Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Sleep was a lost cause, so he'd circled the island twice before finally settling on an earlier than normal morning at the brewery.
He always loved the familiarity and comfort he found here. The ever present scent of charred oak and fermenting grain. The sharp bite of alcohol cutting through humid air. He loved his job here, and wished he could go back to the easy days of before…her.
Steam curled from the tanks in lazy spirals, fogging the windows, turning the brewing floor into something that felt separate from the world outside.
Ryker had been here since three a.m., maybe earlier. He'd stopped checking the clock when the numbers started blurring together.
The massive copper vessels rose around him like sentinels, their bellies filled with mash, pipes snaking overhead in a maze only he, Cal and Gray understood. Heat radiated from the equipment in waves, and sweat had dampened the back of his shirt an hour ago.
He didn't need to be here. The stills ran fine on their own, calibrated to the hour, maintained with the kind of precision Gray demanded. But his bed had felt like a coffin, the ceiling pressing down relentlessly. So he was here instead. The one place that still made sense.
Work. He could always work.
He grabbed a wrench from the tool bench and checked the pressure gauges on the secondary still. Everything read normal. He checked them again anyway, moving through the motions because standing still meant thinking, and thinking meant seeing her face when he'd compared her to Iris.
The way she broke.
He'd done that. Calculated the words that would hurt most and delivered them with surgical precision because he feared the alternative, and fear in general made him mad.
Ryker set down the wrench and pulled the poker chip from his pocket. The edges were wearing smooth now, grooves pressed deep by his thumb over countless hours.
He pressed his thumb into its center and waited for his wolf to offer something. Guidance or warning or any fucking thing. The instinct that had once run through him like a second heartbeat, telling him when to fight and when to yield still wasn’t there.
Nothing. The damn wolf was still there, but he refused to acknowledge anything. But especially her. Which meant his own instincts were right. They were not meant to be together.
He moved to the small kitchenette at the back of the brewing floor and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot he'd made when he arrived. It was burnt and bitter, and when he took a sip, it tasted like ash coating his tongue.
The same way it had tasted for weeks now. Ever since that first planning meeting at the bakery, when she'd handed him a cup with that tight smile and he'd been too distracted by her scent to think twice about anything.
Ryker stared at the mug, then at the window.
Across the street, the bakery's lights were on.
Golden and warm, cutting through the pre-dawn mist. She was in there.
Working hours as crazy as his. Only she was creating, building something real while he stood here dismantling himself one piece at a time.
A thought slithered through his mind, ugly and seductive. What if she'd done something to him that night?
Witches seemed to put intention into everything they did and her air magic was everywhere. That was the whole point. And Willow had known from the start that he didn't want her here. She wasn’t stupid. She knew he was the biggest obstacle between her little coven and permanent sanctuary.
What better way to throw him off balance than to curse his senses? Make him doubt his own body, his own judgment. Keep him distracted and second-guessing while she worked her way deeper into the pack's trust.
Gray had tasted the same coffee and found nothing wrong with it. Which meant the spell was keyed to him specifically. Targeted. Personal.
He knew how it sounded. He was reaching for any explanation that let him be right about her.
But Cara had played a longer game than this.
If Willow was half the manipulator her mother was, a little curse on his coffee would be child's play.
He'd rather believe she was guilty than face the alternative.
Ryker set the mug down and pulled out his phone, scrolling through the notes he'd been compiling since midnight. Timeline of incidents. Points of correlation. The case he was building because doing this felt better than sitting with the wreckage he’d created.
He'd been over this data a dozen times and knew the facts cold. But tonight he'd finally seen the pattern underneath.
The sanctuary witches had arrived in October. Three months on the island, and for most of that time, nothing unusual had happened. Then Frost Fest planning kicked into gear, and everything went sideways.
The timing wasn't random. It was strategic.
Someone wanted to hurt the pack's ability to make money.
Frost Fest was their biggest revenue source outside the distillery—vendors, tourists, the Polar Plunge drawing crowds from across the Pacific Northwest. Cripple that, and the pack would scramble to cover the gap.
Desperate packs made desperate decisions.
And who'd benefit from a desperate pack? Witches still waiting on permanent sanctuary. A coven who might want leverage when the council voted on whether to let them stay.
The first equipment failure happened the same week vendor setup began. Generators, boats, spooked guests—all of it clustered around festival infrastructure. And the epicenter apparently around the area where Willow walked alone, claiming she needed to scout for threats.
Maybe she wasn't scouting for traps. Maybe she was setting them.
The last time this had happened to them he’d missed all the signs, until bodies hit the ground.
His jaw tightened, it was plausible, and yet, he didn't believe a word of his own theory.
The distillery door opened, letting in a gust of chilly air and two wolves who knew him too well to buy whatever bullshit he was selling.
Gray entered first, moving with that controlled predator's grace he'd never lost even after mating softened his edges. Cal followed, already shrugging off his jacket, the burn scars on his forearms visible in the low light. Neither of them asked why Ryker was here at this hour. They already knew.
"Pressure's holding steady on the secondary," Ryker said, jerking his chin toward the equipment. "I checked it twice to be sure."
"Three times, knowing you." Cal grabbed a mug and poured himself coffee, took one sip, and grimaced. "This tastes like it's been sitting since last week."
Ryker narrowed his eyes. "I made it fresh a few hours ago."
"Then your coffee maker is possessed." Cal dumped the mug in the sink. "I'll run out for real coffee after we talk. I bet Willow will have something special on the menu today."
Ryker clenched his jaw but stayed silent.
He was not going to fall for the bait from Cal this time.
Gray leaned against the workbench, arms crossed, watching Ryker with those alpha-mate eyes that saw too much.
He didn't say anything. Just waited, patient as stone, until the silence grew heavy enough that Ryker couldn’t take it anymore.
"I've been looking at the incident timeline." Ryker pulled up his notes, laying his phone on the workbench between them. "There's a pattern. The disruptions started three weeks ago, right when Willow and I were assigned to work together on the festival."
Cal raised an eyebrow. "Correlation isn't causation."
"No, but the residual magic Willow sensed out there? She's the only one who detected it. Your team found nothing. That seems convenient."
"My team doesn't have witch senses." Cal's voice was neutral, careful. "We found the boundary markers she mentioned. Shells arranged in patterns along the waterline. There was nothing supernatural about them, far as we could tell. Could've been kids playing on the beach."
"Or could've been something she placed there herself." The words tasted wrong, and Ryker pushed through anyway. "She has easy access to that area. She's been out there alone multiple times. And she's the one who keeps insisting there's a threat no one else can verify."
Gray shifted his weight. When he spoke, his voice was measured. "We’ve verified the incidents have been real. How do you explain that? You think that’s her too? Have you considered you might be looking for a reason to push her away?"
The question hit him square in the chest. Ryker forced a laugh that caught in his throat. "I'm trying to protect the pack."
"From what?" Cal crossed the space between them, his hands braced on the workbench. "From a kitchen witch who spends her days making pastries? Or from whatever's actually happening in that cove that we can't detect because we don't have magic?"
"We don't know what she's capable of."
"We know what she's done." Gray's tone hardened.
"She turned against her own mother in front of the entire pack.
She's spent all this time proving herself while half our wolves still look at her sideways.
You've been trying to run her off since she got here, and now you're building a case out of coincidences to finally make it stick. You’d better be damned sure about this before you take it so far you can’t take it back. "
Ryker's jaw tightened. His hand curled into a fist at his side. This wasn’t what he wanted to hear from Gray of all people. Because of Ash, he should understand the threat she posed.
"Do you actually believe any of this?" Cal asked. "That she's behind the incidents? That she's playing some long game against us?"
He wanted to say yes. Wanted to feel vindicated after all those weeks of warning the pack about exactly this. He'd told them she was dangerous. That Iris's daughter couldn't be trusted. Now he had a case, and it should feel like victory.
It didn't.