Chapter 22 #2
It takes fifteen minutes for everyone to gather — word moving through cabins, through the barn, through the training yard.
By the time I stand at the front of the meeting hall, there are dozens of them in rows of chairs.
My mother in the back. She hasn’t come to a pack meeting in a decade, but Dawes must have told her this was different, because she’s here, in the chair she used to take when my father ran the pack.
My father isn’t here. He’s in his chair on the porch, where he’s been for ten years, and he won’t come out for this.
I don’t have a prepared speech. I didn’t have one for the hearing either, and this isn’t the hearing.
“This afternoon, I stood in front of a Southern Inter-Pack Council and confirmed that the corridor operated under my authority for over a decade. I confirmed the payments, the transfers, the handoffs. I didn’t defend the operation. There’s no defense for it.”
The room is quiet.
“The wolves who went through the junction were taken to Syndicate facilities. At those facilities, they were experimented on. Children were separated from their parents on arrival. Some survived. Some didn’t.”
A younger wolf in the third row puts his head in his hands.
“The corridor has been closed for weeks. I closed it myself. Today, the Syndicate delivered its response. A cage at our gate, with a magic-blood family inside it. There was a note that told me to resume operations and start with them.”
A sound from the back. Disgust. Someone making a noise they couldn’t contain.
“I opened the cage. The family is in the bunkhouse. Ravenclaw is sending a team to collect them tomorrow morning.”
My mother’s hand rises to her mouth.
“The Syndicate will respond. I don’t know when. Days, maybe. A week at the outside. Whatever they send, they’ll send it here, and the compound will be the target unless I make sure it isn’t.”
Jessie, from her seat near the front. “What does that mean? ‘Unless I make sure it isn’t.’” She already knows.
“It means the Syndicate wants me specifically. I’m the one who refused them. They hold leaders accountable; that’s how they operate. When they come, they’ll come for me. I’m going to make sure they can find me somewhere other than here.”
A voice from the side. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m drawing them off. Once the family is safe at Ravenclaw, I’ll move. I’ll go somewhere they can track me without finding the compound at the end of the trail.”
My mother stands up.
The room turns.
“Garrett.” Her voice is small, but it carries. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that when they come for me, I’ll be somewhere else. The compound won’t pay for what I did.”
“You’ll pay for it.”
“Yes.”
She sits down. Slowly. Her hands are folded in her lap, and they’re shaking.
I look at the room.
“Any of you who want to leave — leave now. Tonight. Take what you need and go. I won’t hold it against you.
If you stay, you stay knowing that the Syndicate may be coming.
That the Forrester name is going to be dragged through every council proceeding in the south.
That the alpha whose authority you’ve served just confirmed at a formal hearing that the corridor was exactly what people said it was.
This isn’t the pack you joined. It never was.
I’m the one who made it that, and I’m the one unwinding it.
Anyone who doesn’t want to be part of what comes next should go. ”
Silence.
A woman in the fifth row — an old friend of my mother’s — stands up. Gathers her bag. Walks out. Two more follow. A young couple with a baby. The door closes behind them.
The rest of the room stays.
Jessie stands. “What do you need from the ones who stay?”
“I need the compound held. I need the wolves who know how to fight ready for whatever the Syndicate sends after I’m gone. And I need someone to run this place while I’m elsewhere.”
“Who?”
I look at her. “You.”
Jessie doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. The only movement in her face is a slow, deliberate nod.
“All right.”
“Dawes stays on for oversight. You take the pack. My mother keeps the house. The Forrester compound stays Forrester. It just stops being what we were.”
“And what does it become?”
“That’s up to the wolves who stay.”
I turn to Dawes. “You good with that?”
He nods. “Suits me.”
Dawes has no aspirations for leadership. He’s happier this way.
The meeting ends. Wolves disperse in clusters, talking low. Some move toward their cabins. A few approach my mother, who’s still sitting in her chair, not quite willing to stand up.
I walk out of the hall. The night is clear. The stars are up over the ridge. The air is cool and smells of tree sap and dust.
I cross the yard to the patio, where Pa is sitting in his chair, looking out at the hills silhouetted in the darkness. He looks up when I step beside him.
“I’m handing the pack to Jessie,” I say. “Dawes takes oversight. Ma stays in the house with you.”
He looks at me but doesn’t say anything.
“I was at the council hearing this afternoon and confirmed our role in the Syndicate network. I told the pack tonight. The Syndicate is coming. I’m going to draw them away from here.”
He looks at me for a long time. Whatever is behind his eyes is something I haven’t seen there in ten years. It might be grief. It might be the ghost of the alpha he used to be before Maren died.
He nods once.
I leave the patio and head inside. The house is quiet.
Outside, the meeting hall is empty. The wolves who stayed have dispersed to their cabins.
The ones who left have done their leaving.
Tomorrow, the family in the bunkhouse will be handed off to a Ravenclaw team that will give them more safety than I ever could.
I walk to the window in the main room. The pasture where the cage was is empty now. Dawes moved the cage into the back of the equipment barn, out of sight. The grass where it sat is flattened in a rectangle. By morning, the dew will have lifted most of it.
Out in the Ozarks, Briar is home. Maybe in her bed, staring at the ceiling, her thoughts as turbulent as mine are right now.
I put my hand flat against the window. The glass is cool.
The Syndicate will do what they do. I’ll face what I have to face. The compound will hold because Jessie will hold it in ways I never did.
And somewhere on the other end of what’s coming, if I’m still standing, there’s a woman who straightened my collar in a storage closet and didn’t voice the thing I could sense in her.
I’ll find out what it is. Or I won’t.