The real answer. I think about that for a second. What the real answer is and how much of it I can give her without either of us combusting.
“Because I owed a debt,” I say. “Not to you. To myself. I made a choice that I knew was wrong the second I made it. I’ve been living with that since, and living with it was starting to look a lot like dying with it. Then Cameron showed up at Aurora with your name and your eyes and asked for my help. So here I am.”
“Guilt,” she says. “You’re here because of guilt.”
“Partly.”
“What’s the other part?”
“The other part is that I walked through your front gate and saw a pack of wolves living in a ruin, and I thought, ‘This is what happens when good people get abandoned by the ones who should have stood for them.’And I was one of the ones who should have stood.”
She’s silent. The forest holds its breath around us.
“You’re saying the right things,” she says finally. “You always did. Right up until the moment you didn’t.”
“I know.”
“So you’ll understand if I don’t trust the words.”
“I’d think less of you if you did.”
Her expression shifts. A reassessment rather than a softening. She’s adjusting a calculation she’d already made, factoring in details she didn’t expect.
We start walking again. The tension hasn’t broken, but it’s changed shape. Less brittle, more elastic. Two people who know they’re going to have to work together and are grudgingly testing the strength of whatever this is between them.
Brenna crouches at another dead section. Presses her palms down. The white fire flows, and the ward flickers to life. I watch her face while she works. The focus, the strain, the set of her mouth when she’s concentrating.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I ask.
She doesn’t look up. “Tell you what?”
“About the boy. About Cameron.”
Her hands stop moving on the ground. The ward light stutters. She lifts her head and looks at me, and whatever was elastic in the air between us goes taut as a bowstring.
“Cameron is none of your business.”
“He asked me for help using your name. He looks at me like he’s searching for something in my face. He’s seventeen years old, and I left you eighteen years ago. You want to tell me that’s none of my business?”
“I don’t owe you anything, Merric. Not explanations. Not access. Not a single thing.” She stands. Her voice hasn’t risen, but the temperature has dropped to somewhere below freezing. “You gave up every right you had when you walked away. You chose your council and your reputation over—”
“Over you. I know. I was there.”
“Then stop acting like the choice didn’t have consequences. You don’t get to leave and then come back wanting answers.”
“I’m not asking for answers. I’m asking you to look me in the face and tell me I’m wrong.”
The air between us is vibrating. Three feet of space and eighteen years of ruin. Her eyes are blazing, furious and alive in a way that makes something dangerous move within me. She’s angry. I’m angry. And underneath the anger, there’s something older, something that has nothing to do with politics or packs or the reasonable decisions of rational adults.
Her lips part. She draws a breath.
“Brenna! Merric!”
Greta’s voice carries through the trees from the direction of the ranch. Brenna steps back like she’s been stung. The heat—whatever was building in that impossible three feet of air—dissipates immediately.
Greta appears on the trail with Arlen behind her. She’s moving faster than a woman her age should, and her attitude says this isn’t social.
“Water pump’s dead,” she says. “Properly dead this time. The motor’s seized, and the backup bladder’s got a crack the length of my arm.”
