"Even if protecting her means exposing the pack?" Brennan asks, his usual relaxed demeanor replaced with genuine concern.
I meet his eyes across the circle. "I'll find another way."
"There might not be another way," Torin says softly. "If she's truly connected to the summoning, if her presence here is part of something larger, then this is bigger than what binds you to her. Bigger than any of us."
Eamon finally speaks from where he stands near the southern stones, his healer's instincts making him the heart of our pack. "Then we help him figure it out. Together. That's what pack means."
The simple statement cuts through the tension. Eamon is right. We're pack. We face threats together, not divided.
"Here's what I propose." I look at each of them in turn. "Give me time to approach her, talk to her, figure out what she knows and what she's really doing here. Brennan, keep digging into her background—quietly. Callum, maintain surveillance on her movements but stay distant. Torin, continue tracking the summoning magic, try to identify the source and the target. Jax, coordinate our perimeter patrols, make sure no one else gets spotted."
"And if we determine she's working with whoever's doing the summoning?" Jax presses. "If she's bait, designed to distract you while something worse comes at us?"
The thought makes my wolf snarl, rejection of the idea visceral and immediate. But I can't dismiss it entirely. "Then we deal with it. But I won't condemn her without proof."
"How long?" Jax asks.
"Until I can assess the situation,” I reply, “and can figure out if she's a threat or a victim in all this."
Jax stares at me for a long moment, then nods slowly. "We can’t wait forever, Declan. If you can’t think clearly, we make a decision as a pack. All of us. Together. Agreed?"
I want to argue, want to assert my alpha authority and tell them Eliza is off-limits regardless of what they discover. But Jax is right. I'm compromised. And if I can't trust my own judgment, I have to trust theirs.
"Agreed." The word feels like surrender.
Eamon moves toward me, his healer's eyes searching my face. "You need to rest. You haven't been sleeping."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." Eamon's voice is gentle but firm. "The mate pull is exhausting you. You need to take care of yourself if you're going to handle this properly."
He's right, though I don't want to admit it. The constant ache of being separated from Eliza is wearing me down, making it harder to think, to plan, to lead.
"I'll try," I say, which is the best I can offer.
The pack begins to disperse, shifting into wolf form or heading down the cliff paths toward town. Brennan closes his laptop and pauses beside me.
"For what it's worth, I hope she's innocent." His voice is quiet. "Because I've never seen you like this, and I don't want to watch you have to choose."
He walks away before I can respond, leaving me alone in the stone circle with the wind and the moon and the constant, maddening pull toward Eliza.
I pull out my phone, staring at the dark screen. I could call her right now. Show up at Clifftop House. Use what binds us to draw her to me, make her want me as desperately as I want her. The connection would make it easy. She already feels the pull, even if she doesn't understand it.
But that feels wrong. Manipulative. Like I would be taking advantage of something she doesn't fully comprehend.
What I really want is to tell her everything. To sit her down and explain about shifters and pack law and ancient oaths. To tell her that fate has tied us together before we'd even met, and that every fiber of my being recognizes her as mine. To beg her to stay, to give this impossible situation a chance, to trust me with her safety and her heart.
But I can't do that. Not yet. Not when her presence might be connected to a magical threat against everything I've sworn to protect.
So instead, I'll do what I've been doing for the past few days. I'll watch her from a distance. I'll fight against the bond that screams at me to claim her. I'll try to unravel the mystery of why she's really here.
And I'll hope that when the truth finally comes out, it won't destroy both of us.
I turn to leave the stone circle, and that's when I see it. A small piece of paper wedged between two of the standing stones, held in place by a smooth black rock. The paper wasn't there when we arrived. I would have noticed.
I approach slowly, every instinct on alert. The paper is folded once, my name written on the outside in handwriting I don't recognize. I open it.
The message is short. Four words that make ice flood my veins:
