We start at dawn because the compound is quietest then—fewer emotional signatures for Luna, fewer tactical variables for Orion, fewer things for Phoenix to accidentally destroy.
The training room is a repurposed storage space in the basement. Concrete walls, no windows, a steel door that Phoenix can grip without worrying about splintering wood.
Orion sits cross-legged on a mat in the corner, eyes closed, hands resting on his knees in a meditation posture Elara taught him.
"What do you see right now?" I ask him.
"The patrols outside, the kitchen staff preparing breakfast, a delivery truck approaching the north gate in approximately fourteen minutes." His brow furrows.
"And seventeen possible outcomes for this training session, ranked by probability."
"Pick one question, just one. What's the most likely weather for this afternoon?"
"Clear skies, high of fifty-two degrees, 4% chance of precipitation after three PM."
"Good. Now let the rest go, release every thread that isn't connected to that question."
"It's like trying to close tabs in a browser that keeps opening new ones," his face scrunches with effort.
"The weather connects to patrol visibility, which connects to attack probability, which connects to casualty projections—"
"Stop at the weather. The connections will always be there, but you choose which ones to follow. The question is the anchor, and everything outside it is noise you can examine later."
"Later feels irresponsible. If I ignore a probability branch and someone dies—"
"If you chase every branch simultaneously, your mind breaks and everyone loses their strategist." I kneel in front of him.
"You're nine years old, Orion. The pack survived for centuries before your gift existed. You're an asset, not a life support system. Can you hold that distinction?"
He's quiet for a long moment. "The weather will be clear, fifty-two degrees. I'm letting the rest go."
"How does that feel?"
"Like setting down a backpack full of rocks," he opens his eyes, and they're focused—present, here, tracking my face instead of invisible futures. "Still heavy, but my shoulders aren't breaking anymore."
"That's progress. We'll take it."
Luna sits in the center of the room while I gradually introduce emotional stimuli—first my own feelings, carefully controlled, then Elara's from outside the door, then a patrol wolf passing through the hallway above.
"Name what comes through," I tell her. "Don't absorb it, just identify it."
"You're feeling... cautious. Hopeful underneath, but you're keeping it contained because you're afraid of hoping too much."
"Is that yours or mine?"
"Yours," she tilts her head, "but I'm feeling something similar, so the edges blur."
"When the edges blur, look for the texture. Your emotions have your texture—the way your fear tastes different from mine, the way your hope carries a different weight. Can you feel the difference?"
"Your hope is warm and careful, like holding a candle in wind. Mine is..." She searches. "Sharper and… more desperate. Like grabbing onto a ledge instead of holding a flame."
"Beautiful, baby, that's a distinction. That's you finding yourself inside the noise."
"Elara's coming closer. She's carrying guilt about yesterday and professional determination and—" Luna smiles, faint but real. "She's also really craving coffee, like desperately."
I laugh. The sound surprises both of us—genuine laughter in a training room during a war, the kind of normalcy that shouldn't exist but stubbornly persists.
"Tell her she can take a coffee break. Her emotions are getting distracting."
"I heard that," Elara calls from the hallway. "And I do not desperately crave coffee. I merely require it for continued biological function."
Luna giggles and the sound is absolute medicine.
Phoenix's training is different. Physical, tactile, measured in broken objects and small victories.
I line up a row of items on the table: a raw egg, a glass of water, a pencil, a doorknob mounted on a wooden block, and a cell phone. The progression from fragile to sturdy, each requiring different calibration.
"Pick up the egg," I say.
Phoenix approaches it like it's a bomb. Her hand hovers, fingers curling and uncurling as she negotiates with muscles that don't understand the concept of gentle anymore.
She makes contact—thumb and forefinger closing around the shell with agonizing slowness.
The egg cracks.
"Dammit."
"Language."
"Sorry. Darn it." She wipes yolk on her pants. "I was being so careful, Mommy. I barely touched it."
"Your baseline grip strength has increased since yesterday. What felt like barely touching yesterday is too much today." I set another egg on the table.
"Again. Lighter this time—imagine you're holding a butterfly."
"Butterflies don't have shells that crack and get gross everywhere."
"Imagine it anyway."
She tries again. Her face contorts with concentration, every muscle in her arm visibly straining to dial back force that wants to express itself at full volume.
The egg wobbles in her grip. Holds. Her fingers close around it without breaking.
"I'm holding it," her voice is a whisper, afraid that speaking too loudly will shatter her concentration. "Mommy, I'm holding it and it's not breaking."
"That's control, Phoenix. That's you choosing how much strength to use instead of letting it choose for you."
"Can I put it down now? My hand is shaking from trying to be gentle, and I think I'm about to sneeze, which would be catastrophic."
"Put it down carefully."
She lowers the egg to the table with the precision of a surgeon placing a transplant organ. It lands intact. Phoenix stares at it like she's just witnessed a miracle.
"I did it," the wonder in her voice breaks my heart and rebuilds it simultaneously. "I held something fragile and it survived."
"You'll do it again tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that, until gentle is something your muscles remember without you having to force it."
"What about the doorknob? Can I practice opening doors without ripping them off their hinges? That would be nice, since I've destroyed four this week."
"We'll work up to doorknobs. Eggs first, then water glasses, then pencils. One fragile thing at a time."
The sessions stretch through the morning, each child rotating through exercises designed around their specific gift.
By noon, Orion can hold a single probability thread for twenty minutes without chasing tangents. Luna can filter three simultaneous emotional sources and identify which belong to her. Phoenix can pick up the egg seven times out of ten without cracking it.
Small victories measured against the backdrop of a war that doesn't pause for children's therapy.
Lysander handles the morning briefing without me. Caroline works the intelligence analysis. Kieran reviews security architecture from his hospital bed.
The pack operates around the gap I've carved into the schedule, and nobody complains because they've watched the triplets struggle and they understand what's at stake.
These children didn't ask to become weapons. Neither did I, once. I know what it means to become something terrifying and have no choice but to learn control or be consumed.
The world doesn't care what children ask for, and the best I can do is stand beside them while they navigate powers that would overwhelm most adults.
But watching Phoenix hold that egg, I think maybe teaching them to hold fragile things without breaking them is the only lesson that matters.