Hatchett stops twenty feet from us, outside the ward line. If he feels the magic, he doesn’t show it. His eyes move across our group—Willow, me, Rook, the wolves at the boundary. Taking inventory.
Then his eyes reach Brenna, and everything changes.
He stops observing. His whole body goes rigid—a locked-joint tension that runs from his boots to his chin. His fighters feel it. The V formation tightens behind him, instinctive, wolves pulling closer to their alpha when they sense danger.
“That’s not possible,” Hatchett says.
“And yet.” Brenna’s voice carries across the twenty feet between them without effort. Calm. Conversational. The voice of a woman who’s not afraid of confrontation.
Hatchett narrows his eyes on her for a long time. I watch the stages move across his face—recognition, disbelief, recalculation. He’s not stupid. I can see him reworking every assumption he walked in with, reassembling the picture, trying to figure out what Brenna Corvus being alive means for the balance of power he thought he understood.
“Cade,” Brenna says his name the way you’d greet a neighbor at the hardware store. “It’s been a while.”
“You burned,” he says bluntly.
“I got better.” She shrugs.
Behind Hatchett, the wiry observer has frozen. He hasn’t reacted visibly—no jaw drop, no tension. Just a complete absence of movement that reads, to me, as a man who’s been trained to control his responses. He’s recording. He’ll report this to someone.
Brenna’s seen him too. I know because her weight shifts—fractional, almost imperceptible—toward that side of the formation. Her attention is on Hatchett, but her awareness is on the observer. She’s doing exactly what she said she would: reading the delegation for intelligence.
I should be doing the same instead of noticing the way her face looks in profile against the afternoon light. Were her lashes always that long?
“We’re here under the old accords,” Hatchett says, recovering his composure. He’s good at this; the surprise knocked him, but he’s rebuilding fast. “My wolves were taken during a territorial incursion. I’m claiming their return.”
“There was no territorial incursion,” Willow says. She steps forward, putting herself on Brenna’s right, and her voice is clear. “Your wolves crossed onto Ravenclaw land, attacked two of our people unprovoked, and were subdued in defense of our territory. Under the same accords you’re invoking, we’d be within our rights to hold them indefinitely.”
Hatchett looks at Willow like a child who’s interrupted an adult conversation. “I’m speaking to the alpha.”
“You’re speaking to me,” Willow says. “I run Ravenclaw.”
“You’re a pup.”
“I’m the wolf who kept this pack alive while people like you helped bleed it dry. Address me properly or address no one at all.”
The meadow goes quiet. Hatchett’s jaw works. His second—a rangy wolf with a scar through his eyebrow—shifts his position, hand drifting toward his belt.
“Easy,” I say. The word comes out of me low and flat and carrying enough alpha weight to make the second’s hand stop moving. I don’t raise my voice. Don’t need to. “Nobody’s reaching for anything. We’re talking.”
Hatchett’s eyes cut to me. He’s been aware of me since he walked out of the trees—a Frostbourne alpha at a Ravenclaw parley is hard to miss—but he’s been choosing not to acknowledge it. Now he has to.
“Alpha Rourke,” he says. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I’m exactly where I mean to be.”
His eyes drop to my position at Brenna’s left. He knows what it means. Every wolf born in the traditional packs knows what the left shoulder position means at a formal parley. His features tighten by a degree.
“Interesting company you’re keeping,” he says.
“I could say the same.” I nod toward the wiry observer at the back of his delegation. “Friend of yours?”
Hatchett doesn’t turn around. “An associate. Here to witness the proceedings.”
“On whose behalf?”
“His own.”
That’s a lie. The observer isn’t here for himself; he’s here for whoever sent him, and the fact that Hatchett won’t name them tells me the chain of command runs higher than a regional purist alpha.
