Page 64 of Charged By the Razorbacks

“Well,” Jarek said, his voice rough, edged with something that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t been dragged through the aftermath of a fight. “That was a little more dramatic than I’d planned.”

Tamsin looked up from where she stood near the central console, one brow lifting. “You planned that?”

He shrugged, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at something that clearly didn’t appreciate being reminded it existed. “I was hoping for less ‘imminent death,’ more ‘clean execution.’”

Aleksy huffed a quiet breath beside him, not quite a laugh, but close enough. “Your expectations were unrealistic.”

“Story of my life.”

The room around them was full, but quieter than it had been before they’d deployed. Not tense—just ... settled. The sharp edge of anticipation had been replaced by something heavier, something earned.

The kind that sat deep in the bones.

Victor stood at the head of the command table, one hand braced against its surface, his presence still steady, still anchoring even now. Ivan was beside him, just as solid, just as immovable, the two of them holding the center of the room as the rest of the E.S.E. filtered in around them.

Bruised and battered but alive.

The Lions looked like they’d taken the brunt of the corridor fight, Caleb’s shirt torn at the shoulder, Jackson rolling his neck like he was trying to work out the stiffness, Wyatt leaning back against the wall with a satisfied sort of exhaustion. Sienna standing close to them, watching the three of them intently.

The Wolves were quieter, Rafe and Dorian already reviewing the aftermath data with Riley at their side, her focus sharp despite the fatigue she couldn’t quite hide.

Claire, with Kairo and Rylan just behind her, was already back at her station, pulling apart what little Chimera had left behind in their systems, her fingers moving fast, precise, relentless.

And Elara—Elara stood beside Tamsin, her attention fixed on the data Tamsin had pulled from the system, her expression still pale, but steady.

“Walk us through it,” Victor said.

Tamsin exhaled slowly, her arms folding loosely as she leaned one hip against the console.

“It worked,” she said simply.

That was the truth of it. No embellishment needed.

“I got into the core architecture before the sequence hit peak,” she continued. “They’d built redundancy layers into the system to force stability, but they didn’t fix the underlying integration.”

Elara nodded slightly. “They compensated instead of correcting.”

“Exactly,” Tamsin said. “Which gave me an entry point.”

She pushed off the console, stepped closer to the display, and pulled up the schematic she’d reconstructed from memory.

“They anchored the trigger to the output spike,” she said, pointing to the convergence point. “So I broke the sequence just before it hit threshold.”

Kairo leaned forward slightly. “You forced a cascade.”

Tamsin nodded. “The system couldn’t sustain it. It collapsed in on itself.”

Rafe’s gaze sharpened. “And the device?”

“Dead,” Tamsin said. “Completely.”

A quiet breath of relief moved through the room.

“We intercepted at the corridor,” Caleb added, pushing off the table. “They didn’t get close enough to deploy.”

Sienna’s gaze shifted to him. “Casualties?”

“Minimal on our side, but considerable on theirs,” he said. “They were pushing hard, but once the system failed—”