Chapter 407: The B-Team Means Business

Brennan’s chest swelled. His back straightened. His chin lifted. His eyes went glassy in a way that had nothing to do with the broken nose he was still sporting from the barrier incident and everything to do with the fact that Jaxon Valerios had just called him indispensable.

Damon: Nicholas.

Nicholas: I see it.

Damon: His eyes are doing the thing.

Reed: If he cries in this war room, he’s in big trouble.

Brennan did not cry. The glassiness retreated behind a hard blink and a jaw clench that cost him his dignity but saved his reputation. He gave Jaxon a nod that was short, controlled, and contained the emotional payload of a man who would be crying about this in private later and was choosing right now to be a goddamn professional about it.

"The delegation is set," Maddox stated. "Blair and Draven represent Drakencrest. Damon and Brennan represent Shadowfell. One attorney travels with them. They collect discovery, identify holes, and report back before we decide if the strike team moves."

"How do we get to Solveil?" Damon asked, because logistics were the part of every brilliant plan that people forgot about until someone with a functioning brain brought it up.

The question landed on the table and produced the specific silence of a room full of apex predators realizing they had spent thirty minutes strategizing an operation to a continent none of them knew how to reach.

"None of us have been there." Jaxon paused and his eyes moved to the wolf king at the far end of the table. "Outside of King Shadowfell. But in terms of portals, that does not help us." His eyes flicked to Brennan. "Can you follow the trace they left in the throne room? When the Luminari made their portal to leave, the residual signature should still be readable."

"Yes," Brennan replied.

???

DRAKENCREST - THRONE ROOM

The war room emptied and reformed in the throne room, which still looked like a battlefield had a disagreement with an art gallery. The impaled portrait was still hanging. The poker was still embedded in the dead king’s forehead.

"Quick briefing, Gamma," Ryker said to Reed. "Before a few nights ago, we didn’t know the word Luminari. We didn’t have a name, a location, a language, or a single confirmed sighting. Maddox knew who Landon Solveil was because his father had dealings with him. That’s it. One name. Zero geography. The entire civilization was a ghost story with good lighting."

Reed processed that at the pace of a man whose job was processing things and who was very good at his job. "How did you make contact?"

"They made contact with us." Ryker took a swig from his flask. "Fae are considered extinct. Kael’s mother was one of the last known Fae. The Luminari ARE Fae. They just have kept themselves hidden. So you can imagine the vibe in the room when a race of beings we thought died out a thousand years ago portaled onto Diplomat Row."

Reed’s expression shifted by a degree that most people would have missed. Ryker caught it because Ryker caught everything and forgot nothing and pretended to forget everything.

"Yeah," Ryker said. "That’s the face I made too."

In the center of the throne room, Brennan was already on his knees. Both palms flat against the obsidian. His eyes were closed and his face carried the concentration of a man listening for a whisper in a hurricane.

Dark magic bloomed from his fingertips, spreading across the floor in thin tendrils that moved with purpose, seeking, tasting, sorting through the residual magical signatures the way a bloodhound sorts through scent.

There.

"Got it," he said, eyes still shut. "Their portal anchor is still warm. They used a paired-point system. Departure signature here, arrival signature on their end. The math is in the residue." His brow furrowed deeper. "Their magic is beautiful, by the way. Gorgeous architecture. Like cathedral ceilings made of light. I hate that I’m complimenting the people who arrested her but the craftsmanship deserves acknowledgment."

"Brennan," Damon said.

"Right. Portal. Focusing."

Purple-black energy spiraled upward from the obsidian, weaving itself into the shape of a doorway that hummed with a frequency that made everyone’s teeth vibrate. The frame stabilized. The center filled with light that wasn’t quite white and wasn’t quite gold and wasn’t quite anything any of them had seen before.

Blair stepped forward. Black cloak. Gold eyes. The necklace Kael had given her glowing faintly against her collarbone. She looked like a woman walking into a legal battle she had already won in her head and was now going to win with her mouth.

Draven stood beside her. Calm. Composed. The physical embodiment of twenty years of surviving a psychopath and turning that survival into the most transferable skill set on two continents.

Damon flanked them on the right. Brennan on the left. And Briggs, the attorney Maddox had pulled from the legal corps at four in the morning, stood in the center holding a leather satchel full of documents and the haunted look of a man who had been woken up through a mindlink and was now wide awake.

Ryker looked at the five of them assembled in front of the portal and grinned.

"The B-Squad."

Every head turned.

"Two Betas. Brennan. Blair. And an attorney named Briggs." He counted them off on his fingers. "Five B’s. One portal. The B-Squad."

Blair’s gold eyes locked onto Ryker with a heat that could have melted the portal frame.

"Call us the B-Squad again, Ryker. I dare you."

Ryker’s hands went up immediately.

"Blair and the Boys," he amended.

She gave a single nod of approval.

"Blair and the Boys," Griffin repeated from the back, nodding like a man who had just heard the title of his favorite new song.

Maddox looked at his sister. The look lasted two seconds. The look was a king trusting his kingdom’s legal fate to a woman who had spent the last twelve hours torturing a man with cold water, catching a spy in a lineup of hundreds, and kissing a wolf Beta in a closet. The look said come back with my wife.

Blair received it. Returned it. Walked through the portal without looking back because looking back was for people who weren’t sure and Blair Drakencrest had never been unsure of a goddamn thing in her life.

Draven followed. Then Damon. Then Brennan, who paused at the threshold, turned back to the room, and gave Jaxon a nod that carried everything the war room nod hadn’t been big enough to hold.

The attorney, Briggs, went last, clutching his satchel to his chest like a man jumping off a cliff and hoping the paperwork would break his fall.

The portal closed behind them.

The throne room went quiet.

Ryker looked at the dead king’s portrait, still hanging with a poker through its face.

"Somebody should fix that," he said to nobody.

Nobody fixed it.