They brought all four of them down off the ridge by midday, the adult splinted and half-carried on a drag frame Vhar built from lashed poles, the three young herded ahead of it in a woven crate Nyra had improvised from cut brush and rope. Riona met them at the pen’s edge, Dessin a step behind her, both of them going quiet at the sight of what the two of them had actually carried back rather than the single kill everyone had braced for.
"You didn’t finish it." Riona said it without judgment, only the plain observation of someone recalibrating a plan she’d already made in her head overnight.
"This wasn’t ours to settle alone, not with four other lives and every band east of here riding on it." Vhar eased the drag frame down carefully, checking the splint’s hold before he let himself straighten fully. "That’s not a call two people make standing over an animal that’s already lost the fight."
"You could have. Most people would have, and nobody watching would have blamed either of you for it." Riona crouched beside the crate, studying the three young without reaching for them. "Why didn’t you?"
"Before we reached the nest, pain made it retreat. Above the young, it fought through the broken shoulder." Vhar looked toward the ridge. "Killing the adult would leave three young starving. Riona, Dessin, Tavik, and the other bands deserve to hear that before we choose."
Riona went quiet a moment longer, weighing the answer before she nodded once, accepting more honesty than she’d expected to receive so plainly.
Tavik arrived from the camp’s far side within minutes of the noise reaching him, and it was his face, more than anyone’s, that settled into something calculating rather than relieved once he understood what he was looking at. "Wildblood Desolation’s contract on this stretch was written for a Tier III range. Nothing in it anticipates a Tier IV predator raising young inside a boundary that’s supposed to be safe for grazing herds."
"The contract is wrong, not the animal." Nyra set down the crate and checked the ropes. "The Quarrymaw’s death left hunting ground open. The blast valley drove this animal into it. The old boundary no longer matches the animals living here."
Tavik went still at the second half of that, an old crew’s mistake landing on him the way it always eventually would. "You’re saying we redraw the line instead of clearing the ground behind it."
"I’m saying the line was drawn for a threat that’s already dead, and it never got updated for the one that replaced it." Vhar looked toward the ridge, distant now against the afternoon light. "There’s a whole fold of unclaimed rock past that crest that nobody’s grazing, nobody’s mining, nobody’s using for anything a Tier IV predator’s territory would actually threaten. Move the boundary out there instead of trying to make this ground safe for something it was never going to stay safe for."
Riona folded her arms, weighing a decision that would outlast every person currently standing in the pen’s shadow. "And the four of them? You’re proposing we carry an apex predator and its young back up a ridge we just fought our way down from, on the strength of a contract redraw that hasn’t been written yet."
"We carry them to the fold on the ridge’s far side, past the den they already had, deeper into ground nobody’s contracted for anything." Nyra’s voice held the same steadiness it had carried through every confrontation this pack had asked of her. "It heals there instead of dying slowly here. The young grow up somewhere that isn’t anyone’s pen. And the next band that walks this stretch inherits a boundary that actually reflects what’s really out there, instead of finding out the hard way the way we did."
Tavik studied the bound animal for a long moment, something working behind his expression that looked less like calculation now and more like a debt finally being paid rather than avoided. "I’ll carry the reclassification into every band’s ledger east of here myself. Wildblood Desolation channels are slow, but they’re not blind, not once a Salvage-Kin crew leader puts his own name against the report." He crouched beside the drag frame, studying the splint’s hold with the practical eye of a man who’d built plenty of his own. "This’ll hold through the climb?"
"It’ll hold." Vhar checked the binding once more anyway. "It won’t hold forever. We move today, while it’s still weak enough not to fight the carry."
Dessin stepped forward for the first time since the group had returned, his bound arm held carefully against his side, eyes fixed on the three young rather than the adult between them. "Can I see them? Just see. I won’t touch anything."
Riona’s hand found his good shoulder before he’d finished asking, not quite stopping him, only steadying the moment. "Look if you want. Remember what almost happened to that same arm the last time something with teeth decided you were close enough to matter."
He looked anyway, crouching at a careful distance from the crate, his expression catching hard at the sight of three animals smaller and more frightened than the shape that had haunted the camp for weeks. "They’re not what I thought they’d look like."
Vhar pointed at the torn shoulder, splint, and young. "You could not see them from the wall."
Dessin studied the splinted adult. The animal had broken his shoulder. "I wanted it dead after it came over the wall. I thought about that for days." He flexed his bound arm and winced. "I do not want that after seeing the young."
"You are allowed to see the whole animal," Nyra said. "It broke the wall and hurt you. It also has a torn shoulder. Its three young cannot follow it."
"Or the choice, once they’ve seen it." Vhar checked the drag frame’s lashings once more, already thinking ahead to the climb still waiting for all of them.
Riona brought four lengths of new rope from the pen stores. She passed them to Tavik, Nyra, Vhar, and Dessin’s father in that order. "No one lets go because their hands hurt. Say it now if you cannot carry your part."
Tavik tested the first knot against the drag frame. "I can carry."
Nyra took the front scout rope and wrapped it once around her wrist. "I can carry."
Dessin’s father looked at the adult animal, then at the young in the crate. His jaw worked before he answered. "I can carry. I do not have to like why."
"You do not," Riona said. "You only have to keep the rope in your hand."
Vhar lifted the drag frame’s heavier end long enough to settle the poles into the ground. The adult’s eyes opened at the movement.
GRRRR!
It bared its teeth but could not lunge through the chest brace. Vhar lowered the frame carefully.
"The first loose step, call it," he said. "The first animal movement, call it. Nobody surprises the people carrying weight."
The three young chittered inside the woven crate. Nyra covered the top with a strip of hide so the sun would not strike them directly, then left a hand-sized gap for air. Riona watched the work and nodded once.
"Now we move," she said.
The climb back up took most of the remaining daylight, Vhar anchoring the drag frame’s heaviest corner the whole way while the others rotated through the lighter positions and Nyra scouted ahead for the safest ground. They reached the fold on the ridge’s far side just as the sun dropped low enough to gild the broken stone gold.
They released the young first, watching them scatter briefly before circling back toward the drag frame and the mother they could already scent nearby. Vhar cut the last of the binding once the crate was clear, stepping back fast enough to leave room for whatever came next.
The animal did not lunge. It rose on three good legs and one splinted leg. It turned toward the young instead of Vhar and Nyra. It looked back once, then moved slowly into uncontracted ground.
"That is the answer for now," Nyra said as the animals disappeared beyond a rock fold. "Move the grazing boundary instead of killing every animal past an old marker."
"For now," Vhar said. "When the ground changes, contracts must change too." He rolled his shoulder. "Today, nobody dies for an outdated map."
Riona wrote the ridge fold, the old pen, and the new grazing turn onto Tavik’s report board before the light failed. Dessin held the board steady with his good hand. He did not look away when the adult disappeared with the young.
The charcoal stayed legible under the last light.
Tavik’s own party was already turning back toward camp when the runner reached them, coming up the southern trail at a pace that meant the news wouldn’t wait for morning. He was young, one of Tavik’s own scouts, breathing hard from a climb he’d clearly pushed harder than his legs wanted.
"Word from the eastern relay," he said between breaths. "Kessendrel Pass is closed. Workers cut the slope above it, and House Talvern’s banner stood on the ridge two days before the slide."
Vhar went still, the climb already forgotten against a name that hadn’t surfaced since the Academy fell behind them. "That route was the only clean way east for every band working this frontier."
Nyra’s hand closed on Thronebreak’s haft. "House Talvern buried the pass instead of posting guards. It wants every eastern band to see the message."