“Enough. If Bern is feeding her strategy.”
“He is. You know he is.”
“I know.”
She’s contemplative. Then: “The vehicles on the logging roads. Has Jonas confirmed anything new?”
“Some scouts tracked them last night. Three SUVs, unmarked, north approach. Different clearing this time—they’re rotating positions, checking the perimeter from multiple angles.”
“Thorough. They’re building an operational overlay—every approach corridor, every gap in coverage.”
“You’re right.”
“Merric.” She turns to face me fully. Her eyes are sharp, the field operative’s focus overriding the mate’s warmth. “Bern’s political maneuvering and now surveillance vehicles on your borders at the same time. That’s not a coincidence.”
“No. It’s not.”
“The political pressure keeps you focused inward: managing Edda, managing the council, managing the pack’s divided loyalties. While you’re looking inside, someone’s positioning outside. It’s a classic two-front strategy. I’ve seen the Syndicate run this playbook before. Create internal instability, then exploit the distraction.”
“You’re thinking this is coordinated.”
“I’m thinking that whoever sent the observer to the parley at Ravenclaw, whoever was behind the purist attack in the hills, and whoever is driving unmarked vehicles around Frostbourne in the middle of the night… they’re connected.”
I’ve been assembling the same picture. The pieces don’t form a complete image yet, but the edges are aligning.
“We double the night patrol,” I say. “And I want Cameron inside the compound at all times. No exceptions.”
“Agreed.”
We stand together at the edge of the training ground. The compound is settling into evening. Wolves moving between buildings, the lodge chimney trailing smoke, the sound of laughter from somewhere inside. A child running across the gravel, chased by the shed dog. One of the kitchen women hanging a lantern on the lodge porch.
My pack. My territory. The place I’ve built and defended and sacrificed for. The place I sacrificed Brenna for because a man in a suit told me it was the only way to keep these people safe.
And underneath the evening sounds, a current running dark and fast. The sense that twenty days is generous. That whatever’s being planned, the timeline is shorter than Edda’s review period. That the vehicles on the logging roads aren’t gathering information for a future operation.
They’re confirming details for one that’s already set.
Brenna’s hand finds mine. She feels it too… The silence that precedes an attack.
“We should bring Cameron in,” she says.
“He’s in the lodge. Lena’s teaching him chess.”
“Good. Keep him there.”
She heads toward the cabin. I head toward Jonas. The evening unfolds around us, ordinary on the surface, and under it, something tightening like a wire wound around a post.
I don’t sleep well that night. Brenna curls against me in the dark, her back to my chest, and her breathing is even. But I can feel her not sleeping either. Both of us lying motionless, performing rest for each other’s benefit, listening to the compound settle into silence and hearing the spaces in the silence where things might hide.
Her hand finds mine on her stomach. Twines our fingers together.
“I love this place,” she says into the dark. “I didn’t expect to. But it reminds me of Ravenclaw. The way it holds people.”
“It’s going to hold you, too. Whether Edda likes it or not.”
“I know.” A pause. “But something’s coming, Merric. I can feel it in the ground.”
“I know.”
