Aria's POV

By the time we'd extracted the survivors from the second building, dawn was breaking over the Academy grounds. What had started as a covert rescue operation had evolved into a full-scale emergency response involving multiple pack territories and regional authorities.

The conspiracy that had seemed so overwhelming and powerful just hours earlier was crumbling under the weight of public scrutiny.

"Final count," Hayes announced as we regrouped at the engineering building, "forty-seven ...