“I want six wolves on the eastern perimeter,” I say. “Three pairs, rotating shifts, overlapping coverage. And I want someone on Ivy Lane at all times. Not visible. Not intrusive. But there.”
My father studies me. “That’s a lot of resources.”
“That’s my mate.”
The word sits between us. I’ve never used it infront of him before, not directly, not claimed it out loud in a way that acknowledges what it means. His expression doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes does. A settling. As if a piece he’s been waiting for has finally clicked into place.
“I’ll assign the teams,” he says. “Tom’s on light duties, but he can coordinate from the house. Rebecca will run the rotation.”
“I want to lead the night patrols myself.”
“You need to sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when the rogues are gone.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and I see him weighing the Alpha’s pragmatism against the father’s concern, the same calculation he’s been running my entire life. Then he nods.
“Your mother would be proud of you,” he says.
I stand up before the words can land properly, because if they land, I’ll have to feel them, and I don’t have time for that right now. “I need to check the eastern markers.”
“Roan.” His voice stops me at the door. “The girl. Phoebe. When she’s ready, bring her to me. Not as Alpha to Omega. As your father meeting the woman his son has chosen.” He pauses. “I’d like the chance to do it right this time.”
Christ. Sixteen years of resentment, and hedismantles it in two sentences. I don’t answer. I’m not sure I can.
I nod once and walk out into the cold morning, and the tightness in my throat isn’t anger for once. It’s something I don’t have a name for yet, something that sits in the space between resentment and forgiveness and is too new to identify.
I spend the next two days on the boundaries.
The scent traces Lewis found are faint but distinct. Three wolves, possibly four, working the eastern approach in a pattern I recognise from the earlier incursions. They’re using the river to mask their trails and approaching from different angles, which means coordination, which means leadership. Someone is directing these wolves, and whoever it is has identified the eastern perimeter as the priority.
Because Phoebe is on the eastern perimeter.
I mark the trails, map the approach routes, and work out the gaps in our coverage. There are two: a stretch of low wall near the old barn where the boundary dips towards the road, and a section of hedgerow behind the church where the undergrowth is thick enough to hide an approach. I flag both for the patrol teams and add a note about the river crossing that Lewis missed.
This is what I’m good at. Tactics, territory, the practical mechanics of keeping people safe. My fatherhas spent years trying to make me do this in an official capacity, and I’ve spent years refusing, and the absurdity of that standoff is becoming harder to ignore. I’m doing the job. I’ve been doing the job for weeks. The only thing I’m refusing is the title, and the title is starting to matter less than the work.
I track her days the way you track a storm from a distance. The fear on the first morning—sharp, cold, the kind that makes my hands clench in my pockets. The anger on the second day, which is better, because anger means she’s fighting. The deep exhaustion on the third day, when the fighting stops and the body takes over.
My independence is her isolation. My defiance is her suffering. I carry this knowledge through the patrols like a stone in my chest, and it’s heavier every hour.
She goes to the shop on the third morning. I’m at the boundary wall when the pain hits—not mine, hers, the village battering her senses like a wall of noise. When she gets home, the relief nearly takes my legs out from under me.
She’s getting worse. And I’m the reason she doesn’t have help.
The text arrives at twenty past nine on the third evening. I’m at the boundary wall,finishing a perimeter check in the dark, and my phone buzzes against my thigh.
Can you come over?
My wolf locks onto one thing only: get to her. It surges forward so hard my vision sharpens. My thumbs are moving before the thought has fully formed.
On my way.
I’m moving before I’ve put the phone away. Ivy Lane is a ten-minute walk from the boundary wall. I cover it in five, my stride lengthening, my heart hammering, my wolf singing inside my chest with a joy so fierce it hurts.
She asked. Three days of silence, processing, anger. She reached for me.
I slow down as I approach the cottage. I make myself breathe. The light is on in the kitchen. She’s close. Nervous. Hopeful. Afraid. I recognise every one of those feelings because I’m carrying the same ones.
