Rowan's jaw throbbed. "You understand what a vetting ritual is. You understand what it entails."
"I do," Nora said. "I know your rules are older than your sheriff. I'm not asking for lineage or blood. I am asking for temporary standing so the county doesn't take Jamie and place him somewhere he doesn't belong."
Elder Lena's voice cracked. "Our people have rules because outsiders burned us before."
"They also burned families," Nora shot back. Whoever was on the fence leaned in. She didn't raise her voice. Her words landed clean.
I could feel the pack's uncertainty press like a winter wind. If I pushed too hard I'd provoke a split. If I bent too far I risked precedent. I had a choice: keep my shoulders squared and let procedure run its cold course—watch Nora and Jamie be processed by county systems that moved like molasses and sometimes spat kids back wrong—or use the power I had to create an exception that could save a life and risk the pack's ire.
"I propose something else." My voice came out flat, then firm. "A provisional vetting. Conditions. Background checks. An oath of conduct. She's not family—yet. She will not sleep in common den areas. She will be under our protection for the duration of county review, nothing more. We make it conditional. We make it legal within our own governance. We vote."
It was the same language I used with contractors and county men—clear terms, cut-and-dried. I hoped it would carry the authority it needed.
Rowan barked a laugh. "You'd bend tradition on your say-so?"
"On what I say," I corrected. "No. On a pack vote."
A murmur. The pack liked procedure when it bound everyone equally.
"Name the conditions," Miguel said.
I did. Background checks run by our elders and the vetted lieutenant. Supervised contact with town officials to keep misdemeanors off our backs. A temporary protective covenant that didn't grant lineage but did grant sanctuary. And a sunset clause—Friday. If Nora failed any condition or if the county deemed Jamie unsafe in her care, the agreement was null and void. No precedent, no loopholes, no granting blood.
Rowan folded his arms. "An oath to protect a human inside our territory?"
"An oath to protect a child," Nora said. "That a human steward—who is not looking to change your rules—can keep a boy while the state reviews is not an invasion. It's a shelter. We keep our rules, and we keep a life from being tossed into the system."
The vote was messy. People argued about the weight of tradition versus the weight of a boy's life. I heard names—neighbors who'd seen Jamie on the schoolyard, Mrs. Hanley's testimony about Nora's steady hands; even the deputy who'd peered down the lane and folded his hands just so. When the final count came it was narrower than I'd hoped. A majority. Cautious, strained. But a majority.
Rowan stared at the ceiling like it might swallow him. "Fine," he said at last. "Provisional. Friday. Backgrounds checked. Oath. Immediate family notified. Any sign of?—"
"—coercion or exploitation, and we call an elder trial," Lena finished for him. Her voice had softened but carried a steel that silenced the room.
Nora exhaled—slight, tired. She needed this. I could tell by how her shoulders changed when the vote went through; how the tenting at her fingers loosened from the folder. She'd offered no favors. She'd made a case. She'd stood in the middle of our tradition and refused to flinch.
"You'll be vetted," Rowan told her. "Not embraced. Not lineage. Vetted."
"That's all I asked," she said. Her hand brushed the folder like saying goodbye to something that had felt precarious.
I wanted to reach across and fold that hand into mine and tell her it was enough. But there was still the outside world to worry about—the sheriff's side-eye, the anonymous photo in the diner, the burned notice, the developer who'd called me with slick promises and assessments, the man in a suit who'd asked questions about Jamie's mother at a counter we both thought we'd left behind.
Rowan stepped closer to the table, lowering his voice. Up close I could smell the old grief clinging to him: whiskey and iron and the memory of a house gone up in flames after an outsider passed through. "You need to understand." His words were slow, deliberate. "People like him? They'll use anything. The county loves paperwork. They love a reason. They love a tidy deliverable to point at and say, 'We did good.'"
I tensed. He was saying what I'd been trying to keep at bay—making the threat that kept me awake visible.
Nora's eyes flicked to me. She folded her hands in front of her like she always did when she needed to stand her ground. "Then we'll outwork their paperwork," she said. "We'll file what they need, give the county a clean record of a kid who is stable, and let them choke on their own forms."
Rowan's mouth tightened. He leaned so close it scraped my shoulder. His breath was old cold and regret. "They'll use anything they can to take the child," he said, and there was no mockery in it—only warning. "Be ready."
The words landed heavy. I wanted to slam my fist and tell him he didn't get to weaponize past losses against my judgment. I wanted to tell him Nora's hands had soothed Jamie's fever and patched his knees and calmed him in dreams. I wanted to tell him that sometimes protection wasn't about keeping the wolf in but about knowing when to turn and face the hunters.
Instead I swallowed and met Nora's eyes. She had that stubborn line at her mouth, the look of someone who'd learned to move while other people froze. She had the folder. She had the vote.
"Then we'll be ready," I said. "We don't give them the excuses. We close ranks and document everything. And we find out who nailed that note to the door."
No one disagreed. The pack's murmur tightened into a low coil. Outside, the valley sighed and the wind picked up. The old reflex—shoulder to shoulder, teeth bared—rose in me. We could fight what came at us. We could take another blow.
Nora's hand brushed mine as she gathered her folder. It was brief. It was not a promise. But the scent of her under my skin wasn't a whisper anymore. It was a map.
