“It is when your people ambushed a seventeen-year-old on my watch. Someone gave you our schedule, our positions, the fact that Cameron and I would be at the south fence that morning. That didn’t come from your alpha sitting in Missouri. That came from someone with eyes on this property.”
Harlan says nothing. The caution has hardened into something closed and final.
“Twenty-four hours,” he repeats. “That’s all I have to say.”
I stand and leave the shed. Dane is outside, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
“Hear all that?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“Thoughts?”
Dane considers for approximately two seconds. “He’s scared. Not of us. Of whoever sent them.”
That tracks. Harlan delivered his message like a man reciting orders, not like a man who believes in them.
I find Brenna in the kitchen.
She’s alone, standing at the counter with a map of the property spread across the surface, marking ward positions with a pencil. She looks up when I come in, and her face does something complicated—the flash of last night surfacing and being pushed down, all in about a quarter second.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“About?” Her eyes narrow. She’s assuming I mean about last night.
“The prisoners.” I set her mind at ease. Or maybe I don’t. “Their alpha is going to claim them under the old territorial accords. Twenty-four hours.”
The pencil stops moving. She straightens up. “Which pack?”
“Ashfall. Southeastern Missouri. He says they’ve got alliances with Stoneridge and Blackhollow.”
“They do. Loose alliances, but real. All three packs lean purist. Ashfall’s alpha is a man named Cade Hatchett—mid-fifties, old-school, runs his pack like it’s still 1850.”
“You know him?”
“I know all of them. Sustained tracking of enemy movements gives you a comprehensive directory.” She puts the pencil down and leans a hip against the counter. “The parley demand is legal. Under the accords, we’d have to surrender them or declare hostility.”
“And declaring hostility with three packs while we’ve got fifteen fighters and no security—”
“Isn’t an option.”
We look at each other across the kitchen table. Map between us. Coffee cups. Morning light touching her face. All the ordinary ingredients of a conversation that isn’t ordinary at all, because twelve hours ago I had my hand on the back of her neck and her mouth was on mine. Now we’re standing three feet apart, discussing territorial law like none of it happened.
I can smell her from here. Not perfume; Brenna’s never worn perfume. Just her. The scent my wolf has been chasing through my dreams, now close enough to taste.
Focus. For the love of God, focus.
“There’s a third option,” Brenna says. “We return the wolves and use the parley to gather intelligence. If Hatchett comes in person, I can read him. His body language, his pack’s positioning, who he defers to, who’s giving him orders. These purist alphas aren’t operating independently. Someone’scoordinating them, and a face-to-face meeting is the fastest way to find out who.”
“You want to use the parley as a recon operation.”
“I want to turn their demand into our advantage. They come expecting a cowed pack handing over prisoners. They find a defended position, an alpha with council standing—” she nods at me, “and a woman they thought was dead. That’s a lot of new information for them to process, and people make mistakes when they’re processing.”
She’s brilliant. I’ve always known that, but watching her work in real time—the way she takes a threat and rotates it until it becomes a tool—is something else entirely.
“You’d reveal yourself to their network,” I say. “That burns your cover permanently.”
“My cover’s already burned. The wolves from yesterday saw me. If any of them make it back to their people—and the one who ran certainly will—then every pack in the south could know Brenna Corvus is alive by now.” A beat. “I factored that in when I came down the hill.”
