I bring Orion to the strategy meeting because leaving him alone feels worse. He sits in the chair beside mine, a math textbook open on his lap that he's been pretending to read for twenty minutes.
His eyes drift toward the maps spread across the table, the patrol routes marked in red, the defensive positions Lysander is outlining with a pointer and a voice that carries authority Kieran can't provide from a hospital bed.
"The southern flank is our weakest point," Lysander taps the map. "The terrain funnels any ground approach into a corridor between the ridge and the creek bed. If they hit us there with sufficient numbers, we'd need to pull defenders from the eastern perimeter to reinforce."
"Which leaves the school exposed," Marcus adds. "We can't strip the eastern teams without—"
"Move the third patrol to the ridge overlook." Orion's voice cuts through the room.
It’s not his voice—something flatter, older, stripped of the child who should be reading about fractions.
"Position two wolves at the creek crossing and one in the drainage culvert beneath the access road. The attack will come from the southwest at 4:17 AM, fourteen operatives in two teams. The first team breaches at the tree line while the second flanks through the ravine."
Adults stop talking.
My son stares at a point above the map, eyes tracking movements invisible to everyone else. Pupils dilated, breathing shallow, fingers gripping the textbook with whitening knuckles.
"If the southern flank isn't adjusted, they'll reach the inner perimeter in seven minutes. Someone will die.... I can’t see who exactly, but someone close. Also, there are many wounded, critically."
"Orion," I touch his shoulder. "Come back to me."
"But if you move the third patrol now, tonight, before they finalize their approach, the ambush fails. Their scouts are watching the current pattern, not knowing you can change it in time." His eyes focus, finding mine with desperation. "You have to change it now, Mommy. Before 4:17."
The room is silent. Lysander exchanges a look with Marcus, and the color drains from both faces.
"How do you know this?" Lysander asks carefully.
"I can see it. Their commander has a pattern: escalate left, probe right, commit center. The southern approach is the next logical step, and the terrain makes it optimal."
Orion's voice wavers between the analytical machine and the frightened child. "Please believe me. I know it sounds impossible."
"Send scouts to the southwest ridge," I tell Lysander. "Right now."
"Thalia, he's nine—"
"He predicted the drainage vulnerability two days ago and was right. He calculated his father's survival probability within a percentage point of what Elara confirmed." I hold Lysander's gaze. "Send the scouts."
And he does.
Forty minutes later, the radio confirms: fourteen heat signatures moving into position in the southwest ravine. Two teams, exactly as described. The approach vector would have bypassed every current patrol and reached the inner perimeter unchallenged.
My son just saved a man’s life by seeing a future that hasn't happened yet.
Wolves reorganize with stunned efficiency around his intelligence. Lysander repositions the third patrol to the overlook. Marcus volunteers for the creek crossing with grim determination, knowing he was minutes from a death predicted by a child.
Orion sits in his chair, textbook on the floor, trembling.
"Did I help?" His voice is small—a boy asking his mother if he did okay.
"You saved lives tonight. You absolutely helped."
"Then why does it feel terrible?"
I pull him against me. "Seeing the future is a weight that shouldn't land on anyone's shoulders, let alone yours."
"There were other outcomes, worse ones. Branches where the compound falls and everyone—"
He stops. "I could see the ones where we die, Mommy. All of us, in different combinations, like watching the same nightmare from a hundred angles."
"But you found the branch where we survive."
"What about next time? What if I can't find the good outcome fast enough? What if it's buried under thousands of bad ones and I miss it?"
That night, I tuck Luna and Phoenix in first. Luna's shields are marginally better after two hours with Elara. Phoenix sleeps with one hand off the bed, fingers leaving impressions in the hardwood.
Orion's room is dark, but he's not sleeping.
He lies on his back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling with the fixed intensity of someone watching a screen only they can see.
"I can't close my eyes," his voice is small and exhausted. "Every time I do, the futures start. Dozens of them, overlapping, branching. I see everyone dying, Mommy. I see Dad dying on the hallway floor again, and Luna drowning in emotion until her heart stops, and Phoenix breaking someone's spine by accident."
I sit on his bed and take his hand. His fingers are cold, pulse racing.
"I don't know which ones are real." Tears track down his temples into the pillow. "Some feel more solid and probable, but I can't tell what will happen from what might happen. They all look the same when I'm inside them."
"We'll learn the difference, I promise."
"How? You don't have this gift, nobody does. I searched Elara's historical records—there's no precedent for probability sight in a wolf child my age. I'm the only one."
"That doesn't mean you're alone."
"Nobody can teach me," his voice breaks, and the strategist collapses into the child crying in the dark because his mind shows him death and he can't find the off switch.
"I see everything, Mommy. Every way this goes wrong, and I don't know how to stop watching."
I lie down beside him, pulling his body against mine, his back to my chest. His heartbeat hammers against my forearm—too fast, too hard, a child's system straining under a prophet's burden.
"Close your eyes. I'll be right here. If the futures start, you tell me what you see, and we'll sort through them together. Real from the noise."
"You promise you won't leave?"
"I promise."
His breathing slows by fractions. The tension eases against mine—redistributing, sharing the weight with someone who can't see what he sees but refuses to let him carry it alone.
I hold my son in the dark and make promises I have no idea how to keep, guiding a child through a wilderness I've never walked.
The futures play behind his closed eyes, and I can't access them, can't filter them, can't do anything except be present—a fixed point in his storm of probability, an anchor made of nothing but love and stubbornness.
It isn't enough, it can't be. But tonight, with his breathing finally evening against my chest, it's what we have.