“When I got too old to waste time on bullshit.” Gideon drained the last of his coffee and stood. “Go check on Michael.”
I stood too, suddenly restless, suddenly needing air. “You know, for someone who claims to stay out of pack business, you're awfully invested in my love life.”
“Who said anything about love?” Gideon's eyes glinted. “The rest is between you and whatever's left of your conscience.”
“I don't have a conscience. I'm an Alpha.”
“Those aren't mutually exclusive.”
“They feel like they should be.”
Gideon laughed. Actually laughed, rough and rusty like he'd forgotten how. “Get out of my office, Daniel. Some of us have work to do.”
I headed for the door, then paused with my hand on the frame. “Gideon.”
“Hmm?”
“Whatever's coming... when it gets here... I need to know I can count on you.”
The laughter faded from his face. Something older looked back at me, something that had survived more darkness than I could imagine.
“You can count on me,” he said quietly. “For what it's worth. For whatever time we have left.”
It wasn't a promise. It was something better.
It was the truth.
2
THE WRECKAGE WE TEND
DANIEL
The Harrington house sat at the end of Birchwood Lane like a wound that refused to close.
I'd driven past it dozens of times in the months since the attack. Told myself I was checking on things. Making sure nothing lurked in the shadows where Anna Harrington had taken her last breath. Making sure the house that had become a crime scene was healing the way houses were supposed to heal.
Lies. All of it. Lies that got harder to swallow every time I found myself turning down this road when I should have been anywhere else.
The house came into view through a break in the trees, and my chest did something complicated. It looked different than it had six months ago. The door that had been torn off its hinges had been replaced. The broken windows were whole again. Fresh paint covered the porch, white over white, like trying to bleach out a ghost.
Michael's truck sat in the driveway. Beat-up Ford that had seen better decades, bed loaded with lumber and construction debris.
I pulled Evan's truck in behind it and killed the engine. Sat there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, listening to the tick of cooling metal and the distant whine of power tools from inside the house.
Get out, I told myself.Stop being a coward.
The smell hit me before I reached the porch.
Beer. Stale and sharp, the kind that came from bottles left open too long. Underneath it, sawdust and fresh paint and sweat and exhaustion. And something darker. Something my wolf didn't want to name but recognized anyway.
Grief. The kind that soaked into walls and floors and skin. The kind that didn't wash out no matter how much you scrubbed.
I could hear Michael's heartbeat from here. Faster than it should be, irregular with the stuttering rhythm of someone running on fumes. His breathing was shallow, ragged at the edges. When he moved, I could track him through the house by sound alone, footsteps heavy with fatigue.
The front door was propped open. I stepped through and found myself in a house trying very hard to forget what had happened here.
New drywall covered the places where rogues had torn through plaster. New flooring replaced the hardwood that had soaked up too much blood to ever come clean. The furniture was different, cheaper stuff that didn't quite fit the space, like Michael had bought whatever was available without caring if it matched.
