Chapter 88| What Victory Cost
The extraction teams arrived within the hour, and what they found upon reaching the devastated coastal ridge painted a considerably more sobering picture than the earlier triumphant reports of the Queen’s defeat had suggested.
Seven Hunters had died in the Prince’s initial assault before Allen’s arrival — three from the American support contingent, four from Canada’s considerable deployment, their names carefully catalogued by grim-faced medical personnel as Farrow herself arrived to oversee the recovery operation personally.
"Cole," Irene said quietly, kneeling beside the still form of the Canadian specialist who’d become her friend over the preceding weeks, tears streaming freely down her battle-worn face. "He didn’t—"
"He’s alive," Everlyn said gently, having already confirmed his condition amid the chaos. "Barely. But alive. Everlyn’s magic stabilized him, and the medical team is confident he’ll recover, given time."
Irene’s relief broke into fresh, overwhelmed tears, and Everlyn wrapped an arm around her, offering quiet, wordless comfort as the medical teams continued their grim work amid the devastated ridge.
Damon arrived shortly after, having led a separate contingent that had been battling considerable colony reinforcements roughly a kilometer further along the coast, his own considerable injuries evident despite his efforts to mask them. He surveyed the scene with visible, profound grief, four of his own people among the confirmed casualties.
"Seven," he said quietly, voice tight with barely restrained emotion. "Seven people who trusted me to lead them properly through this operation."
"You couldn’t have anticipated this," Allen said, his own injured shoulder bound tightly despite Everlyn’s continued healing efforts. "None of us could have. We killed the Queen. We had no reason to expect an offspring capable of this level of development within mere minutes of hatching."
"That doesn’t make the loss any easier to carry," Damon said, though something in his expression suggested he recognized the truth in Allen’s words regardless.
Farrow moved among the gathered Hunters with quiet, measured solemnity, offering what comfort her position allowed while simultaneously coordinating the considerable logistics the operation’s grim conclusion now demanded. She found Allen eventually, seated near the ridge’s edge, exhaustion and grief mingling heavily across his battered features.
"You saved considerably more lives than were lost today," she said quietly, settling beside him. "Without your intervention, without your party’s combined efforts, that creature would likely have continued its rampage across the remaining coastal positions, and quite possibly beyond, toward the mainland itself."
"Seven people still died," Allen said, voice hollow with grief. "Seven people who trusted this operation’s planning to keep them safe."
"Five years ago, this exact objective cost over a thousand lives," Farrow said, quiet weight carrying through her measured delivery. "Today, seven. I understand that seven is not zero, Hunter Veton. I understand that grief doesn’t diminish simply because the alternative could have been considerably worse. But I need you to understand, clearly, that what your party accomplished today represents genuine, extraordinary success, even carrying the weight of loss it inevitably demanded."
Allen absorbed her words carefully, the accumulated weight of the day’s brutal cost settling heavily alongside the undeniable truth of her assessment. "It still hurts," he admitted quietly.
"It should," Farrow said simply. "The day genuine loss stops hurting is the day you’ve lost something considerably more valuable than any single operation’s outcome. Grieve properly, Hunter Veton. Then continue carrying the responsibility your considerable capability demands, exactly as you already have."
She rose, offering a final, respectful nod before returning to the operation’s continued logistics, leaving Allen alone with his thoughts as his wives gradually gathered around him once more, battered, grieving, but unmistakably, gratefully alive.
"Seven people," Myria said quietly, settling beside him. "We’ll remember them properly, Allen. Every single one."
"We will," Allen agreed, and around him, his wives settled into quiet, grief-stricken solidarity, carrying forward the weight of a victory that had cost considerably more than any of them had been prepared to pay, but which none of them, faced with the alternative, would have chosen to avoid regardless.
The sun continued its slow, indifferent arc across the smoke-hazed sky above the devastated ridge, and Allen found himself watching it in silence for a long while, holding his wives close, grateful beyond words that all four of them remained here to watch it with him.
Behind them, medical teams continued their grim, careful work, and somewhere far beneath the island’s scorched, battle-worn surface, in a chamber none of them had yet returned to properly investigate, something ancient and long-sealed had felt, in the chaos of the Prince’s violent, premature death, the faintest, unmistakable crack finally beginning to spread.
Freya found Vivian sitting quietly apart from the others sometime later, both women nursing their own considerable injuries in exhausted, companionable silence.
"You almost died today," Freya observed, not quite a question.
"I know," Vivian admitted. "Allen made sure I didn’t."
"I saw," Freya said quietly. "That’s not tactical instinct alone. That’s something considerably deeper."
Vivian considered the observation for a long moment before answering. "It is," she said simply. "I don’t know if I’ll ever fully find the right words for it. But it’s real, Freya. More real than anything I believed possible, back before all of this began."
Freya nodded slowly, something thoughtful crossing her usually guarded expression. "I envy that, a little," she admitted. "Though I suspect envy isn’t particularly useful, given the day we’ve just survived."
"No," Vivian agreed. "But it’s honest, at least."
They sat together a while longer in the settling quiet, the coastal ridge’s grim recovery efforts continuing steadily around them, and Vivian found herself grateful, despite everything the day had cost, for the strange, hard-won camaraderie that had grown between two very different women who’d nonetheless found genuine understanding in each other’s company.
Eventually, exhaustion overtook them both, and the devastated ridge settled into whatever fragile rest its grieving, battle-worn survivors could manage, carrying forward the accumulated weight of victory and loss in equal, inseparable measure.
Somewhere within that settling quiet, seven names were already being carefully recorded for the memorial wall Farrow had once mentioned — a wall that already carried too many, and would now, regrettably, carry seven more names etched permanently alongside all the others who had come before them.