This is how it goes. A compound full of wolves, and every interaction is a negotiation conducted in glances and silences. I’ve operated in enemy territory; I can handle pressure. But there’s a difference between hostile territory where you expect to be hunted and a place that’s supposed to be home, where half the population is trying to decide if you’re a person or a threat.
Merric is pulled into pack business from the moment he steps out of the cabin, Jonas at his elbow with two weeks of accumulated decisions, supply disputes, a boundary disagreement with a neighboring pack, a teenager who shifted for the first time while Merric was gone, and needs his alpha’s acknowledgment. The ordinary duty of pack leadership needing his hands. I watch him cross the compound, wolves falling into step beside him, and within ten minutes, he’s absorbed back into Frostbourne. This is his world. He moves through it with the bone-deep ease of a man who built it.
I’m on my own.
Cameron handles it better than I do. He finds the training ground within an hour, and by mid-morning, he’s running drills with three Frostbourne wolves his age: a dark-haired girl named Lena who fights dirty, a stocky blond boy called Mark, and a lanky teenager named Kai who asks Cameron about his magic with a curiosity that borders on hero worship.
I watch from the edge of the yard. Cameron moves differently here. Freer. The Syndicate tension hasn’t left his shoulders entirely—I doubt it ever will—but it’s competing with somethingelse now. The pull of wolves his age. The simple animal pleasure of running and sparring and being young in a place that isn’t under siege. Lena sweeps his legs, and he goes down hard and comes up grinning. The grin is so unexpected that it makes my chest ache. That’s what seventeen is supposed to look like. Not months of fear. This.
He catches my eye across the yard. The look he gives me is complicated; not warm, not cold. The look of a boy who’s still angry but is also, reluctantly, adapting. I’ll take it.
The wolves who approach me fall into categories.
The first are Merric’s loyalists. Petra—young, dark-haired, direct—finds me at the edge of the training ground and invites me to the afternoon sparring session with the straightforward confidence of someone who evaluates people by how they fight and doesn’t care about bloodlines.
“Rook told me about the parley with Hatchett,” she says. “I want to see what you’ve got.”
“Rook talks too much.”
“Rook talks exactly enough. Three o’clock. East yard.”
She’s there at three. So are eight other wolves, a mix of ages, most of them loyalists, a few from the middle ground who’ve come to watch.
The training yard is hard-packed dirt with a timber rail fence, well-used, the ground scuffed and stained from years of drills. Nothing like the improvised circles at Ravenclaw. This is purpose-built. Professional.
Petra faces me on the mat. She’s fast, compact, trained in the Frostbourne style that favors grappling and close-quarters work. I let her come to me. She feints left, drives right. I redirect her momentum and put her on her back in four seconds.
She’s up immediately. Not angry. Delighted. “Again.”
We go again. This time, she lasts twelve seconds before I take her down. She’s learning my tells, adapting between rounds,which tells me she’s good. Not just trained but intelligent, a fighter who gets better every time she loses.
By the fourth round, the watchers have grown to a dozen. I’m aware of them the way I’m aware of everything at Frostbourne—with the sideways attention of a woman who knows she’s being evaluated. Petra and I trade three more rounds. She takes one. I take two. On the last one, she nearly gets a chokehold, and I have to burn real effort to slip it. The look on her face when I do is pure, uncomplicated respect.
“You fight like someone who’s been in real trouble,” she says, breathing hard.
“I have.”
“Good. We need people who have.” She grips my forearm. The warrior’s greeting. “Welcome to Frostbourne. For real this time.”
It’s one person. One opinion. But it carries weight in the training yard, and I can see the calculation shifting behind the eyes of the wolves who watched.
Karl Harwick, the council seat, finds me at the lodge afterward and makes careful, cordial conversation about ward construction: how they’re built, how they’re maintained, whether Frostbourne’s security could be enhanced. It’s either genuine interest or reconnaissance. I give him the cordial version back and let him draw his own conclusions.
The second category of wolves is the middle ground. The ones who nod, maintain distance, watch. They’re reserving judgment, and I respect that. Judgment should be earned, not given. The gray-haired man from the garden falls into this group. So does Torsten, the burly older male I noticed at last night’s announcement. He watches me cross the compound with the impassive attention of a man who’s seen enough to know that first impressions are unreliable and is waiting for the second one.
The third category is Edda Beaumont.
She finds me in the late afternoon.
I’m walking the eastern line, assessing the forest edges, measuring the sightlines, noting where the natural terrain creates blind spots that an approach team could exploit. Professional habit. The thing I do to feel useful when the ground under me is shifting.
“You’re checking our defenses.” Her voice comes from behind me. I turn. Edda stands ten feet back, arms folded, iron-gray hair pulled severely from a face that’s handsome in the way granite is handsome—all planes and angles and zero give. Three wolves flank her at a respectful distance. Not threatening. Just there. The one on the left—the scared one, Cameron noticed—keeps his eyes on the ground. The other two hold my stare.
“I’m taking a walk,” I say.
“You’re gauging vulnerabilities. I’ve watched soldiers do it. The pattern is distinctive.” She tilts her head. “Looking for weaknesses, Corvus?”
Not alpha. Just Corvus. I don’t react.
