Every sentence lands with the precision of a man who’s been doing this for thirty years. Positioning the council as essential, me as overextended, Ravenclaw as a problem that requires institutional management.
It’s a masterwork. And it’s complete bullshit.
I let him talk. Watch his hands, his eyes, the micro-expressions that flicker beneath the diplomacy. This is the manwho shaped southern wolf politics for thirty years. Who decided which packs thrived and which withered. Who sat in a room with me and engineered the end of a mating bond because it didn’t fit his vision of how the world should work.
I was afraid of him then. Afraid of what he represented, what he could take away.
I’m not afraid anymore.
“Elder Bern,” I say, during a pause in his presentation. “I appreciate the council’s concern. And I’ll give your proposals the consideration they deserve. But I should be clear about something.”
He waits. Attentive. The good listener.
“I’m not going back to Frostbourne until the situation here is stable. Ravenclaw is under my protection… formally, as of the parley we held two days ago with the Ashfall delegation. Any council discussion about Ravenclaw’s status goes through me and through Brenna. Not around us.”
I hold his eyes. He holds mine.
“Understood,” Bern says. Smooth. Accommodating. Not a crack in the surface. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m here to support, Merric. Nothing more.”
He’s lying. I can smell it. Not the lie itself, but the pressure of it. The shift in the air that says something is coming.
I smile back. Two men lying to each other across a kitchen table while the women in the room watch with varying degrees of contempt.
The morning grinds on. Bern tours the ranch, escorted by Rook, who doesn’t let him out of his sight. His fighters set up a clean, efficient camp near the main road, just inside the property line. His aide takes notes on everything.
And Brenna and I don’t get a single moment alone.
She’s always moving. Ward work, supply logistics, briefing Willow, checking on Cameron. Every time I catch her eye acrossthe yard, she looks away. She’s rebuilding the fortress. Brick by brick, hour by hour, with Nathan Bern’s presence as both the excuse and the mortar. And I can’t fault her because his presence here is a big red flag.
By evening, the ranch feels different. Watched. The easy rhythm of the last few days has been replaced by the stiff performance of people being observed. Bern’s fighters are polite, professional, and impossible to ignore.
I stand on the bunkhouse steps after dinner and watch the light fade. Bern’s camp glows white at the property’s edge. Inside the main house, I can see Brenna through the kitchen window, standing at the counter, head bowed, hands flat on the surface. The posture of a woman holding something up by pure will.
Cameron sits on the front porch, watching Bern’s camp. He hasn’t spoken more than ten words since the introduction this morning. But his body language says everything: coiled, vigilant, the alertness of a boy who spent six months in a facility run by men who spoke in measured tones and hurt him anyway.
He doesn’t trust Bern. He’s right not to. The man’s a snake.
I need to talk to Brenna. About last night, about Cameron, about the fact that Nathan Bern is sitting inside our territory with the entire political infrastructure of the southern wolf world behind him.
But she’s not ready. I can feel it. She’ll talk to me when the crisis demands it. Not before.
So I wait. The way I waited on this porch last night. The way I’ve been waiting for eighteen years, if I’m honest.
Patience. The one skill I never wanted and can’t stop needing.
The night settles. Bern’s camp goes quiet. The ranch holds its breath.
Somewhere inside the house, a woman who should be mine is standing at a kitchen counter trying to hold the world together,and I’m out here on the steps doing the same thing, and neither of us knows how to do it in the same room.
Tomorrow. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.
It’s becoming a habit. Pushing everything important to tomorrow.
I just hope we can deal with the fallout when tomorrow inevitably comes.
Chapter 19
Brenna
