Page 25 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

“’Course,” I said.

He didn’t bother with small talk. “I got an offer in Alaska. Six months, maybe a year. They want a specialist who can handle wolf packs, maybe some grizzly, too. Cousin of mine runs the operation.”

“You thinking of going?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not sure. I haven’t mentioned it to Calder yet. Figured I’d see what you thought.”

I wanted to say he couldn’t, that the whole thing would fall apart, that nothing worked here unless Gray was part of it. But that wasn’t true, and it wasn’t fair. He was good at the work, but he was better at surviving. If anyone could make it out there, it was him.

“You should do it,” I said. “If you want. It sounds like its right up your alley.”

He studied the ground. “You ever think of leaving?”

“When I was younger. Not anymore.”

He was quiet for a minute, then said, “Thanks.”

“You’ll always have a home here,” I said. “I know Calder will say the same.”

He went back to the bunkhouse, leaving me with the rain and the night and all the things that don’t get said. I sat out on the porch a long time. The rain dropped off, the air thick and electric with the promise of another round by morning. The trees swayed in the wind and as I thought about the crates, about the cold fact of what we’d found, about the years of neighborly detente that had let it fester right under our noses.

But mostly, I thought about her. Jennie Cardin.

I didn’t know what it meant, the way the wolf in me had tracked her since the first day, the way it circled her scent, mapped her every footstep, remembered every word. I’d been calling it just attraction, but it felt like a lot more than that. There was nothing in the old stories about this. Wolf bonds were supposed to be clean, simple, inevitable. A wolf found their mate, and that was it. But she wasn’t a wolf, and she wasn’t anything I understood, and there was nobody alive I could ask.

Chapter 11: Jennie

I woke before the rest of the house, body refusing sleep when there were questions I needed to answer. I sat cross-legged on the bed and opened the drone feed on my phone. The BisonEye’s battery had made it through the night. The memory card claimed 28 gigabytes of footage. The first trigger came in at 22:14, right as the weather cut loose. The rest of the world was in the wind, but my camera never blinked. It held onto its spot in the tree well.

I ran the footage at 2x, eyes darting for motion in the grid. At first, it was just the horizon flattening under that sheet of rain. Then a flicker at the left of frame, a heat bloom, probably a deer angling for the creek, or a stray hand taking a leak. I flagged it but didn’t slow down. Next pass, the same sector, four-legged signature, moving fast, too heavy for a coyote.

I toggled the view and watched the wolf come in.

It was huge. Freaking enormous. If that was a big dog I’d eat my drone. It hugged the edge of the clearing, then another appeared, darker and leaner, not following but flanking, and then a third, all chest and legs, massive. One last one, looking older and rangier than the rest, brought up the rear.

I’d written off Grandad’s stories as just that. Stories. People saw things, and then those things became tall tales, and eventually the stories paid better than the truth. But this was not a story. I watched the four wolves converge, each moving with the instinct that said “pack.”

The drone captured everything, even when the world was dark. The infrared showed the wolves as blurs of living fire. I followed them, frame by frame, as they circled the old feed station, all four raising their heads at once. The rain hit the partially caved-in roof in sheets, flattening the world to static. I boosted the volume, but the only thing I caught was the beat of water and, behind it, the rumble of thunder.

The lead wolf approached the crates, nose low. It hesitated, muscles bunched, then it looked up and back at the other two. They closed in, a triangle. Then the real show started.

The first wolf shuddered, like it had been hit with a cattle prod. Its body rippled and folded, the fur became skin, the limbs twisted, hands and feet erupting from paws. I’d seen some fucked-up things in the Bureau, cartel execution videos, a guy who’d tried to DIY his limb removal, a PCP trip gone so bad the man yanked out his molars, but this metamorphosis sent my stomach lurching toward my throat. The wolf became a man. The other three followed, quickly, one after another, and then there were four men standing in the rain, fully clothed, staring at the gun crates.

I paused the feed and sat back. What the fuck?

In my thirty-two years on this earth, I’d always assumed that when the moment came, the moment the world turned upside down, I’d have something smart to say. What I had was a mouth full of cotton and a brain leaking out my ears. So, yeah. Not my best moment.

I replayed the transformation, slower this time. The transition wasn’t instant, wasn’t like poof magic. It was violence turned inward, the body fighting to reject every inch of itself, then, at the last second, deciding to just give up and let nature have its way. The men who emerged weren’t superheroes. They were battered and raw, skin already going purple in the cold, hands clutching at themselves, barely upright.

I zoomed in.

The faces weren’t unfamiliar. My heart stuttered as I recognized the one on the right. Reid Coulter. The other three I recognized from around Hollow Ridge, Buck, who I’d met at the feed store. The other two were part of the Maddox ranch. The wolves were Maddox men.

I should have called the FBI right then. I should have called Marcus. But I didn’t. I sat on the mattress, staring at the freeze-frame of three men in the rain in shock. Reid had just appeared from a wolf.

I watched the rest of the footage.

The men stood over the crates, talking. I tried to read lips, but the angle and rain made it impossible. Still, body language is half the battle. Reid opened a crate and motioned them closer. Eli’s jaw dropped. Buck rolled a round between his palms. They were surprised. They weren’t here to guard the stash. They’d just found it.