My Cheating Mate (Emma and Jeremy) novel Chapter 162

Chapter 162

My Cheating Mate

Jeremy pov

They came at 3 AM.

Not the slow, organized assault we’d anticipated. The Council hit simultaneously from four directions – north, south, east, and west–with forces significantly larger than our intelligence had suggested Either they’d hidden reserves we hadn’t known about, or they’d consolidated aligned territories faster than Cas had predicted.

Either way, we were outnumbered.

The alarms went off at 3:04 AM. By 3:06, wolves and vampires were in position. By 3:07, the first wave hit the frorthern perimeter and the world became blood and noise and chaos.

I fought alongside my pack, shifting between wolf and human form as tactics demanded. The fighting was nothing like the controlled strike against the hunter warehouse or even the Black River assault. This was sustained, brutal combat against an enemy that had centuries of experience and didn’t care about casualties.

Council operatives came in waves. Wolves with silver weapons. Aligned vampires who moved with cold efficiency, nothing like the integrated cooperation I’d grown accustomed to watching between our wolves and Cas’s coven. These vampires were separate. Isolated in their own ranks. Fighting beside wolves but not with them—the difference was visible and it made them less effective than our integrated forces.

But there were so many of them.

By the second hour, I’d lost count of how many I’d personally engaged. Silver burns scored my arms and ribs. A blade had found my left shoulder sometime during the first wave–I’d pulled it out and kept fighting, my wolf healing pushing against the silver residue that tried to slow the process.

Cas found me around 5 AM, during a brief lull between waves.

He was not okay. I’d never seen Cas anything other than immaculate, controlled, every hair in place and expression carefully managed. Now his shirt was torn, dark stains–blood, mostly not his spreading across what remained of it. A deep gash across his cheekbone that was healing slower than usual, silver–tainted blade having slowed even vampire regeneration. His hair was disheveled, his breathing harder than I’d ever witnessed from him.

Vampires didn’t usually need to breathe. When Cas’s chest was heaving, things had been genuinely difficult.

“Northern line is holding,” he said, appearing beside me and speaking without preamble. “Marcus has the south stable. Your

father’s coordinating the east but they’ve pushed us back thirty meters.”

“Casualties?”

“Eleven wolves injured. Three seriously. Two vampire warriors from Nightshade-” His jaw tightened. “Deceased. Four aligned coven vampires who switched sides when the fighting started. They saw our integrated forces and-” He paused. “They couldn’t fight against what we’d built here. Couldn’t justify the Council’s ideology when faced with the reality of it.”

“They switched sides during battle?”

“Surrendered. Refused to continue fighting. Said they hadn’t understood what the Council was actually asking them to destroy.” Something flickered across his expression. “Eight hundred years of ideology colliding with actual lived experience. Some people can’t maintain beliefs when confronted with their humanity.”

“Or their decency.”

“Yes. That.” He looked around the defensive perimeter, cataloging, calculating. “Jeremy, the Council’s third wave will be their largest. They’re holding reserves–I can see them positioned half a mile north. Waiting for us to exhaust ourselves.”

“How long?”

+15 Bonus

it

“Thirty minutes Maybe less. He wiped blood from his cheek with the back of his hand him before. “We need to hit them before they hit us. Disrupt their reserve positioning before they can deploy.”

a human gesture I’d never seen from

“With what? Our forces are spread across four fronts

་་

“With everything the coalition promised.” He pulled out his phone–somehow stil intact through everything and typed something rapidly. “Victoria’s been holding forty vampires two miles east. I told her to wait until the third wave committed. If we can lure the reserves forward and hit them from behind while they’re tooving”

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