Chapter 10
Briar
Merric finds me before I reach my cabin.
He’s coming out of the barn, a hay hook hanging from his belt.
His stride changes direction the second he sees me.
Not rushing. Merric doesn’t rush. But the purpose in his walk says he’s been waiting for this.
The look he gives me when he’s close enough to read my face is the look of an alpha counting damage.
“You’re back.”
“I’m back.”
“Almost a week. No contact.”
“I know.”
He waits. Merric is good at waiting. He taught me how to do it when I was just a kid. He showed me it was a tool, and then I showed him I was better at it than he’d ever be.
I don’t give him anything. Not because I’m being difficult. Because I don’t have anything to give that he’d want to hear.
I went to Texas. I took the Forrester alpha. I tied him naked to a chair and cut him. He escaped, I chased him, we fought, and then I fucked him on the ground and his wolf mate-claimed me. And now I can feel him in my head.
“It’s handled,” I say.
His eyes move to my collar. The shirt is buttoned high, and the gauze is hidden, but Merric has been reading wolves since before I was born. I watch him assess the collar, the stiffness in my left shoulder, the way I’m holding my neck. He doesn’t ask.
“Brenna wants to see you.”
“I know.”
“Today.”
“I said I know.”
He holds my eyes for another beat. Then he nods and walks back toward the barn. I can feel him not asking the questions he wants to ask, and I’m grateful. The gratitude sits badly, because I don’t want to be grateful. I want to be alone.
I find Brenna in the lodge kitchen. It’s her office, her war room, and the place where every important conversation at Ravenclaw eventually happens. She’s at the long table with a cup of coffee and a stack of papers — the council case against Bern, from the look of it.
Greta is at the sink with her back to us, running hot water over a cast-iron skillet. She turns when I come in.
“Good to have you back, honey.” Her smile is warm. “Got biscuits if you’re hungry.”
I nod. “I’ll get some.”
“As many as you like. You look like you lost half yourself out there.” She turns away and continues her washing as if the exchange never happened. That’s Greta’s gift. She hears everything and acts like she hears nothing.
“Sit down,” Brenna says.
I sit in the chair across from her. The sun through the window makes a bright square on the pine table between us. I watch a fly cross it.
“You went after Garrett Forrester.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He’s been dealt with.”
“Dealt with how?”
“He has a better understanding of what his corridor produced.”
Brenna sets down her coffee. Folds her hands. The look she gives me is the one she uses on wolves who are telling her the truth but not enough of it: patient, sharp, waiting for the rest.
“Briar. I need more than that.”
“He’s alive,” I concede. “He’s at his compound.”
Her eyes narrow. She doesn’t push. Brenna knows when pushing will shut me down, and she’s too smart to waste the leverage.
Behind her, Greta moves the skillet to the drying rack. A plate clinks against another plate. The fly crosses the bright square on the table again.
“I’m building a case that depends on political credibility,” Brenna says when the silence drags on too long. “If the Forrester alpha shows up at the council hearing with injuries he can pin on Ravenclaw wolves—”
“He won’t.”
“You’re sure.”
“He won’t report what happened. Trust me.”
Something in my tone makes her pause. I watch her recalculate — turning over the words, the certainty, looking for the angle that explains why I’m so sure Garrett Forrester will keep his mouth shut.
She won’t find it. Not today.
“All right,” she says. “Full debrief tomorrow. Everything you saw at the compound. Security posture. All of it. If they’re gearing for something, I want to know about it.”
“Fine.”
She catches my arm as I stand. Not tight. A pause, two fingers on my sleeve.
“And Briar. Don’t go back. Whatever you did, it’s done. We handle the Forresters through the council now.”
I nod.
The nod is a lie, because this thing that’s happening to me is not going to go away on its own. I’d be a fool to believe that. She lets go of my sleeve. I walk out.
The sun is higher now. The yard is busy. Wolves moving between buildings, the thud of sparring from the east field, the smell of bacon from Greta’s open kitchen window. I cross toward my cabin, head down, collar up. Four more doors and I’m inside.
Willow falls into step beside me at the second door.
I don’t hear her coming. She moves that way when she wants to — light on the ground, wolf-quiet in human form. She doesn’t say anything at first. Just walks.
Her eyes go to my collar. The same assessment Merric made. Then her expression does something I’ve seen her do before — turns inward for a second, softens, the way a person’s face changes when they’re listening to a sound only they can hear.
She’s reading my threads.
Fuck.
Willow’s bond threads are supposed to be limited to her pack, but since Merric and Brenna mated, that circle seems to have expanded.
I keep walking.
“You saw Garrett.”
“It’s handled.”
“That’s what you told Merric.”
“That’s what I’m telling everyone. I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
We pass the third door. The fourth. My door is visible at the end of the path. Willow’s hand settles lightly on my forearm. I stop because I don’t know how to shake it off without making a scene.
“Conner called him,” she says. “Yesterday. Garrett picked up.” She watches my face. “He knows his brother is alive. That’s not what’s worrying him now.”
“Then what is?”
“He doesn’t know. That’s the problem.” Her eyes move to my collar, back to my face. “But something shifted. Something we can’t account for.”
“Nothing shifted,” I say.
Willow looks at me for a long moment. She’s not reading my face. She’s reading something underneath it.
“There’s a new thread on you,” she says. Quiet. “It wasn’t there before you left.”
My hand goes to my collar before I can stop it.
I catch the movement. Drop my hand. But the reflex is enough, and Willow’s eyes track my fingers, track the collar, track the stiffness in my neck. She knows.
Maybe she doesn’t.
“It goes toward Forrester territory,” she says.
The morning moves around us. A horse whinnies. Children call to each other. Someone shouts something from the training field. Willow’s fingers stay on my sleeve.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
She looks at me for a long moment. Her face is doing something complicated; part concern, part recognition. She knows what a mate bond looks like. She carries one herself, to the brother of the man mine connects to. The symmetry of it is something I am not equipped to handle right now.
“Okay,” she says.
Not okay meaning she believes me. Okay meaning she’s not going to push.
Her hand lifts from my arm.
“If you need to talk to someone who understands—”
“I don’t need anyone.”
It comes out hard. Willow doesn’t flinch. She’s heard worse from me, and she knows my edges aren’t personal. They’re how I’m built.
“Okay,” she says again. She touches my arm once more — a pat, almost — and then she walks past me toward the cabin she shares with Conner.
I stand on the path and watch her go.
I walk into my quarters, sit on the edge of the mattress, and unbutton the collar one-handed. The gauze underneath is dry now. The skin around it is still angry red. I peel the tape off slowly. Even with wolf healing, it’s still as brutal as it was when he did it.
Gonna leave a scar, dammit.
Of course it will. A mark every wolf who sees it will read correctly: This female is claimed. This female has a mate.
I press my fingertip against one of the ragged edges. Pressure, not pain. A second heartbeat that isn’t mine.
I do not have a mate.
I say it in my head with the certainty of a woman who has built her life on exactly that premise. Briar doesn’t need. Briar doesn’t want. Briar survives because she travels light.
I pull my finger back. Re-tape the bandage. Button the collar. Lie on my back on the cot and stare at the ceiling.
The man in Texas reaches for me again. That same brush against the part of my mind I can’t seal off — checking, always checking. My wolf answers him without asking my permission.
Stop, I tell her.
She doesn’t.