Alexei's ice lines thickened to two fingers deep.
The fifth truck that tried to gun its way through met them like rails and found itself sledding sideways into the fence instead of sprinting into the yard.
Metal shrieked.
Weeds bowed.
The driver beat the dash with a fist, then stopped beating anything at all when a round from Elias cut through his throat and rearranged his priorities.
"Seven and eight just crested," Elias warned. "Brass on the hood. Those are not raiders."
"Cartel hunters," Alexei confirmed, voice gone colder. "Dogs in the back of seven."
Luci didn't growl, but his ears flattened. Sera put her palm to his skull and leaned pressure until he breathed deeper and his mouth shut. He would launch when she let him. He would not waste energy before.
"Hold them," she told her horde, and the words tasted right.
The seventh truck nosed the gate with dogs frothing in a welded cage in the bed—lean shapes with scarred muzzles and eyes too wide.
