“We need to finish what we started.”
We don’t say much on the drive. Beau sits hunched in the truck’s passenger seat, staring out the window like the trees might rearrange themselves into answers if he looks hard enough. Fiona insisted on riding in the back in wolf form, tail thudding the bed every time we hit a bump.
The inn rises ahead of us like a bruise on the roadside, familiar and ugly in a way that makes my stomach knot. This is where it started. The bar. The bikes. The bad decisions that snapped into worse consequences.
The sign creaks overhead. The smell hits me next: beer, fryer oil, old wood, stale sweat. It’s all the same, and I’m not.
We pull around back.
The innkeeper is already waiting by the rear door, arms crossed, a branding iron resting beside him. It’s an old-school piece of work, heavy, dark, with a fresh head fitted on the end.
He eyes us with an expression somewhere between annoyance and reluctant respect. “You sure you’re the one who wants to do this?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, stepping out of the truck.
His gaze flicks to Beau, then back to me. “Talon said you could call him if you changed your mind.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” I say. “I’m an alpha. Pain’s supposed to run through me first.”
Beau looks up at me.
I glance at him. “Got a problem with that?”
He shakes his head quickly. “No. I’m just still getting used to it.”
“Me too,” I admit.
The innkeeper grunts and crouches by a small fire pit, turning the iron. Embers glow. The metal begins to darken, then redden. The smell of heating iron threads through the air.
Beau swallows. “That’s for… me?”
“It’s for us,” I correct.
He startles. “Us?”
I nod toward the metal. “We designed the mark together. That makes it ours.”
He nods rapidly.
The innkeeper lifts the brand partially from the coals, checking the temperature. “Tell him what it looks like,” he says. “He earned that much.”
I take a breath, trying to picture it as I saw it on paper yesterday, when Beau and I sketched it on a napkin between arguments and apologies. He didn’t see the finished design, though.
“It’s a circle,” I say. “But not closed. There’s a gap in the ring at the top, like an open door. Inside, there’s a stylized wolf head. Not snarling. Not bowing. Just awake and alert. Looking out.”
Beau’s eyes shine.
“Around the outside of the circle,” I continue, “are three small marks. Equidistant. Like stars.”
“Three,” Beau croaks.
“Three,” I confirm. “Always three. No matter who comes or goes, that’s what we started with. That’s what made us.”
The innkeeper grunts again. “And the placement?”
“Over my heart,” I say. “Over his exile mark.”
Beau makes a sound that’s half sob, half protest. “Jason?—”
