POV: Lysander
The coalition confirmation sits in my inbox like a sealed verdict, and I allow myself a brief moment of relief before clearing the remaining diplomatic correspondence.
Two messages to Morrison confirming the procedural timeline. One encrypted note to Chen's deputy regarding summit logistics. A final acknowledgment to Hargrove that his support has been formally registered.
I clear my desk methodically, with the attention of a man who knows unfinished items become vulnerabilities overnight.
The compound hums with full moon quiet. I close the laptop and stand, stretching tension from a spine bent over coalition documents since four this afternoon.
I go to check on Dylan before bed. The habit is still new and already non-negotiable — a short detour that returns more than it costs.
His door is closed. I turn the handle with the careful pressure Caroline taught me — the angle that produces no sound, the slow release that does not disturb a sleeping child.
The room is silver with moonlight and the bed is empty. Blankets folded back with a neatness that does not belong to sleep.
The stuffed wolf sits upright against the pillow, positioned with deliberate care, facing the open window.
"Claire." I cross the hallway in three strides and find her door already open wide.
She stands in the middle of her room with shoes half-on and her notebook clutched to her chest. Her face carries the controlled terror of a mother who checked not long ago and found her son asleep.
"He is not in his room." I confirm what her face already knows across the hallway between us.
"I checked at midnight — he was breathing, he was in bed." Her voice shakes at the edges.
"The window is open." I deliver the detail that changes the search from the room to the grounds.
"How long?" She finishes her shoes with hands that tremble against the laces in the dark.
"Unknown — the monitor did not trigger." I pull my phone and check the protocol system.
"Green across the board." I read the display that should have caught a child leaving his bed.
"The protocol monitors physiology, not location." She names the gap we failed to anticipate.
"He left without distress." I absorb the implication — no elevated heart rate, no disrupted sleep.
"He left with purpose." She grabs her jacket from the hook and moves past me into the hallway.
I follow her toward the stairs, mapping the eastern perimeter. The window faces east, the tree line sits two hundred meters from the guest wing, and the cameras that were dark are now online.
Caroline stands at the bottom of the stairwell — barefoot, jacket over pajamas, hair pulled back with the efficiency of a woman who heard the same absence and moved faster.
"His room is empty." I confirm before she can ask the question her face already carries.
"I know — I heard Claire's door." She holds her position at the base of the stairs.
"The eastern window is open." I add the directional data she needs for the search.
"Eastern tree line." She nods once with certainty. "That is where he walks during full moons."
Footsteps on the stairs above — two sets, one heavy, one lighter. Orion and Phoenix descend with shoes on and jackets zipped, the preparation of children who were not asleep when the adults discovered the empty room.
"You were already awake." I read Orion's posture as he reaches the landing beside Phoenix.
"I set an alarm for twelve-thirty." He holds his tablet against his chest with both hands.
"You expected this." I name what his preparation confirms without accusation in my voice.
"I calculated a seventy-eight percent probability of nocturnal movement." He adjusts his grip.
"Based on what data?" I press because the answer determines where we search next.
"Lunar peak cross-referenced with his behavioral escalation." He delivers it with clinical calm.
"I tracked his scent to the eastern tree line before you came downstairs." He adds the location.
"You went outside alone." Caroline's voice carries the sharp edge of a woman recalibrating.
"Phoenix went with me." He glances at his sister. "I do not go anywhere alone at night."
"I can bench-press a tree if we need one moved." Phoenix cracks her knuckles with readiness.
"Nobody is bench-pressing anything." I redirect the group toward operational clarity.
"The scent trail — how fresh?" I address Orion with the question that determines our pace.
"Not long ago." He checks the timestamp he logged on his tablet before we arrived.
"Direction of travel?" I pull on my jacket and move toward the eastern exit of the compound.
"Straight line from the window to the tree line." He falls into step beside me without hesitation.
"No deviation, no circling." He traces the path on his screen. "Purposeful and direct."
"He knew exactly where he was going." Claire tightens her grip on the notebook still pressed against her chest.
"He has always known." Orion delivers the correction with quiet certainty across the group.
The eastern door opens onto the courtyard. The full moon hangs overhead — silver, close, casting shadows sharp as midday across the grass.
The tree line stands two hundred meters ahead. Somewhere inside those trees, my small son walks toward a presence that has been calling him for longer than any of us were listening.
"Caroline, stay at the tree line." I stop her with the instruction before we cross the courtyard.
"If he comes back before we find him, I need someone at the boundary." I hold her eyes.
"Lysander —" She starts to argue because the instinct is real and the argument is earned.
"Please." I let the word carry the weight of a father asking the woman who loves his son to trust.
She nods. The nod costs her visibly, but she holds her position at the courtyard edge.
I move into the forest with my brother's children ahead of me — Orion tracking scent and data with his tablet casting pale light across the underbrush, Phoenix flanking her brother with the coiled readiness of a girl whose strength has been waiting for a purpose that matters.
The full moon filters through the canopy in silver bands that stripe the forest floor, and somewhere ahead, carried by the scent of my own blood, my son walks toward the answer that none of us are ready for.