“Good for her.”
“She wants to see my magic.” He says it carefully, testing the idea. “Not afraid of it. Just curious.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I’d think about it.” He scuffs the ground with his boot. “It’s different here. They don’t look at me like I’m going to explode.”
“You did set a few things on fire at Ravenclaw.”
“A porch post. One porch post.”
“And a circle of forest.”
“Okay, two things.”
The almost-humor settles between us. Not healed. Not resolved. But present, and that’s more than I had yesterday.
“Ma,” he says. “That woman. Edda. She was watching me at dinner last night. The same way Bern watched me.”
“I know.”
“Is she dangerous?”
I consider lying. Consider protecting him the way I’ve always protected him, with selective truth and careful omission. Then I remember what that cost us.
“She’s convinced,” I say. “About what we are. What magic-blooded wolves represent. Convinced people are harder to deal with than cruel ones, because they believe they’re right.”
“And the people behind her? The ones feeding her the belief?”
Seventeen. My son is seventeen, and he’s reading power structures with an accuracy that makes my intelligence training look like finger painting.
“Those are the dangerous ones,” I say.
He nods. Looks out at the compound. The lodge lights are coming on. Somewhere inside, Merric is navigating the political aftermath of last night’s announcement, and somewhere beyond the trees, vehicles are driving logging roads in the dark.
“I’ve got your back,” Cameron says. Matter-of-fact. Like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
I put my arm around his shoulders. He lets me. For three full seconds before he shrugs it off with the instinctive dignity of a teenager who loves his mother but has a reputation to maintain among new sparring partners.
“Come on,” I say. “Dinner.”
We walk toward the lodge together. My son at my side. My mate somewhere inside. And the compound around us, watching, weighing, deciding what to do with the wolves who came in from the cold.
I keep my chin up. My wolf keeps her ears forward.
We’ve faced worse.
Chapter 27
Merric
Three days at Frostbourne, and the fault lines are deepening. The pack has settled into an uneasy partition. My loyalists—Petra, Karl, the Hale family, most of the wolves under thirty—have accepted Brenna with varying degrees of warmth.
Petra invited her to lead a sparring session yesterday, and Brenna moved through the drills with a skill that turned skepticism into respect by the time she put Petra on her back in under four seconds. Word travels fast in a pack. By evening, three more wolves asked to train with her. Torsten watched the whole session from the fence rail without saying a word. When Brenna finished, he gave her a single nod and walked away. From Torsten, that’s practically an ovation.
The traditionalists have gone silent. Not in the way that means acceptance. In the way that means organizing.
Edda requested a formal council session this morning. As a seated elder, she has the right. Karl Harwick and I are the othertwo Frostbourne council members; Karl’s solid, but Edda needs only one external ally to force a confidence review, and Bern’s voice carries weight across every council seat in the south.
