One second, and my whole chest remembers.
I pour more coffee. Mind my own business. Get to work.
The morning is half gone when Rook finds me at the collapsed section of the west fence. I’m digging postholes again because digging postholes doesn’t require me to think about anything except dirt.
“We’ve got a problem,” Rook says.
“Which one?”
“The prisoner. The gray one. He wants to talk.”
The gray with the torn ear. The pack leader from the ambush, currently secured in the tool shed with a broken foreleg and burns across his shoulder where Brenna’s fire caught him.
“So let him talk.”
“He’s asking for you specifically.”
Fuck. I knew we couldn’t put this off forever.
I drive the posthole digger into the ground one more time, lever out the dirt, and set it aside. “Fine.”
The tool shed is dim and smells like motor oil and blood. Three purist wolves in human form, bound and seated against the backwall. The two lesser wolves are quiet—sullen, beaten, resigned. The gray is sitting upright despite the broken arm, which is splinted with strips of lumber and a torn shirt. Greta’s work. She set the bone herself, briskly and without sympathy, and told him if he moved before it knitted she’d break the other one.
He watches me come in with sharp, calculating eyes. Forties, maybe. Gray at the temples. He has the weathered look of a wolf who’s spent his life outdoors and the composed bearing of someone used to authority.
“Merric Rourke,” he says. “Frostbourne.”
“And you are?”
“Harlan. Ashfall Pack. Southeastern Missouri.”
I pull a crate over and sit. “Talk.”
Harlan shifts his weight, wincing as the broken arm adjusts. “By my reckoning, you got twenty-four hours. Maybe less. My alpha knows we’re here and he’ll come for us.”
“With how many?”
“Enough.”
“That’s not a number.”
“It’s more than you’ve got. Ashfall runs sixty wolves, and we’ve got alliances with two other packs in the region. Stoneridge and Blackhollow.”
Three packs. Potentially a hundred and fifty wolves. Against our combined strength of maybe fifteen fighters, if I’m generous with the count.
“He’ll claim parley rights,” Harlan continues. “Under the old territorial accords. Captured wolves must be surrendered to their alpha upon formal demand, or the holding pack assumes a state of hostility.”
“I know the accords.”
“Then you know Ravenclaw can’t afford a state of hostility with three packs.” He leans forward. “I’m telling you this because you seem like a reasonable man. We were sent to testyour defenses. That’s done. Return us, and this doesn’t have to escalate.”
“Sent by whom?”
“My alpha.”
“Who told your alpha where to find us?”
Something shifts behind Harlan’s eyes. A quick caution. “That’s not your concern.”
