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Her head whips up. “You know.”

“Darling, everyone knows.”

She looks sheepish. “We kept it quiet for Lexi’s sake. Until the pack accepted her as the heir.”

“She seems pretty solid to me,” I say.

“Yeah, they’ve really come around, especially after how she’s dismantled the old hierarchy. We’re having elections for city leadership.”

“Progressive. And Grey? He seems okay now.”

She nods. “He and Lexi had to merge their alpha power to hold it without it killing them or driving them mad. But Ramsey doesn’t have a mate to merge with. And even if he did, he’s not a born alpha, so I doubt that would even help.”

“I agree. And from what I’ve seen, if there’s nowhere for that power to go, his wolf will deteriorate pretty fast.”

“You sound like you have experience with this. I thought you hadn’t heard of the serum.”

“Not a serum. But a few years ago, a wolf acquired alpha status through a hex rather than natural ascension. He lasted eight months before his own pack couldn’t manage him anymore.”

“What happened to him?”

“His second put him down.”

She’s quiet for a moment.

“So, Ramsey’s on a timer,” she says.

“Possibly. Which makes him more dangerous in the short term, not less. A wolf who knows he’s running out of time⁠—"

“Takes bigger swings.” She picks up her wine again. “We need to find him before he takes one we can’t recover from.”

“Yes.” I pause. “I've been thinking about the abandoned camp your scouts found. The one with the human girl’s ID.”

“From the pictures, it looks like he established himself there pretty well before moving on,” she says.

“I think he used it as a meeting point for recruits. He would have needed a place he could stay in long enough to put out the call and have them arrive to meet him.”

“Do you think more recruits might still show up there?”

“It’s possible. If they didn’t get the change of venue in time. But more importantly, someone from Ramsey’s side might drop in to see if anyone arrived there by mistake.”

“It’s a long shot,” she says, sitting forward slightly. The strategist clicking back into place behind her eyes. “Very possible no one ever shows up. Which makes it a waste of resources for scout patrols. Especially when we still have so much ground to cover elsewhere.”

“But if someone from Ramsey’s side does decide to check it out…”

“They could lead us back to his camp.”

I don’t answer, waiting for her to think it through. This only works if she comes to it on her own.

“It might be days before anyone shows,” she says at last. “You’re talking about a stakeout.”

“Yes.”

She looks at me. I look back. We both know what a mission like that together means, and neither of us is going to say it right now because right now it’s strategy.

“I can’t afford to lose any patrols for that long,” she says.

“Neither can I.”