Chapter 13 Reid
There’s a clarity I only got when standing in a soup of sweat, gas fumes, and the feral green reek of chainsawed cedar.
Clarity I couldn’t buy in therapy or find at the bottom of a bottle, because it didn’t come from solving anything, just from the raw act of beating a problem into pieces until it agreed to stay down.
I’d been at it since sunrise, running the line east of the hayfield, cutting back every sapling and cedar stand that had the gall to muscle in on Maddox grass.
Ash and Buck were working the next pasture over, keeping pace with me but on a different angle. Even over the racket, I could hear them. Ash had a voice that punched through a jet engine, and she punctuated every joke with a cackle so sharp it ought to have come with a warning label.
But then, with the engine off and the tree down, the quiet dropped back in, and so did the thoughts I’d been running from.
She hadn’t been surprised.
I’d brought Jennie out to the stash because I’d wanted to see what she’d do.
I’d wanted to watch her face when the truth hit her.
But she hadn’t flinched. Not really. Sure, her eyes had gone hard and fast, and she’d logged every detail the way only a law dog could, but there was no shock.
No tremor. She’d been expecting it. Or at least, expecting something close.
I killed the saw and stood there in the silence.
The wind shifted, and for a second, I caught her scent.
Not her perfume, she never wore any, but the mix of sweat, detergent, and the faint tang of her hair, which always reminded me of crushed lemon verbena.
I wondered if she was somewhere up on the ridge right now, watching me the way I’d been watching her.
She wasn’t a wolf. But the pull was the same.
I’d heard Midge talk about the mate bond once when I was a kid. She’d been drinking at the time, which made her more honest but also less careful with her words. “It’s not love, not at first,” she’d said. “It’s need. And then it’s everything else. Doesn’t matter if you want it or not. It’s yours.”
I slung the saw over my shoulder and started the walk back toward the barn. As I passed the next field, I caught sight of Ash, arms akimbo, hat tipped back. She was grinning at something Buck had just said.
I kept walking. I needed to talk to Calder. Not because he’d have answers, but because he’d listen without pretending to know what I was going through. That’s part of what made him alpha.
I found Calder in the main barn, boots braced on a feed sack and a bottle of water sweating on the ground between his boots.
Gray was there, too, but off in the tack room, humming under his breath as he inventoried the bridles.
Calder looked up when I entered, but didn’t say a thing.
He just jerked his chin at the bench across from him.
I took the seat, flexed my sore hands, and let the silence work its way between us. Calder was good at that. He could wait out a thunderstorm if it meant getting the whole story.
When I finally spoke, my voice sounded rough. “We’ve got a problem,” I said.
Calder nodded, but his face didn’t move. He waited.
“It’s the Coleman girl. Jennie,” I said. “She’s been watching us over the ridge for three mornings running. And yesterday, when I took her to the lean-to and showed her the guns, she didn’t even blink.”
Calder laced his fingers and leaned in. “You think she knew about them?”
“If not, she suspected,” I said. “Didn’t even ask how I found the stash. Just wanted to know if I’d told anyone else.”
Gray drifted closer, just inside the archway, but stayed silent.
I went on. “She’s not scared, not even curious. She’s cataloguing us, Cal. Treating us like entries in a case file.”
Calder tipped his head, studying me. “You think she’s FBI?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s freelance. But if she’s working for the feds, they picked her for a reason. She’s not just running a cover. She’s got a job.”
He considered it for a second. “She hasn’t made a move. She’s not tipping her hand.”
“She’s waiting,” I said. “But I have no idea for what.”
Calder’s eyes flicked past me, to the shaft of sun cutting the dust in the aisle. “She’s had chances. If she meant us harm, she’d have acted by now.”
I wanted to argue, but he was right. In our world, action spoke louder than anything. She was a lot of things, secretive, relentless, maybe even dangerous, but she wasn’t looking to burn us down, not yet. Still, there was a twist to my gut that wouldn’t relax.
“That’s not the only thing,” I said. “My wolf can find her. Even when I’m not tracking her. There’s a wire running between us. I know where she is.”
Calder didn’t laugh, didn’t mock. He waited.
I shook my head and tried to put it into words. “It’s not threat response. I know that one. This is different. It’s the way the old timers used to describe mate bonds, but she’s not, she’s not even a shifter.”
I met his gaze, expecting skepticism, but all I found was a steady calm.
“You ever heard of that?” I asked. “Wolf taking to a human, like that?”
He thought about it for a good ten seconds. “No. With Tess, I fell in love. My wolf was drawn to her, yeah, and we’re full mates now, obviously, but we weren’t fated. But it makes sense. The wolf doesn’t care about blood or rules. Only need.”
“Great,” I said, hollow. “So, my wolf is an idiot.”
He grinned broadly. "Or maybe you are, and the wolf's smarter."
Gray let out a low, amused sound from the tack room. Unhelpful.
I ignored him, keeping my focus on Calder. “What do you want me to do?”
He looked up, past me, at the high beams. “We don’t move unless we have to. You keep watching her. See if she tips her hand. Don’t push. If it’s a setup, she’ll overplay it sooner or later.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t satisfied. “And if the wolf is right?”
Calder’s face got serious again. “Then you deal with it. That’s your call.”
He clapped me on the shoulder, hard enough to make my teeth click. “Go shower. You smell like you rolled in a cedar mill.”