The burial unit dug graves. Too many graves, Fallon thought as she walked outside, across the muddy ground. But today they dug none for their own, and that made it a good day.
Flynn slid out of the woods, his wolf Lupa by his side.
“Seven of the prisoners need more treatment,” he said. “Your mom’s helping with their transport to Cedarsville. It’s the closest clinic that can handle their injuries. The rest are on their way to the detention center on Hatteras.”
“Good.”
Flynn, she thought, fast—an elf, after all—efficient, and solid as the rock he could blend into, had met her mother and birth father when he’d been a teenager.
Now a man, he stood as one of her commanders.
“We’ll need a rotating security detail here,” she continued. “Hatteras is close to capacity, so we’ll need this facility. And they may come and check when they can’t get through, or just bring in another load of prisoners.”
She rattled off several names for the detail, including her brother Colin.
“I’ll set it up,” Flynn said. “But Colin took a hit in the op, so—”
“What?” She whirled around to Flynn, grabbed his arm in a vise grip. “I’m just hearing this?”
“You’re The One, but the mother of The One is downright scary, so when she says keep it to myself, I keep it to myself. He’s good,” Flynn added quickly. “Took a bullet in the right shoulder, but it’s out, and he’s healing. Do you think your mom would go with enemy wounded if her son wasn’t okay?”
“No, but—”
“She didn’t want you distracted, and neither did your brother, who’s more pissed off than hurt. Your dad already shoved him in the mobile heading back to New Hope.”
“Okay, all right.” But she pushed her hands through her short crop of hair in frustration. “Damn it.”
“We freed three hundred and thirty-two, and didn’t lose anyone.” Tall and lean, eyes of sharp green, Flynn looked back toward the building. “No one will be tortured in that hellhole again. Take your victory, Fallon, and go home. We’re secure here.”
She nodded, and walked into the woods, breathed in the smell of damp earth, dripping leaves. In this swampy area of what had been Virginia, near the Carolina border, insects hummed and buzzed, and what she knew to be sumac grew thick as walls.
She moved through until she stood within the circle of the shimmering morning sun to call Laoch.
He glided down to land, huge and white, silver wings spread, silver horn gleaming.
For a moment, because despite victory she was bone weary, she pressed her face to his strong throat. For that moment she was just a girl, with bruises aching, with eyes of smoke gray closed, with the blood of the slain on her shirt, her pants, her boots.
Then she mounted, sat tall in the saddle of golden leather. She used no reins or bit on the alicorn.
“Baile,” she murmured to him. Home.
And he rose up in the blue sky of morning to take her.
When she arrived at the big house between the New Hope barracks and the farm where Eddie and Fred raised their kids, their crops, she found her father waiting on the porch, his boots up on the rail, a mug of coffee in his hand.
He’d had a shower, she noted, as his mop of dense brown hair still showed damp. He rose, walked down to her, laid a hand on Laoch’s neck.
“Go on in and check on him. He’s sleeping, but you’ll feel better for it. I’ll see to Laoch, then there’s breakfast for both of us keeping warm in the oven.”
“You knew he’d been hurt.”
“I knew he’d been hurt and I knew he was okay.” Simon paused when she dropped down. “Your mom said not to tell you until you’d finished. She said that’s that, and when your mom says that’s that—”
“That’s that. I’m going to see for myself, grab a shower. I could use that breakfast after. Travis and Ethan?”
“Travis is at the barracks working with some new recruits. Ethan’s over at Eddie’s and Fred’s helping with livestock.”
“Okay then.”
And now that she knew where her other brothers were, she went in to check on Colin.
She went inside, turned for the stairs in the house that served as home, but one she doubted would ever really be one. The farm where she’d been born, had been raised would forever be home. But this place, like the cottage in the woods where she’d been trained by Mallick, served a purpose.