The week after the river accord moved like a held breath being slowly let out: taut, careful, then easing into a rhythm. Patrols were steadier; the scouts' jokes came easier. The travellers' grain had sat neat and unmolested beneath the old oak for three days, the arrangement proving itself by being routine. Ethan liked that — the way small habits could hold off big violence. He liked it enough that he kept the Panel closed most of the day, letting his muscles and Riley's corrections do the talking.
Still, the world beyond their ridge didn't sleep. Out there, other decisions were being made by other hands. Lines that looked permanent could be tested with a single desperate night.
Ari came to the cabin at first light with a look that tightened the pack into silence. "I want a full perimeter check today," he said bluntly. "Tracks show more movement on the east flank. Evan's been sighted near the north bank again."
Riley's jaw clipped. "We watched his boys push last week. He's probing."
Maya stood a little straighter. "Is he looking for a fight?"
"Maybe not at first," Ari answered. "But he's testing. He finds a weakness and then he takes more. We don't want to give him a weakness."
Ethan felt the panel's quiet suggestion, an internal hum he alone could hear. If they wanted to harden their hold without obvious escalation, there were several extractions that would make the work easier: concealed alarm nodes, reinforcing snares, or a portable barricade field. Each had a cost. Each would shift reality in ways only he would ever be able to explain.
He listened to the conversation as if gathering pieces for a mosaic. Ari divided the day into tasks—two teams to double-check the traps, one team to sweep the river crossing, one to watch the old logging road. Ethan was put on the fence team with Riley and two older scouts. It was close work: two people forward, two back, moving like a single organism.
They found a sign of deliberate interference by noon. A snare that should have been taut lay slack and chewed, its trigger half-cleaved. Small, deliberate cuts along the rope—someone had been practicing not to leave evidence. The cut marks were precise, not hungry. They implied skill.
Riley knelt and ran her fingers along the fibers. Her face hardened. "This was done by someone who knows our traps," she said. "Not new hands. Someone trained to sabotage."
"That's a message," one of the scouts muttered. "They want us to know they can get through, but not yet."
Ethan felt the ledger under his sleeve like a weight. He thought of the diplomacy template that had smoothed words at the river crossing — sixty PP, a cheap insurance for conversations. He thought of the portable barricade that cost more but would shelter a crossing from an actual raid. He thought of the ethical shape of what he could buy: tools that allowed them to avoid harm, or tools that made them unnaturally safe in a way that would look suspicious if discovered.
Ari's voice snapped him back. "We double the watch tonight. No one travels alone. We rotate, no long gaps. If Evan wants to test, we'll give him a show of readiness, not blood."
It was the right call. It was the pack way.
—
Night moved like a shadowed hand closing, and the perimeter took its positions: torches stubbed low to cast confusing light, scouts half-hidden in gullies, two posted near the old oak. Ethan's hands were steady as he checked his knot points — the physical rituals of readiness slowed the mind and steadied the heart. Riley's presence at his back was a tangible thing, not intrusive, just an assurance that if something came, she'd be the first to move.
Around midnight, a far-off crash sent birds into the trees: someone moving too loud, too tall. The scouts tightened. Ethan's skin prickled; his panel pulsed, offering a defensive module: a temporary, localized field that would slow momentum and disorient an attacker long enough for the pack to respond. Cost: 400 PP. He kept the prompt to himself.
The first shapes came into torchlight like low ghosts: three men moving with practiced stealth, faces wrapped, hands quick. They hesitated at the line where Ari had placed the cairn markers and the three stones. One stepped forward to the river's edge to inspect the water; another knelt by a snare, prodding. They completed the testing ritual like a lesson taught by a careful teacher.
Ethan counted heartbeats. The attackers were dozens of small choices — not necessarily Evan himself, but scouts or mercenaries taking a line to test it.
Riley signaled with a small hand gesture and the scouts closed in, not to strike but to compress movement. Ari stepped into the torches' periphery and let his voice roll out. "You're past the limit," he said. "Turn back. Mark the crossing and keep to them. We won't lift hand on your people if you do."
The leader of the intruders looked up. Ethan read the man like a long line of small clues: clipped beard, a limp to his step, a ring of family marks on his sleeve. He watched the mini-drama unfold: the leader's jaw tighten, the second man's fingers flex near a concealed blade.
Riley's stance shifted — not aggressive, but ready. Ethan could see it in the minute set of her shoulders. He felt the Panel pulse again: an extra resupply of command: "Crowd Control Flash — non-lethal concussive burst. Cost: 200 PP."
He did not use it. Instead he stepped forward into the ring of torchlight and let his voice be calm. "This is our land," he said. "We asked for an arrangement. We can speak and find terms. We don't want a fight."
The leader's eyes flicked to him as if measuring the right weight to place on a stranger's words. Ethan used a phrase from the diplomacy template not aloud but shaped as his own: "If you need passage, call ahead. Leave a token. Make the crossing straightforward. No one gains by blood."
There was a long silence. The second man in the intruding group snorted — a sound of impatience. For a breath, it felt like the moment before a match is struck. Ari's hand dipped toward a blade. Riley's fingers tightened.
Then the leader's shoulders sagged a hair. He spoke in a voice that had the friction of someone who'd carried too much trouble for too long. "We heard there was grain near the oak," he said. "My children are hungry."
Riley's face changed. The scouts around the fire exchanged looks. Hunger was a motive that lived hand-in-hand with chaos.
Ari's mouth softened, but his eyes stayed hard. "We can spare a measure, not all," he said. "But you leave a token at the oak and you cross only in the marked way. Name your scout. We keep the route on schedule."
The leader hesitated, then nodded. He gestured once, the men stepped back, and they drifted away into the dark like smoke.
When they were gone, the pack exhaled. The tension unknotted slowly. No one cheered. There was only a relief like cold water across bruised hands.
Later, when the perimeter was secure and the torches dying low, Ethan slipped away to the cabin's lean-to. The ledger in his head scrolled again: the cost of the defensive field would be small relative to his balance, but would using it change how the pack thought of him? Would it make them doubt the sweat that had gone into the last week's training?
He fed the questions into the silence and decided to spend elsewhere. First, he authorized a small extraction he'd been considering: a reinforcement weave for the most vulnerable snares — modest, silent, and non-obvious. Cost: 150 PP. It would buy time by making traps harder to sabotage, but it wouldn't produce a flashing effect that would unnerve the pack.
The extraction was private; only he saw the confirmation. He sent the order to his satchel and then, like any member of the pack, he checked knots and tapes. He moved through the morning doing the small, obvious labor that made trust real: tightening strings, drying hooks, teaching a younger scout to retie a knot.
When Ari clapped him on the shoulder that afternoon, it was not praise as much as acknowledgement. "You're part of this now," he said. "We hold together or we don't. Keep that in your head."
Ethan nodded. The panel hummed under his sleeve like a secret heart, a private set of scales. He added the numbers in his head — the PP balance after the reinforcement weave, the buffer left for healing capsules, the larger extractions he might need if Evan escalated. He liked being able to do discrete, helpful things without announcing them. He liked that he could choose to spend power in ways that matched the culture he'd come to value.
At dusk, Riley appeared at the edge of the hearth with a small mug of broth and a look that meant she'd been watching him — not with scrutiny but with something like quiet approval. "You did the right thing tonight," she said, handing him the mug. "You could've flashed something and made it over."
He smiled into the broth. "Not everyone wants the miracle." He lifted his eyes to hers. "I want the reason."
She set her hand over his briefly, an ordinary gesture that had come to mean the weightiest things. "Good," she said. "Keep it."
Ethan let the words settle. Outside, the ridge softened into night. Inside, the pack hummed with small rhythms: cups being set down, a low conversation about trap lines, a child's tired cough. He lay on his pallet that night with the panel warm and secret against his skin, counting the ways power could be spent and the people who deserved to have it spent for them.
Only he knew the ledger. Only he weighed the numbers. Only he chose how the multiplication of ten would be used to keep this fragile pattern — these ordinary lives — intact.
Tomorrow would bring new tests. Evan's march could begin at any time. But for now there was the pack's breath around him and Riley's steady presence a hand's breadth away. He closed his eyes and rested, knowing the stakes and, for the first time, liking the life he could help make steady.