30. Epilogue
Epilogue
Later that week, Nadia burned the toast.
Not badly. Just enough to fill the cabin with smoke and set Rhys coughing from the doorway where he’d been pulling on his boots.
“Stove runs hot on the left side.” He crossed to open the window. Mountain air rushed in, swapping smoke for pine and frost.
“I know that.” She scraped the blackened edges into the sink. “I was reading the patrol summary.”
“While cooking.”
“I can do two things at once.”
Rhys glanced at the burned toast and stifled a grin as he leaned against the counter, close enough that his hip touched hers. He smelled like cedar soap and the wool blanket they’d slept under. His leg bore his weight without shaking.
“You made me coffee.” He picked up the mug she’d left by the stove.
“Don’t get used to it.”
He drank it black while she ate toast that tasted like charcoal and butter.
Neither of them rushed. Outside, the compound was coming alive.
Hammers rang from the new refugee cabin Declan’s crew was framing near the tree line.
Clara’s training group ran the boundary loop, their footfalls crunching through crusted snow.
Someone laughed, high and startled, and Nadia didn’t flinch.
She noticed that. The not-flinching. It was new enough to feel like a victory and old enough to stop surprising her.
Maren stopped by with a list of incoming transfers. Two omega wolves from a pack near the Idaho border. A mated pair whose alpha had tried to separate them. A young male with a bad limp and worse nightmares.
“The male’s name is Jonas,” Maren said, handing the file to Nadia. “Nineteen. His pack left him in a ditch after he challenged a ranking wolf.”
“When does he arrive?”
“Thursday. Maren is running intake. She asked me to sit in.”
“I’ll be there.” Nadia scanned the details. She’d learned to read these files without her hands shaking. The clinical language no longer stole her breath. She could hold someone else’s pain now without drowning in her own.
She felt Rhys’s gaze the way she always did, warm and steady, the certainty between them humming low in a way that no longer frightened her.
“Stop staring.” She didn’t look up.
“Can’t help it?” But he pushed off the frame, gave her a quick kiss on her cheek, and headed for the lodge, his stride easy despite the limp that would never fully heal.
That evening, Jace gathered the inner circle in his office. Routine debrief. Border reports, supply logistics, the council’s enforcement timeline for Thornwood’s penalties.
“Garrett pulled his eastern patrols back twenty miles,” Sage reported, spreading a map across the desk. “Trade routes are drying up. Three of his ranked wolves crossed into neutral territory last week and didn’t come back.”
“Deserters?” Jace asked.
“Could be,” Sage said. “We’re tracking it.”
Rhys had been quiet through the report. He spoke now. “You’re forgetting the pale-eyed one.”
Jace looked at him.
“Watched Garrett the whole hearing. Watched him lose.”
Jace turned a pen between his fingers. “Counting his alpha’s mistakes.”
“Yeah.” Rhys agreed. “Garrett’s cornered now. That makes him stupid in the short term and more dangerous in the long term. But I’d also keep an eye out for the one already counting.”
Jace nodded slowly, filing it.
The office door opened. A tall wolf ducked through, snow dusting his shoulders, his face reddened from the chill. Cade Holbrook. Jace’s younger brother. He ran the eastern boundary patrol with the same quiet intensity Jace brought to everything else.
“Sorry I’m late.” Cade dropped into the chair by the window. “Outer boundary took longer than usual.”
“Problem?” Jace asked.
“Not sure yet.” Cade pulled a folded paper from his jacket where he’d sketched some symbols and passed it to Sage.
“Found these along the eastern ridge. Tree markings I haven’t seen before.
Not Thornwood’s style. And there’s a scent trail that doesn’t match any pack I know.
” He paused. “Human, mostly. But mixed with something. Camera equipment. And something else I couldn’t quite catch. Made my wolf sit restless.”
“Human?” Sage frowned. “This far into pack territory?”
“Someone’s documenting something out there.” Cade smoothed the paper open. Hand-drawn marks, methodical, like field notes. “I’ll run the ridge again tomorrow. See if the trail leads anywhere.”
Jace studied his brother, then nodded.
Rhys came back to the cabin late. The lamp was still on. Nadia sat at the kitchen table with the intake files spread in front of her, her feet tucked under her in the chair the way she did when she was reading something hard.
She looked up when he walked in. “Long debrief?”
“Long enough.”
She closed the file. Stood. Reached for her coat. “Walk with me?”
They stepped out into air that smelled like woodsmoke and frozen pine. The compound glowed behind them. Warm windows. Muffled voices. The sound of a pack settling in for the night.
Rhys took her hand. His palm was rough and warm against hers.
“Good day?” he asked.
“Burned the toast. Read three intake files. Helped Clara correct her footwork.” She considered. “Yeah. Good day.”
He squeezed her fingers. It hummed quietly, certain in the silence.
Nadia leaned into his shoulder as they walked. The cabin waited ahead, small and solid and theirs. Tomorrow there would be new wolves to settle, borders to walk, a pack to build.
Tonight there was just this. His hand in hers. Pine and frost-laced air and the steady sound of his breathing.
She’d spent six years running.
She’d found the place worth staying for.
On the far ridge the next morning, sunlight cutting sharp through the pines, Cade Holbrook's wolf crouched in the snow over a hand-drawn field mark.
The print of a tire track ran past his paw, half-filled with fresh snow. Whoever had been out here had moved on. But the markings on the trees weren't going anywhere, and neither was the scent that wouldn't leave him or his wolf alone.
He rose and went after it, his wolf pacing beneath his skin, locked on the trail.