Chapter 34 #2
He almost smiles. Almost. Then he walks out of the barn and across the yard toward the cabin he shares with Willow and Mia. I watch him go, and I think about a child whose parents are dead because of a system I maintained and whose uncle I am because of a bond I didn’t choose and a woman I did.
I go back to shoveling. The physical work is good.
The rhythm of it clears my head in ways that thinking never does: the fork, the straw, the weight, the lift, the dump, repeat.
Simple. Honest. Work that produces visible results, unlike everything else in my life right now, which produces mainly confusion and the occasional miracle.
Briar finds me again at noon. This time, she doesn’t pretend it’s about a halter.
She comes into the barn, sits on a hay bale, and watches me work.
I let her watch. The silence between us has a different quality today.
It’s not charged or cautious. Something looser.
The silence of two people who’ve seen each other naked in every possible sense and are learning what the dressed version looks like.
“Conner told me about Mia’s parents,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“He asked you to stand witness for the claiming.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to?”
“I said yes.”
She pulls a piece of straw from the bale. Turns it between her fingers. “The man who ran the corridor. Standing witness while his brother claims a child the corridor orphaned.”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“I’m not saying it like anything. I’m saying what it is.”
“I know what it is, Briar.”
“Good.” She chews the straw and looks at me. “It’s also the right thing. Mia chose you. And Conner asked. And you said yes. So stop looking like you’re about to throw up and accept that you get to be part of something good for once.”
I stop shoveling and face her. She’s sitting on the hay bale in the noon light with straw in her mouth and her legs crossed. The small, barely-there swell of her belly is visible under her shirt if you know to look for it. Which I do.
“Something good,” I say.
“Don’t push it.”
“I’m not pushing anything. I’m standing in a barn covered in horse shit, agreeing with you. This is me not pushing.”
“You’re grinning.”
“I’m not grinning.”
“You are. That stupid crooked thing your mouth does. Stop it.”
“I can’t help my mouth.”
“You can help directing it at me.”
“I really can’t, actually.”
She throws the straw at me. It bounces off my chest. I catch it. Hold it up.
“You missed.”
“I don’t miss. I chose not to hit you.”
“Ah. Important distinction.”
“Very.” She stands and brushes hay from her jeans. “Jessie called.”
“I know. Conner told me.”
“The compound is stable. Syndicate has pulled back.”
“I know that too.”
“Are you going back?”
The question. The one I’ve been turning over since Conner asked it an hour ago. The one that has Briar’s name written through it.
“Yes,” I say. “I need to go back. The pack needs its alpha, even if the alpha is a different person than the one who left. The compound needs rebuilding. Jessie’s held it, but it’s still Forrester land, and I’m still a Forrester.”
“Okay.” Her voice is flat. The Briar mask is back. The one she wears when something lands hard, and she doesn’t want anyone to see the impact.
“I want you to come with me.”
The mask slips. Just for a second, her eyes widening, her lips parting, the unguarded flash of a woman who wasn’t expecting that sentence.
“That’s—”
“The compound has a house. A barn. Land. Good land, Briar. Hill Country land with room to run in wolf form and hills that go on forever and a creek that doesn’t dry up even in August.” I set the pitchfork down and face her fully.
“I’m not asking you to give anything up.
I’m asking you to come home with me. Make it home.
For you, for the baby. A place where our child can grow up with space and pack and—”
“You’re asking me to live on the land your corridor ran through.”
“Yes.”
“On the territory where wolves were loaded into trucks.”
“Yes.”
“And you think I’d want to raise a child there.”
“I think you’d want to raise a child in a place where the man responsible for those trucks has spent every day since trying to make it into something else.
I think you’d want to be part of the making.
” I hold her eyes. “I think you’re not the kind of woman who runs from hard ground.
I think you’re the kind who plants things in it. ”
She stares at me. The hay bale is between us. The horses are quiet in their stalls. The barn smells like straw and animals and the warmth of a building that’s been standing a long time and will stand a long time more.
“You’re asking me to be the alpha’s mate,” she says. “At the Forrester compound. You understand what that means. To the survivors. To the wolves who were hurt by—”
“I’m asking you to help me change what the Forrester compound means. Not erase it. Change it. The corridor is the history. What comes next is the future. And the future needs you in it.”
“Because of the baby.”
“Because of you.” I step closer. “The baby is… the baby is everything. But I’m not asking you to come because of the baby.
I’m asking you because I don’t want to build something new without you.
Because every morning I stack Greta’s firewood and make oats and muck stalls and wait for you to come through the kitchen door.
And the moment you walk in is the moment the day starts making sense. ”
She’s quiet. Her hand has gone to her stomach — that unconscious gesture, the one she still doesn’t know she’s making.
“I need to think about it,” she says.
“Take whatever time you need.”
“That’s very patient of you.”
“I’ve had practice.”
She gives me the straw-chewing almost-smile. The tiny crack in the mask that lets the light through.
“I’ll think about it,” she says again. And walks out of the barn.
I watch her go. Then I pick up the pitchfork and go back to work.
She’ll say yes. I don’t know when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe after the baby comes and she’s had time to test what it means.
But she’ll say yes, because Briar doesn’t throw straw at men she’s planning to refuse, and Briar doesn’t sit on hay bales watching men she doesn’t want.
And Briar’s wolf has been carrying my scent since the clearing.
The woman has been catching up ever since.
She’ll say yes. My wolf knows it. The rubber ball on my nightstand knows it. The child growing under her hand knows it.
I shovel straw, and I wait.