I held my breath for a moment because even saying it felt like giving it shape.
“What if I go to her when she’s least expecting it…soon,” I said quietly. “Walk straight into her compound and end this.”
The cottage didn’t flinch, but Keegan did.
“No,” he said. One syllable.
I lifted my chin because stubbornness had kept me alive long before magic ever did. “We don’t know where Gideon is. We don’t know what she’s planning next. We don’t know what shethinksI am.”
Keegan leaned forward just a fraction, eyes dark. “We do know what she wants.”
“Control,” I said.
“Leverage,” he corrected softly, and the difference mattered. “Control comes after.”
“And how are the wolves doing? The mom and pups?” I knew to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“Thanks to the medicine, they’ll be fine.”
I let out a breath in relief. “Any thoughts why Caleb didn’t mention this?”
“Maybe he didn’t know or didn’t want it to appear that the shifters were a burden or couldn’t handle this.” Keegan twisted his lips into a deep scowl. “Don’t forget what these packs have been used to doing for centuries.”
“They turn their backs on the ones who look weak, or they think are different.”
“It’s a hard thing to break, apparently.” Keegan shrugged. “He probably thinks we’d second-guess ourselves about letting them stay if they come with illness or other drains on the system.”
I shook my head, realizing how deeply the Hunger Path etched its mark.
“Sad.”
Keegan nodded in agreement.
“It feels cowardly not to confront her,” I admitted. “To keep waiting while she’s pulling strings, and meanwhile we have sick pups and mothers.”
Keegan’s expression shifted into something like pain, quick and restrained, before it smoothed.
“It’s not cowardly to refuse a trap,” he said. “It’s discipline.”
“I’m tired of discipline,” I muttered.
That earned me the smallest, most infuriating curve of his mouth. “I know.”
“I can feel her,” I said, quieter now. “I don’t mean like a presence in the room, but like… like a hand hovering over a candle. Waiting to decide if she’ll snuff it or let it burn.”
Keegan’s gaze dropped to my hip for a heartbeat, like he knew where the pulse lived without me having to point it out. He lifted his eyes back to mine.
“You’re not a candle,” he said. “Nobody’s going to eliminate your flame.”
“That’s poetic.”
“That’s fact.” He shook his head and glanced around the cottage as if he were waiting for Elira or Miora to appear, as I exhaled. The breath came out shaky, and he smiled at me, touching my knee.
“I keep thinking,” I said, “if I went to her, maybe I could at least see the shape of her plan. Learn what she’s hiding. I couldunderstand why Gideon seemed so certain there was something in Stonewick that belonged to him.”
Keegan’s shoulders tightened. “You don’t get answers from someone like her. You get dungeons or worse.”
“You’re afraid for me.”
