Chapter 11
Garrett
Three days after the clearing, I almost drive north. Not almost as in I thought about it. Almost as in I was in the truck, engine running, the sign for the interstate in my rearview before I realized I wasn’t heading for the feed store. I was heading for the county line.
Today, it’s worse.
The pull I can live with. A drag northward, hooked into my chest, and if I grit my teeth, I can walk in any direction I choose. I’ve been gritting my teeth since the clearing. Twice yesterday, I caught myself drifting toward the north gate without deciding to. Three times today.
The new thing is not the pull.
It started yesterday afternoon. A burn. Not in my skin — lower, a slow pressure under my ribs that spreads down through my gut and keeps going. It’s not mine. It’s hers. Coming through the thread between us, the way her anger has been coming through, except this is not anger.
This is a woman’s body calling a man’s body home.
I’ve been half-hard since yesterday.
At my desk, doing pack accounts. Standing in the feed barn, checking the sacks I ordered last week.
Sitting across from Dawes at the long table at ten in the morning, going through the patrol rotations.
I had to keep my chair pulled tight against the pine because the alternative was explaining to my head of security why his alpha is hard during a briefing about the south boundary.
My wolf has opinions about this, and every one of them is go to her.
“Vehicle at the south gate,” Dawes says. He’s reading the radio in his palm. “Two men. Suits. Asking for you.”
I know who they are before Dawes finishes the sentence.
“Let them through.”
He doesn’t move for a second. “You want me in the room?”
“On the porch. Close enough to be seen. Not close enough to hear.”
He nods and walks out to send the word.
The SUV is black, the windows are tinted, and the driver stays in it. The other man — mid-forties, lean, suit a shade too expensive for ranch country — gets out and crosses the yard with the easy confidence of a man who knows he’s the smartest thing walking.
He stops three feet from me and puts out his hand.
“Mr. Forrester. Thank you for seeing us.”
I don’t take the hand.
“I don’t recall agreeing to a meeting.”
He draws the hand back without reacting. “We understand the southern corridor has been experiencing some disruptions.”
“The corridor is closed.”
“That’s what we’d like to discuss.”
I walk him into the meeting hall. I don’t offer coffee.
He doesn’t take a chair. We stand on opposite sides of the long pine table with the patrol map still pinned to it from this morning’s briefing.
Dawes is visible on the porch through the screen door.
The suit notes him and decides he doesn’t matter.
“The organization has invested significantly in the southern infrastructure,” he says. “Your family has benefited from that investment for over a decade. Unilateral termination of a partnership of this duration and value is not typical.”
“It’s not a partnership. It was a contract. I’m ending it.”
“Alternatives take time, Mr. Forrester. During the development period, the relationship between your pack and our organization would be…” He chooses his word. “Unstructured.”
“That’s not my problem.”
Something in his expression makes me think he plans to make it my problem.
“I’ll convey your position.” He straightens his cuffs. “But I’d encourage you to reconsider. The organization doesn’t hold grudges. But it does hold records. Very thorough records. Photographs. Dates. Participants. Information your Council might find… enlightening.”
My stomach turns. My face does nothing.
“You have my answer.”
He nods. Walks back to the SUV. The driver pulls out, and the dust from their tires drifts across the yard long after they’ve crossed the cattle guard.
Dawes comes off the porch.
“What’d they want?”
“The corridor reopened.”
“And?”
“I said no.”
Dawes is quiet. He runs a thumbnail along the seam of his jeans pocket.
“Garrett.”
He doesn’t use my name often. When he does, he means it.
“The compound isn’t built for a sustained operation against us. We don’t have the numbers. Not since—”
“I know.”
Not since Conner left. Not since the six who walked out with him.
“Let’s be prepared,” I say. “Double the night watch. South and west. Pull Cal off the junction.”
“Where do you want Cal?”
“Rotate him into the perimeter. The junction doesn’t need a man anymore.”
Dawes nods. Doesn’t move.
“They won’t come through the fence,” he says.
“Not now. The facility went up last month. The council case is building. There’s too much heat on the network to risk more exposure.
They’ll use the records, play the political angle.
But they’re not sending men through our fence while the spotlight’s on them. ”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But I know probability.” He holds my eyes.
“I’ve got this. The compound is covered.
I know which direction trouble comes from and what to do when it arrives.
” The thumbnail again, one slow drag along the seam.
“Whatever’s got you walking toward the north gate three times a day — go deal with it.
Come back when you can think straight. You’re no use to this pack the way you are now. ”
It should rankle. It doesn’t.
“It’s not pack business,” I say.
“No. But you are.”
He goes.
I stand in the meeting hall with my thumb pressed into the scar on my left forearm — the first one she made, the one closest to my wrist. The ache when I press is clean and specific. I press harder. The burn retreats half a step. I let go, and it comes back.
My phone buzzes. Conner’s name on the screen.
I answer. “Still breathing,” I say. “In case that’s why you called.”
“We were worried.” Flat. Not warm.
“Worried that I might not survive your little assassination attempt?” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.
Conner heaves a breath. “Briar went in alone. Nobody sanctioned it.”
Briar.
I taste the word. That’s her name. I can’t believe that she’s been burrowing under my skin for days and I never knew he name.
I don’t say anything.
“Garrett. What happened?”
“Nothing I need your help with.”
“You sure about that?” he presses.
“I’m a big boy, Conner, in case you’ve forgotten. And generally, you’re the one needing help from me.”
“Right. Sure.” His voice is icy again. The line goes quiet. Then he’s gone.
Goddammit, Forrester. Did you have to be such a dick?
I should have used that to reopen the door between us.
Too late now.
I head out into the yard. My feet carry me past the porch steps and onto the path that leads to the north gate. I’m twenty paces down it before I catch what I’m doing.
Barn. You’re going to the barn.
The barn is south.
I turn around. Jessie is standing at the edge of the training field with her hands on her hips, watching me.
She’s seen it before. Not this specific thing, but the edge of it. Yesterday at lunch. Today twice. Jessie keeps her own internal records, and the file on me has been getting thicker since Conner walked.
I cross to the training field because avoiding her is a worse tell than going to her.
“Jessie.”
“Alpha.” Her tone has a question she’s not quite voicing. “South group’s ready for close-quarters. You want to run them?”
Normally, I would. Today, the idea of close physical proximity to six sweating wolves makes my skin want to come off. Every scent is too sharp. My wolf is refusing contact with anyone who isn’t her, and standing this close to Jessie is already costing me.
“You run it.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t move.
“Was there something else?”
She looks at me. Not the respectful up-nod of a ranked wolf to her alpha. The straight, level look of a woman asking a man a question.
“Garrett. Are you all right?”
Nobody asks me that. The alpha doesn’t get asked if he’s all right. The alpha is the one who holds the frame.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You keep walking toward the north gate.”
“I’m checking the perimeter.”
“The perimeter is south, east, and west. North runs into open range.” A beat. “There’s nothing up there.”
There’s a woman three hundred miles up there with my bite on her neck.
“I’m fine, Jessie.”
She watches me a beat longer. Then she nods — not the correct ranked nod, the other one — and walks back to her group.
Later, she corners me at the barn.
Not literally, she’s smarter than that. She waits until I’m in Ridley’s stall, checking the mare’s hooves, a task that keeps my hands busy and my head down. She leans on the stall door and folds her arms.
“I need to talk to you,” she says.
“So talk.”
“Not here.”
I set Ridley’s hoof down and straighten up.
Jessie is thirty, give or take. She’s been training the younger fighters since she was twenty-two.
Patient, precise, the kind of teacher who makes you better by making you hate being bad.
I’ve trusted her with the pack’s next generation for five years.
She’s earned the right to corner me in a barn.
“Walk,” I say.
We walk the south fence line. The repair section that the work crew will reach this afternoon. Jessie matches my pace. She doesn’t rush into it. She’s building up to something, and the building is deliberate.
“People are talking,” she says.
I keep walking.
“Not just here. Outside. The wolves who left after Conner… they didn’t leave quietly. They went to other packs, other territories, and they’ve been saying things.” She matches my stride. “About a ledger. About payments through the corridor. About what was at the other end of the trucks.”
“People talk.”
“Garrett. A woman I trained with six years ago called me from East Texas last week. She’s with the Darrow pack now. She asked me if it was true that the Forresters were running wolves to the Syndicate for money. She asked me if I knew.”
Her voice cracks on the last word. The sound of a loyalty developing a fracture.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her it was bullshit. I told her Conner had a breakdown and people were spinning stories.” She stops walking. I stop too. “Was I lying?”
I could give her the sanitized version. The words are right there: good faith, deception, a program run on assurances. I’ve been saying them for weeks. They’re smooth with use.
They don’t come out.
“Was I lying, Garrett?”
“Yes.” I don’t sugarcoat it.
Jessie doesn’t break stride. Doesn’t flinch. But I hear her breathing change, a sharp intake, held, released slowly.
“All of it? The payments for—”
“All of it.”
Fifty yards of fence line pass without a word. A hawk circles the south pasture. The cattle don’t look up.
“Jesus, Garrett,” she says at last. “I know they’re not like us, but that’s just wrong.”
“I didn’t know what was on the other end,” I say, hating that it feels like an excuse. “I didn’t know about the facilities. The tables. What they did to the wolves we sent. I knew they went south. I didn’t know what south meant.”
“Did you ask?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was a fool. And afraid.”
I’ve never said that word out loud. Afraid. Alphas have duty. Responsibility. Fear is for wolves who follow.
Jessie looks at me. Not anger. I’d braced for anger. Not disgust. Something I can’t read. Somehow, that makes it worse.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know.”
She picks up a fence staple that’s fallen into the grass. Examines it. Presses it back into the post with her thumb.
“I’m not leaving,” she says. “I need you to know that. I’m angry, and I’m… I don’t have a word for what I am right now. But I’m not leaving.”
“Why not?”
“Because I called my friend in East Texas and lied for you. Because I’ve been defending you to every wolf in this compound who’s had doubts, and now I find out the doubts were right, and the defense was wrong, and the man I was defending never once told me the truth.
” She sets the staple and turns to face me.
“But just now you said you were afraid. The Garrett Forrester I’ve been following for five years would never have said that word.
So either you’re falling apart, or you’re turning into someone who can say it. And I want to see which one.”
She walks back toward the compound.
I stand at the fence until she’s back inside the gate. The meeting hall, the main house, the barn, the yard — everything I’ve run for ten years, sitting in the late afternoon light, looking exactly the way it always has.
My wolf chose a magic-blooded female. Chose her the way he chooses everything — without asking me first, without weighing the cost. The same kind of magic that killed Maren on that ridge is in the blood of the woman he’s been pulling me toward since the clearing.
I’ve had six days to talk him out of it. I stopped trying yesterday.
Jessie just told me she wants to see who I’m becoming.
So do I.
I walk back to the main house. Pack a bag. Ma is in the kitchen, and she looks at the bag, looks at my face, and puts a sandwich in a paper bag without asking where I’m going. I tell her I’ll be back in a few days. She nods. She’s been reading me since I was a boy.
I drive north before dark. The country station plays. This time I leave it on.
The burn in my gut settles into something steadier as the miles pile up. Not gone. Closer. My wolf stops fighting me for the wheel and rides alongside instead, his attention fixed on the road ahead.
Somewhere past the state line, the heat sharpens. Her body escalating, mine answering. We’re closing the distance on both counts, and my wolf has been patient long enough.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.