Page 66 of Charged By the Razorbacks

“She’s safe,” she said quietly.

Victor nodded. “She is.”

Caleb pushed off the table again, rolling his shoulders once. “So,” he said, glancing around the room, “we calling this a win?”

Rafe huffed a quiet breath. “Feels like one.”

“It is one,” Ivan said.

But Victor—Victor didn’t move. His gaze moved across all of them, steady, measured.

“It’s a step,” he said. “We disrupted their deployment. We removed their current capability, but Chimera still stands.”

Sienna nodded once. “Which means we go higher.”

“Top down,” Jarek added.

“End it properly,” Aleksy said.

Tamsin didn’t hesitate. “We dismantle them, from the source.”

Victor held silent for a moment, then nodded once.

“Then we prepare,” he said. “But tonight, you stand down.”

That got attention.

“Take time,” he said, his gaze moving across the teams, the couples, the connections that had formed in the middle of war. Before his gaze settled on Elara, his mate. “With your people. Tonight was too close.”

No one argued, because they all knew it.

Ivan straightened, stepping back from the table. “Celebrate the fact that you’re here, that they’re here.”

His gaze flicked briefly to Tamsin, then Aleksy, then Jarek.

“Tomorrow,” he finished, “we go back to war.”

People moved then, toward the ones they chose. The ones they loved. Aleksy’s hand slid from her back to her hand, his fingers threading with hers, grounding, steady.

Jarek stepped in on her other side, close enough that she felt the heat of him without him needing to touch her.

Tamsin looked between them.

Tonight was a win. They had won the battle, but the war was still to come.

But for tonight—that was enough.

****

“You’re staring again.”

Jarek didn’t bother denying it.

“Hard not to,” he said, leaning back against the bedroom wall, arms folded as he watched her move across the room like she owned it.

Because, let’s be honest, she did.

Tamsin glanced over her shoulder at him, that slow, knowing smile curving her mouth. “You’re going to make it weird if you keep looking at me like that.”