The demon came at dawn which was just rude because I'd gotten maybe three hours of sleep and waking up to alarm bells and emergency pack links was not how I wanted to start the day that might kill us all.
Forty-three demon-spawn. Not twenty-three like last time. Forty-three.
The number kept bouncing around my skull while I ran toward the eastern clearing where two hundred alliance fighters were already mobilizing into defensive positions we'd drilled for exactly this scenario, except drilling and actually doing were completely different things and my brain was stuck on forty-three which was almost double what we'd faced before.
Through the bonds I felt all four alphas already in position—Kael coordinating wolves, Riven managing the mind-link network, Draven liaising with vampires, Thorne prowling the perimeter in wolf form looking for weak points—and their combined battle focus helped even though it didn't stop my hands from shaking.
