I don't answer immediately. I'm watching a figure cross the courtyard below. Gideon, moving with the unhurriedpurposefulness of a man who knows he's being watched and doesn't mind. He disappears toward the east wing.
Twenty minutes later he's in my doorway.
He doesn't knock, but he does stop at the threshold rather than walking in, a bold statement. His deep-set eyes move across the patrol maps pinned to the wall before they settle on me, and his expression carries the particular patience of someone who believes the conversation is already going his way.
"The hunters solve your problem," he says. "Let them in. Let them work the southern corridor, draw out the rogue, and pull back once it's done. The town quiets, the media attention dies, the council pressure eases." He spreads one hand slightly. "You come out of this looking like a leader who made a practical call."
"The hunters aren't looking for one rogue," I say. "They're looking for wolves."
"They’re looking for whatever killed those deer on the highway."
"Which is a wolf. So, they'll take whatever wolf they can find and call it a success." I turn from the window to face him directly. "If one of ours is in wolf form when they come through that corridor, we don't get a retraction. We get a mounted head and a story that brings federal wildlife officers into these mountains for the next decade."
Gideon's expression doesn't shift. "Our people are disciplined enough to stay in human form."
"Our people are disciplined under normal conditions. Not under active provocation with armed strangers in their territory." I step toward the desk, keeping the distance between us deliberate. "One juvenile. One enforcer who shifts before he thinks because a rifle goes off too close. That's all it takes."
"You're manufacturing worst-case scenarios."
"I'm accounting for them." I hold his gaze. "The rogue's kills are staged near highways and town borders with consistentvisibility. He's not escalating out of instinct, he's escalating to be seen. To draw exactly the kind of attention that's now sitting at our tree line." I watch his face carefully as I continue. "Someone is guiding that behavior. Inviting hunters inside the forest is not a solution. It's the next step in a sequence someone else planned."
Something moves behind his eyes. It's there for half a second and then it's gone, replaced by the same composed skepticism he's worn since he walked in.
"You're reaching," he says.
"I'm leading." The patrol map draws my gaze. "The patrols shadow the hunters and hold the line. That's the decision."
Gideon stays in the doorway for a moment longer than he needs to. The silence carries weight, though neither of us fills it. Then he turns to leave, and he's nearly through the door when Ciaran appears at the other end of the corridor, moving with the particular pace that means he has information that won't wait.
Gideon stops.
Ciaran looks between us. "The archive keeper confirmed the Blood Moon timing this morning." His ice-blue eyes settle on me, then slide briefly to Gideon and back. "Seven nights."
The three of us stand in a corridor that suddenly feels very small.
Gideon gives me a blank look, giving nothing away, appearing somewhere between calculation and satisfaction, like a man watching a clock he set himself finally reach the hour.
"Seven nights," he says quietly, and leaves without another word.
I look at the patrol map on my desk. The red marks. The blue gaps. The careful, systematic shape of something built long before any of us were ready for it.
"Silent investigation," I say to Ciaran. "Move faster."
19
CASSIDY
Alden finds me in the east wing corridor just after noon with my tablet open and three weeks of GPS movement data pulled up on the screen.
"The hunters are getting closer," he says, forgoing any preamble. He stops beside me and looks at the screen rather than at me, and even that studied neutrality does something inconvenient to my pulse. "I need eyes on their approach vectors before patrol can reposition. Can your tracking system cover the southern boundary zones?"
"Not with my current calibration." I scroll to the terrain overlay and tap the dead zone along the lower corridor. "My trail cameras are still mapped to rogue movement patterns. I need to recalibrate the GPS nodes for human-scale traffic, different weight, different stride interval, different heat signature on the motion sensors." I glance up at him. "Give me an hour on-site and I can have coverage running by nightfall."
"You'll go at dusk." His jaw sets in the familiar way that means he's already decided and is offering the information rather than negotiating. "Ciaran goes with you."
"I wasn't going to argue that one," I say.
Something almost shifts in his expression. He holds my gaze for half a second longer than necessary, and in that brief moment, I remember his mouth on my skin, blood rising to my cheeks, then he looks back at the screen. "Report back directly."
