The Ozark night is thick with sound. Frogs, insects, the low, constant voice of the water. The air is warm and damp and carries the green smell of the hills. My wolf settles as we move. This is better. Open ground. Familiar territory. The land I grew up on, singing its old magic under my bare feet.
I follow the river path south, past the pump house where I can hear the faint mechanical heartbeat of whatever Dane did to resurrect that motor. The man got it running in four hours with parts scavenged from a tractor engine and what appeared to be a piece of drainpipe. I’d have been impressed if I had room for any emotion beyond exhaustion.
The path curves along the river to a flat stretch of bank where the water runs slow and shallow over a gravel bed. Moonlight turns the surface to hammered tin. I used to bring Cameron here when he was small. He’d splash in the shallows while I sat on the bank, watched the ridge, and pretended the world wasn’t closing in.
I sit on the bank now. Pull my knees up. Let the river noise fill the spaces in my head where the thinking won’t stop.
The wards. The scattered families. The intelligence network I’ve built, now compromised by my own resurrection. The watchers on the ridge. The purist wolves in the tool shed who were coordinated well enough to ambush a guarded position… which means someone gave them the ranch’s schedule and layout.
The leak. Always the leak. Every thread I pull leads back toward the council’s communication infrastructure, and every time I get close enough to see a face, the trail goes cold.
And Merric. Standing there today with his chin up and his eyes firm, asking me to tell him he’s wrong about Cameron. Refusing to be the villain I need him to be.
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
His voice comes from the trees to my left. Low. Unhurried. Not trying to sneak up. Announcing himself as if I might bite.
I don’t turn around. “You’re on my land.”
“I know. Couldn’t sleep. Walked.” A pause. “I can leave.”
He means it. No game. No tactic. He’ll turn around and walk back to the bunkhouse if I say the word.
That’s the problem. It would be easier if he pushed. Easier if he demanded, insisted, made himself into the thing I’ve been telling myself he is: a man who takes what he wants and leaves when it’s inconvenient.
Instead, he stands at the edge of my peripheral vision and offers to go.
“Sit down,” I say. “You’re making my wolf nervous, looming in the dark like that.”
He sits. Not beside me. A few feet to my left, leaving space. He moves stiffly. The leg, the stitches, the accumulated damage of a man who keeps taking hits and refusing to acknowledge them.
The river fills the silence for a while.
“I pushed too hard today,” he says. “On the ridge. About Cameron. That wasn’t my place.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“I know it wasn’t. I’m not apologizing for wanting to know. But the way I went about it… cornering you in the middle of ward work, forcing the conversation. That was wrong.”
I turn my head just enough to see his profile. He’s looking at the river. Jaw tight, but not the combative tight from this afternoon. A man sorting through his own wreckage and not liking what he finds.
“You always did have terrible timing,” I say.
His lip twitches. “My one consistent quality.”
The joke lands somewhere unexpected, and I feel something loosen in me. Marginal. A shift you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t holding yourself rigid every waking moment.
“The wards look better,” he says. “From the yard. The blue is brighter.”
“Eastern section’s done. South and west tomorrow. If I can get through it without someone dragging me into a confrontation about my personal life.”
“I’ll send Dane. He doesn’t ask questions.”
“He doesn’t ask anything. I’m half convinced he communicates through carpentry.”
“You should see him play chess. He’s brutal. Doesn’t say a word for two hours and then moves one piece and you’re done.”
I almost smile. Catch it. Push it down.
