“Will you? Because from where I’m sitting, you look like a man who’s about to handle exactly nothing.”
Before I can answer, the bond flares. Brenna’s moving. Coming down from the ridge, heading toward the ranch. The exhaustion is still there, but overlaid now with something harder. She’s armoring up. Rebuilding the walls that I spent all week watching her dismantle.
I set my coffee down. “She’s coming back.”
Sienna raises an eyebrow. “How do you—?” She stops. Reads my face. “Right. Bond thing. Got it.”
Brenna comes in through the back door ten minutes later. Dressed, hair damp, face composed. She looks at me for exactly one second, and then she looks at Sienna.
“Morning,” she says. Neutral. Composed.
“Morning,” Sienna says, equally neutral.
The kitchen fills with the tension of three people who all know what happened and are all pretending they don’t. I open my mouth to say something—anything, some version of“can we talk”—when Rook appears in the doorway.
“Merric. We’ve got company.”
His voice has that flat, careful quality it gets when he’s delivering bad news without editorial comment. I’m on my feet before the words fully land.
“How many?”
“Three vehicles. Coming up the main road from the south. Black SUVs. Council plates.”
Council plates. My stomach drops.
“Bern,” I say.
“That’d be my guess.”
I’m moving. Through the kitchen, across the yard, Rook falling in beside me. Behind me, I hear Brenna’s boots on the floor. She’s following, whatever happened last night shelved with the iciness of a woman who can compartmentalize a nuclear explosion.
The convoy is visible from the front gate. Three black SUVs, polished, moving in formation up the dirt road that leads to the ranch. They look obscene against the Ozark landscape. Too clean, too purposeful, like a corporate delegation arriving at a disaster zone.
They stop at the gate. Doors open. Six wolves emerge: four fighters in dark clothes, a younger man with a tablet who looks like an aide, and Nathan Bern.
Fuck.
I haven’t seen him in person in over a year. He looks the same. That’s the worst part. Silver hair swept back from a high forehead, clean-shaven, lean in the way of a man who maintains his body as carefully as he maintains his reputation. Charcoal suit. No tie. The top button of his shirt open just enoughto suggest informality, which is calculated to the millimeter. Everything about Nathan Bern is calculated.
He walks through the gate with the unhurried stride of a man who believes every door in the world opens for him.
He’s the man who sat me down, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me that mating with a Ravenclaw witch would destroy my pack. That the other southern alphas would never accept a magic-blooded luna. That Frostbourne would be isolated, sanctioned, cut off from the political infrastructure that keeps a pack alive.
He gave me a choice that wasn’t a choice. And I took it. Because I was young and scared, and I believed him when he said it was for the best.
I believed him.
Standing at the gate now, watching him approach with his suit and his smile and his entourage, I feel something cold and hard settle into the place where the intimidation used to live. The clarity that comes when you finally see a man for exactly what he is and realize you’ve been looking at a mask for twenty years.
“Merric.” Bern extends his hand. The smile is warm. The eyes are measuring. He doesn’t use my title. “I apologize for the unannounced visit. I sent several messages that went unanswered. Given the, ah, evolving situation, I thought a personal conversation might be more productive.”
I shake his hand because refusing would be a declaration I’m not ready to make. His grip is firm, dry, briefer than friendly.
“Elder Bern. Long drive from the packlands.”
“Quite. The roads through the Ozarks leave something to be desired.” He scans the ranch with the cool sweep of a man conducting an assessment… the repaired barn, the reinforced fence, Dane’s construction work visible along the south line. The Ravenclaw wolves who’ve emerged to watch from porches and doorways. “You’ve been busy.”
“There was a lot to do.”
