“Your ma walked into that parley to protect you,” he says. His voice is quiet but firm. “Every decision she’s made—leaving you here, going out there, all of it—she did because keeping you safe is the thing she puts before everything else. Including herself.”
Cameron’s mouth tightens. “She left me behind like I’m—”
“She left you behind because if those wolves had seen you, the boy whose magic lit up half a pasture three days ago, every plan she had would have gone sideways. You’re not a liability, Cameron. You’re a priority. There’s a difference, and your mother knows it even when you don’t.”
Cameron looks at Merric with an expression that’s caught somewhere between resentment and hunger. Resentment because he’s being told something he doesn’t want to hear, hunger because he’s being told it by a man whose opinion has started to matter more than he’s comfortable admitting.
“She’s always doing that,” Cameron mutters. “Deciding things for me.”
“That’s what parents do. You don’t have to like it. But you don’t get to yell at her for it either. She walked into a field with hostile wolves to make this ranch safer for you. You owe her better than a tantrum on the front porch.”
The wordtantrumlands hard. Cameron’s eyes flash. For a second, I think the fire is going to come back.
“Now, apologize to your mother, son.” Merric’s voice has an edge to it that tells me he’s dead serious.
My boy’s chin juts out. Then something shifts. The fight goes out of him; not all of it, not permanently, but the immediate blaze. He looks at Merric, then looks at me, and I see him mentally adjusting. Factoring in new information, even when it contradicts what he feels.
“I’m sorry, Ma.” He says it stiffly. Grudgingly. With the gracelessness of a seventeen-year-old who knows he’s wrong and resents knowing it.
“I know,” I say. My voice comes out calm. I make sure of that. “I know you were scared.”
“I wasn’t scared. I was—” He stops. Reconsiders. “Okay. I was scared.”
“That’s allowed.”
He nods. Doesn’t meet my eyes. Then he turns and walks into the house without another word, and the screen door bangs shut behind him with the finality of a teenager who needs to be alone with his bruised pride.
The grass smokes faintly. The porch post has stopped burning, but the wood is blackened and will need replacing. Dane hasn’t moved from the doorway. He watches Cameron go inside, then looks at me, and offers the closest thing to an apology I’ve ever seen from him—a small, gruff shrug that says,“I kept him in the house. The rest was above my pay grade.”
Greta starts directing cleanup without being asked. The ranch adjusts to the disruption the way it always does: absorbing the shock, patching the damage, moving on.
Merric stands in the middle of the yard with his hands in his pockets, watching the door where Cameron disappeared.
I should thank him. I should walk over and say,“You did what I couldn’t, and I’m grateful,”because it’s true and because he earned it. The words are right there.
Instead, I watch the back of his head and feel the ache of something unfamiliar. Not gratitude. Not jealousy. Something more complicated. The recognition that my son needs something I can’t give him, and the man who can give it is the same man I’ve been telling myself isn’t worthy of the role.
Merric didn’t claim anything, didn’t use the moment. He just steadied my child and told him to respect his mother. Told him that my choices come from love, not control. Defended me to my own son without asking for credit or position or acknowledgment.
That’s what a father does.
My throat tightens.
Willow appears beside me. She’s been watching too, standing at the edge of the yard, reading the scene.
“He’s good with him,” she says. “Cameron. Merric is good with him.”
“I know.”
“You going to tell him?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. Three days ago, I was certain that Merric Rourke hadn’t earned the right to know his son. Now I’m feeling that certainty fade away the same way Cameron’s fire flickered out, and I don’t know what’s underneath it.
“I’m going to check the wards,” I say.
Willow lets me go. She’s learning when to push and when to let me run, and right now she can see that pushing will break something I’m barely holding together.
I walk toward the north boundary. The wards glow along the line I spent all yesterday feeding. They’re strong. They’re holding. They’re doing exactly what I built them to do.
