going to lecture me about orders after I just read the whole attack for you?"
Jared's mouth twitched. Then he was moving, striding toward the east fence with the long, purposeful gait of a man who had a pack to protect and a fight to win. The floodlights caught the scars on his arms, the set of his shoulders, and Duncan watched him go with his heart hammering in his chest.
The noise from the east swelled again, and Duncan turned and slipped through the clubhouse door, closing it behind him. The hall was empty, the fire still burning low in the hearth, and the quiet felt louder than the battle outside.
He pressed a hand to his stomach and stood in the dark, listening to the pack he had chosen fight for the territory that had become his home.