Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Shadow investigates the mysterious scent east of the OP and encounters a massive brown bear—another shifter—who identifies himself as Koval, a former Ukrainian soldier turned feral after months behind enemy lines. Koval reveals he has been stalking the Greys Battalion independently and has observed the same convoy preparations. Rather than fight, Shadow shifts back to human form and negotiates a temporary alliance. Koval agrees to help seal the eastern approach during the ambush. Shadow returns to the OP and relays the encounter. Thorne weighs the risk of trusting an unknown shifter against the tactical advantage of a fourth predator. Meanwhile, the patrol gap opens on schedule and the convoy begins to stir earlier than expected. Thorne makes the call to proceed with the ambush, now with an unplanned asset on the eastern flank.
Three minutes had bled into the frigid air since the wolf had dissolved into the treeline. Thorne counted them not by the ticking of his watch, but by the dull thud of his own heart, the ragged cadence of Cole’s breath beside him, the whisper of wind through skeletal branches overhead. The distant, monotonous hum of the quarry’s generators was a constant, a low thrumming beneath the more immediate sounds of their vigil.
The radio remained a dead channel. Harlan’s ridge, a silent sentinel. The patrol flashlights, which had swept their designated arcs across the frozen earth, had completed their circuit and winked out, leaving the eastern approach to the quarry a gaping maw of shadow.
"He should be back by now," Cole murmured, his voice a low rumble that barely disturbed the stillness. His rifle remained canted, its barrel a dark finger pointed towards the eastern tree line, an unwavering extension of his coiled tension.
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