Page 52 of Howl Lotta Love

By evening, the pattern had fully resolved itself, and her stomach dropped clean through the floor looking at it.

“He’s not only after one parcel.” She turned the laptop toward Jace, overlaying the historical property records against Walter’s map. “Look at the timeline. Shell purchases dating back eleven years, every one of them ringing the eastern and southern boundary. The Chairman has been closing this net since before you took over pack leadership.”

“Show me the last piece.”

She pulled up the final parcel, the one circled in red ink on Walter’s original map, and watched Jace go very still, granite settling into every line of him.

“That’s the access corridor.” His voice had gone flat, controlled, the calm she’d learned meant barely restrained fury. “Emergency vehicles, expansion rights, the only legal route in or out that doesn’t require crossing three other properties. If Kane closes that parcel, this pack loses the ability to grow, to evacuate quickly, to do anything but exist like this, forever, at his mercy.”

“That’s not chance at all. It’s the whole point of the ring.” Emma reached for his hand without thinking, needing the contact as much as offering it. “He’s not trying to hurt the pack. He’s trying to own it.”

The family council convened at dusk around the same long table, and Emma found herself facing a room noticeably more intimidating than any boardroom she’d ever walked into for work.

Jace’s father sat at the head with the settled authority of thirty years leading this pack before handing it over, silver at his temples, eyes sharp despite the easy set of his shoulders. His mother sat beside him, arms crossed, studying Emma with the sharp, deliberate attention of a woman deciding exactly how much to trust a stranger holding her son’s future.

Gerri arrived last, sweeping in with a suitcase clearly packed for a longer stay than anyone had invited her to. “Darling, I saw the guest room on my way in, and I have concerns. It’s charming, but it’s also far too celibate for two people engaged to be married. I’ll be speaking to someone about the throw pillows.”

“Gerri.”

“I’m simply saying the energy is off.” She dropped into a chair and gestured for Emma to begin, as if she hadn’t just derailed the whole meeting.

An older man near the end of the table—one of the pack elders, silver-bearded, arms crossed with the skepticism of someone who’d sat through far too many outsider presentations—cut in before Emma finished her first sentence.

“Forgive me, but you’re an accountant. Why does the pack need a spreadsheet to tell us our own land is under threat?”

“Because your own land has forty years of buried paperwork you’ve never once had reason to read, and I read paperwork for a living.” Emma didn’t blink. “Deed restrictions, easements, conservation clauses nobody’s looked at since your grandfather’s time—old paperwork has a way of holding real teeth long after everyone’s forgotten it’s there. I’d bet money there’s at least one clause buried in this pack’s original filings that nobody’s thought about in decades.”

She let that settle before she went on. “You’ve been defending this territory with instinct. That’s kept you alive so far. It won’t stop a man who’s spent a decade buying the legal right to starve you out. For that, you need someone who speaks his language better than he does.”

The elder studied her for a long beat, then let out a short, surprised laugh. “Fair enough.”

Emma laid out the pattern with the same clean precision she’d have used on a courtroom exhibit—the shell companies, the timeline, the final parcel and everything it threatened—and watched three veteran alphas who’d walked in prepared to humor a human accountant slowly stop humoring her and start listening.

“She’s right.” Jace’s father spoke first, studying the map with a frown that had nothing dismissive left in it. “I remember when the county first opened that corridor for review. Nobody thought to lock down the deed restrictions because nobody imagined a threat patient enough to wait a decade for the opening.”

“I imagined it.” Emma met his eyes without flinching. “It’s what I do for a living. Recognizing patience is patient people trying not to look patient.”

The old alpha’s expression shifted—respect, slow and real, the kind that had to be earned rather than given. “Jace didn’t oversell you.”

“He undersold me, honestly,” Emma said, and the room’s answering laugh eased a tightness in her chest she hadn’t realized was there.

“What do you need from us?” Jace’s father leaned forward, all business now, thirty years of leadership showing plain in the set of his shoulders. “Legal standing, manpower, or both.”

“Both, eventually. Legal standing first.” Emma pulled up the deed history on her laptop, turning it so the whole table could see. “The corridor’s protected under an old conservation clause. If we can get the county to recognize the original restriction before Kane closes on the parcel, he loses the entire strategy in one filing. I need someone who can move a records request through the county office faster than the standard six weeks.”

“I know a clerk who owes this family a favor.” Jace’s mother spoke for the first time, dry and certain. “She’ll move it in two days if I ask nicely. Three if I have to be less nice about it.”

“Please be less nice about it,” Roman said, from the doorway, entirely serious. “I’ve heard stories, and I’d love for at least one of them to turn out true in front of me.”

Jace’s father studied Emma for one more long moment, approval settling plainly behind his eyes. “You’re not what I expected when Jace called to say he was bringing someone home.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone who needed protecting.” He shook his head slightly, a small, real smile breaking through the authority. “Instead, my son brought home someone who’s going to save this pack’s land with a laptop and a records request. I like this a lot better than the version I’d imagined.”

Roman, lurking near the doorway with a tactical vest under one arm, raised a hand. “For the record, I volunteer for perimeter duty anywhere except near the lodge tonight. Anywhere. I’ve got a good feeling about the tree line.”

“Nobody asked, Roman.”