Above them, Kara Cale was still trying to steady her breathing.
Her fingers had not fully stopped trembling.
She remained crouched on the wall with her bow across her knees, the string loose but ready, her eyes scanning both the courtyard behind her and the southern road beyond the gate. The Alpha's death had not left her body as quickly as it had left the field. Her arms still remembered the pull of the bow. Her hands still remembered the moment the Mauler climbed toward her, its jaw open, its claws biting into the wall, and the sickening weight of knowing that if she missed, no one below could reach her in time.
She had not frozen. She had shot. She had killed it. And later, when her arrows had shattered uselessly against the Alpha's armor, she had not kept firing out of panic. She had listened, changed roles, finished wounded Maulers, watched the gate, and waited for the moment her ice could matter.
That pride was small, but real.
