“Follow it,” I say.
The wolf reappears at the edge of the headlights, moving north at a pace the car can match on the track that runs parallel. Escort.
Celeste watches it through the window without comment. Her body shifts beside me. Shoulders squaring, chin lifting by a fraction.
The road narrows. Branches brush the roof. The headlights catch eyes at intervals, not the escort wolf but others, stationary, watching. No sound from them. No movement. Just the gold flash of reflected light.
The road opens into a clearing. Three structures visible. A main cabin, something that functions as equipment storage, and a smaller building I can’t immediately classify. Firelight comes from inside the main cabin. And beyond the structures, on all sides, the darkness full of things watching.
Kael is waiting by the door in his human form. Arms crossed. He gives me a nod. Looks at Celeste.
“Alpha’s inside,” he says.
The cabin is one large room with a stone fireplace taking up most of the north wall. Rough-hewn table in the center, long enough to seat eight. Pine resin deep in the wood. Earth underneath. Something wilder underneath that.
Two wolves I don’t recognize are at the far end of the table. They stand when we enter, not in deference. They assess. They stay.
Erik is at the fire.
He turns when we enter. Takes in Celeste first, then me.
“Folder,” he says.
I set Julian’s report on the table. He picks it up without sitting, reads it standing, pages moving fast.
He sets it down.
“Same three hubs.”
He pulls a chair out and sits. Doesn’t gesture for us to do the same. We sit anyway.
“Your analysis puts the start nine weeks back.”
“Konstantin’s operation started before either of us noticed the pattern.”
“Yeah.” He leans back. “That’s the part that pisses me off.”
One of the two wolves at the far end shifts slightly. Their heads turn in the same direction at the same moment, some signal passing between them.
“The buffer zone,” Celeste says. She’s looking at Erik’s map, unfolded beside Julian’s report, her finger tracing the eastern boundary. “The area your wolves won’t enter. Are those wards? Like at the facility?”
“No.” Erik’s voice is flat. “Wards you feel. You hit them and you know. This is different. Whatever’s in that stretch has been there long enough that my trackers route around it by instinct. They can’t tell me what it is. They just won’t go in.” A pause. “I’ve pushed two of them. Good wolves. Ten and fifteen years in the pack. Both hit the boundary and stopped like they’d walked into something solid. But there’s nothing there. No ward line. No barrier.”
I study the buffer zone. The third hub sits four hundred meters inside the eastern boundary. Whatever Konstantin placed there has been working on the pack long enough to become reflex, something the wolves’ bodies accept before their minds catch up. Witch work, most likely. Subtle and sustained.
“We survey the first two hubs,” I say. “The buffer zone we leave alone until we know what we’re walking into.”
Erik looks at me. “Agreed.” He folds the map. “Let’s do the Hidden Accords ritual outside.”
He stands. The two wolves at the far end stand with him. We follow them out.
The night is cool. The sky is full and clear, stars in concentrations I don’t see from Atlanta. One of the two wolves has shifted at the perimeter, dark brown, larger than any natural wolf, watching. More of them in the darkness beyond.
This is the pack in their element.
A man is standing at the far edge of the open ground. Human form. Arms crossed. Dark hair, fighter’s build.
Nico.
