CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Everly
She woke before Caleb, sun already climbing past the curtains, and lay still for a while just watching him sleep — something she'd never let herself do with anyone in longer than she wanted to admit, that particular vulnerability of studying someone's unguarded face without them knowing.
He looked younger and asleep. The careful alertness that lived permanently in his features when he was awake, the alpha's constant low-grade vigilance, smoothed out into something softer, more boyish, one arm thrown across his eyes against the morning light.
She found herself smiling, unprompted, at the sight of it, and thought, not for the first time, how strange it was that two weeks ago she hadn't known this man existed, and now she couldn't imagine mornings without the specific weight of him beside her.
She let herself catalogue small things about him in the quiet — the faint scar along his collarbone she hadn't asked about yet, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the way even in sleep his hand had found hers sometime in the night and stayed there, fingers loosely curled around her own.
It felt, lying there in the early light, like the kind of ordinary domestic peace she'd stopped believing was available to her, back in the last bad months with Derek, when even sleep had felt like something to survive rather than rest into.
She'd forgotten what it felt like to wake up unafraid.
She was only now remembering, one quiet morning at a time.
She thought, watching a shaft of sunlight climb slowly across the quilt, about how different this felt from every other morning-after she could remember — no anxious replaying of the night before, no scanning for signs she'd said or done the wrong thing, no bracing for a different, colder version of the person who'd been so warm the night prior.
Just quiet. Just the simple, uncomplicated pleasure of having chosen well, for once, and having that choice reflected back at her in the steady rhythm of someone else's breathing.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she reached for it carefully, not wanting to wake him yet, and felt her stomach drop the moment she saw the screen.
Marisol: Call me the second you're up. It's important. Not Ashgrove-important, but still important.
She sat up slowly, careful not to jostle Caleb, and stepped into the hallway to call, feeling an old anxiety flare even though the text had specifically said it wasn't about Ashgrove.
Marisol picked up on the first ring, voice already moving fast, the county-office cadence Everly remembered from that very first day back in full effect.
"Okay, so, I need to preface this by saying I don't know how bad it is yet," Marisol said, without preamble, "but there's a man in town this morning asking questions about you.
About the estate. He showed up at the county records office an hour ago claiming to represent a firm handling a contested claim on the Shaw property.
I only found out because Ellen at the front desk called me the second he left, because she remembered me handling your paperwork and figured something felt off about the whole visit. "
Everly's chest went tight. "A contested claim? Contested by who?"
"He wouldn't say directly, which is its own kind of answer.
But Everly — the name on his business card was Ashgrove.
Not Rourke. A cousin, maybe, or some kind of associate — Thom Ashgrove, attorney at law, according to the card, which, if it's even real, means Rourke's decided to try the legal route instead of just sending more shifters to your backyard. "
"How does that even work? Can a rival pack alpha's cousin just show up and file a claim on land his family has never legally owned?"
"That's exactly what I'm trying to find out.
Ellen said he was asking about boundary surveys from decades back, old easement records, anything that might suggest ambiguity in how the original parcel lines were drawn.
Which tells me this isn't a snap decision — someone's been building toward this for a while, probably well before Ruth even passed, just waiting for the right moment to surface it.
" Marisol's voice sharpened, focused. "I've got a call in to the county attorney's office, and I want to loop in Blackbriar's actual estate lawyer before either of us panics.
But I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it secondhand from Dot, who I guarantee already knows and is probably three exaggerations deep into the story by now. "
"Thank you. For calling first." Everly rubbed a hand over her face, exhaustion and adrenaline warring against each other. "What do I do?"
"For now, nothing. Don't sign anything, don't talk to anyone claiming to represent any firm, and definitely don't engage directly with this Thom Ashgrove character if he tries to approach you.
Let me and the lawyer handle the paperwork side.
You focus on the parts only you can handle.
" A pause, and Everly could hear the careful diplomacy in it, the sense that Marisol was choosing her next words with unusual care. "Is Caleb with you?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Keep him close today. If Ashgrove's trying a legal angle now, it probably means the direct approach failed badly enough that Rourke's looking for other leverage. That doesn't make you safer. It just means the threat's coming from a different direction for a while."
"Do you think it's connected? This, and the fire?"
"I don't think Rourke's the kind of man who abandons a strategy just because one prong of it failed.
I think it's very possible he's running both approaches at once, hoping one of them eventually cracks something open.
Which is exhausting to think about, I know.
But better you go in expecting a coordinated campaign than get blindsided assuming each threat exists in isolation.
" Marisol's voice gentled slightly, some of the rapid-fire urgency softening.
"You're doing better than you probably realize, handling all this.
I want you to know that, even in the middle of the panic.
Most people would have gotten back on that bus after week one. "
Everly managed a small, tired laugh despite everything. "Some mornings I still think about it."
"And yet here you are, three weeks in, learning stewardship rituals and taking on rival pack lawyers before breakfast. That counts for something, Everly. I hope you know that."
Everly hung up and stood in the hallway for a long moment, taking stock of the fear trying to climb back up her throat, the particular flavor of it that reminded her, uncomfortably, of every time Derek had found some new angle to pressure her from just when she'd thought she'd found solid ground.
She breathed through it deliberately, the way her one session of therapy had taught her, and made herself walk back into the bedroom instead of spiraling alone in the hall.
Caleb was awake when she came back in, propped up on one elbow, expression already sharpening into alertness at whatever he read on her face. "What happened?"
She told him everything, watching his jaw tighten progressively through each detail, watching the soft, unguarded morning version of him give way to the alpha who processed threats for a living.
"A legal challenge." He said it slowly, working through the implications.
"That's — actually more concerning than another direct attack, in some ways.
It means Rourke's trying to make this look legitimate.
If he can manufacture some claim that holds up even briefly in a county court, he buys himself time, creates confusion about who actually owns the Hearth land, maybe even gets a judge to freeze the property while it's litigated.
That's not a battle I can fight for you with teeth and claws. "
"So what do we do?"
"We fight it the way it needs to be fought.
Legally, carefully, with better lawyers and better documentation than Rourke's expecting a human heiress with no local ties to have access to.
" He was already moving, pulling on clothes with the brisk efficiency of a man converting fear into action.
"Blackbriar's pack has an estate attorney on retainer — has for decades, actually, because land disputes with Ashgrove aren't exactly new.
Her name's Naomi Weiss, human, married in the same way Marisol did, sharp as anyone I've ever worked with.
I want her looking at every piece of paperwork Ruth left you today, and I want to know exactly what claim Rourke thinks he can make before he gets the chance to actually file it. "
"Has this happened before? A legal challenge, I mean, not just direct attacks."
"Twice, that I know of, both before my time as alpha.
My father handled the first one — some contested easement claim in the seventies that took almost two years to resolve, though the Hearth land itself was never seriously at risk once the actual property records got pulled.
The second was smaller, more of a nuisance suit than a real threat.
But Rourke's smarter than either of the men who tried it before him, and hungrier for the Hearth than anyone in his family's history.
I'm not going to assume this one resolves as easily. "
Everly dressed quickly too, some of her earlier fear settling into the same determined focus she'd been building since the fire, the sense of having concrete ground to stand on even in the middle of uncertainty.
"Ruth's journal. There might be something in there — property records, old agreements, anything that would prove the chain of ownership more solidly than a simple will. "
"Good thinking. Bring it. We'll take it straight to Naomi — she's handled every property dispute this pack's had in the last twenty years, she'll know exactly what to look for."
They drove into town together an hour later, journal and Ruth's letter both carefully packed in Everly's bag, the easy warmth of the morning replaced now by the focused urgency of two people facing down a new front in a war that had already cost more than either of them wanted to calculate.
Everly watched the familiar landscape scroll past the truck window — the boundary marker, the tree line, the scorched patch of earth still visible near the cottage's edge — and felt, despite the fresh threat, a stubborn certainty settling into her chest that hadn't been there two weeks ago.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, watching the trees blur past. "Why does Rourke want this so badly?
I understand the mechanics of it now, the Hearth, what it could do in the wrong hands.
But you knew him, growing up, in whatever way rival pack alphas' children know each other.
What made him into someone willing to burn down half a valley to get what he wants? "
Caleb was quiet for a moment, eyes on the road, clearly weighing how much of the answer belonged to him to share.
"I only met him a handful of times, as a boy — pack gatherings that predated the worst of the hostilities, back when there was still some pretense of civility between our families.
He always struck me as someone who felt owed something.
Like the world had shorted him on what he was entitled to, and every choice since has been about correcting that deficit, whatever the cost to anyone standing between him and what he thinks he deserves.
" He glanced over at her briefly before returning his attention to the road.
"His father was the same way, from what I understand.
Maybe it's generational. Maybe some packs just teach entitlement instead of stewardship, and it compounds every generation until you get someone like Rourke, willing to burn a whole valley down rather than admit his family's approach to their own land was never sustainable. "
"That's a sad way to grow up. Being taught the world owes you something instead of being taught what you owe the world."
"Yeah." Something in Caleb's expression softened slightly, though the tension didn't fully leave his shoulders.
"I used to feel sorry for him, honestly, before he gave me every reason not to.
There's a version of Rourke's life where he inherited a struggling pack and chose to rebuild it carefully, the way stewardship actually works.
He chose differently. At some point, understanding why someone became what they are stops mattering as much as stopping what they're currently doing. "
She reached over and took his hand, steady and warm, watching the road curve ahead of them toward town.
"We're going to stop him. Whatever this legal maneuver turns out to be, whatever comes after it.
I didn't come this far, learn this much, choose all of this, to lose it to a piece of paper, or to a man who never learned the difference between owning something and deserving it. "
Caleb brought her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles just long enough to steady them both before returning his attention fully to the road ahead.
"No," he agreed, voice low and certain. "He's not going to win this.
Not while I'm still standing, and not while you keep proving, every single day, exactly why Ruth chose you. "
They drove the rest of the way into town in comfortable, purposeful silence, the morning's fear settling into something steadier — not gone, never fully gone with a threat this real hanging over them, but folded now into resolve instead of panic, into forward motion instead of paralysis.
Everly watched Main Street come into view ahead of them, the same street that had welcomed her so warmly just one night before, and felt something solidify in her chest that she recognized, with some surprise, as belonging — not just to Caleb, not just to the bond between them, but to this whole strange, dangerous, beautiful place she'd never expected to call home.
Whatever Thom Ashgrove's business card claimed, whatever contested easement or manufactured technicality Rourke thought he'd found, Everly intended to meet it exactly the way she'd met everything else since stepping off that bus three weeks ago: with her eyes open, her feet planted, and absolutely no intention of running.