Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
She walked into the distillery wearing his jacket.
He'd called the meeting an hour ago, the second she'd told him what the siren wanted, and what she’d agreed to.
He'd pulled his phone out on the walk back from the cove while she limped alongside him in silence, texted Gray and Damien with hands that still hadn't stopped shaking, and the pack had assembled in record time.
Word traveled fast on an island this size, and "Ryker's calling an emergency meeting" carried a different kind of weight after he told them Willow found the source of trouble in the cove.
Now he stood near the back wall watching her come through the door, and his wolf pressed so hard against his ribs he had to lock his jaw to keep it together.
His jacket hung to her mid-thigh, the sleeves pushed up past her wrists, and her hair had dried in stiff salt-crusted waves that she hadn't bothered to fix.
She'd changed into dry clothes underneath but kept the jacket.
His scent was all over her and every wolf in the room would smell it.
She didn't look at him. Instead she walked straight to the front where Damien and Diego waited, the slight hitch in her stride from the clawed ankle was the only sign that not long ago she'd been underwater with a creature that could have killed her.
The room was packed. Wolves lined the walls, crowded in every available space, with the overflow perched on overturned crates.
The tension had a different flavor than the last meeting.
Two days ago, it had been suspicion looking for a target.
Now it was fear looking for a solution. The Polar Plunge was so close.
Tourists were already gathering. And the pack was about to find out what was happening in their waters.
Damien nodded to Willow and she stepped forward.
"I found the source of the incidents." Her voice was steady, clear, pitched to carry without shouting. No wobble in it. No sign that her lungs had been full of salt water this afternoon. "It's a siren. She's nested in the north cove."
The distillery erupted. Voices overlapping, chairs scraping, someone near the stills cursing loud enough to echo off the copper. Ryker watched Willow stand in the center of it and wait. She didn't flinch or raise her voice to compete.
When the noise ebbed enough for her to be heard again, she continued.
"She's pregnant. Alone. Her mate is dead and she chose the cove because the water there has properties she needs to protect her baby from other predators. Every incident we've been investigating was in defense of that. She’s just a mother protecting her unborn child."
She laid it out with the same precision she brought to everything.
Ryker could see the wolves processing it, some nodding as the pieces clicked into place, others shifting with the particular unease of predators learning they'd been sharing territory with something more dangerous than they wanted near the island.
"I negotiated a deal." Willow's gaze swept the room. "Pack protection for the nest in exchange for calm waters. She'll stop disrupting equipment and boats. She'll let the Polar Plunge proceed without interference. She'll even guard the south cove waters during the event."
"You negotiated." Marcus was on his feet. Ryker's shoulders tightened. "On whose authority?"
"Mine."
"You don't have authority. You're not pack. You're a guest, and a contested one at that."
Willow's expression didn't change. "I'm the co-chair of the festival that's about to collapse if someone doesn't fix this. I'm also the only person on this island who went into that water and came back with an answer. I had to make the call and that’s what I did."
A murmur ran through the crowd. Marcus wasn't done.
"So we're supposed to trust a siren? A creature none of us have seen, based on the word of a witch who's been here three measly months?" He looked around the room for support. Found some. "She could be lying. They could be working together."
That old song again. Ryker's jaw clenched as the next voice piled on, younger, one of Marcus's circle.
"The siren shows up the same time the witches do? And now we're supposed to believe this outsider talked it down?"
"The siren's been in the cove since before we arrived." Willow's voice stayed level. "The magical signature I found during the investigation was hers. Not ours. And Ryker saw her and he can confirm she’s definitely out there."
Eyes turned to him. He nodded. "Yep. Saw her with my own eyes and trust me, it took a lot of effort not to attack her on the spot."
Marcus pressed on. "Even if the siren is real, and even if this deal is legitimate, we're talking about a pregnant predator nesting in our waters while tourists swim. One wrong move and she kills someone. Are we willing to stake the pack's livelihood on a handshake with a monster?"
"She's not a monster." Willow's voice sharpened for the first time. "She's a refugee. Pregnant, alone, grieving her dead mate, with nowhere else to go. She didn't come here to attack anyone. She came here to have her baby in peace."
“This is the last place a siren should seek peace,” Damien said.
The group erupted in agreement, worried voices filling the room.
Diego spoke from the back wall, arms crossed, voice flat with the particular calm he used when he was thinking tactically instead of emotionally.
"There's a more immediate problem. Siren magic is neurotoxic to shifters.
Prolonged exposure can damage a wolf's nervous system.
If we're posting patrols at that cove, we're putting our people in range of something that could hurt them without opening its mouth. "
The room shifted. Marcus had been arguing politics. Diego was arguing survival, and every wolf in the room heard the difference.
Willow didn't flinch. "She's been nesting in that cove for months.
Wolves patrol the north shore every week.
Has a single one of them come back harmed in any way?
" She let the silence answer for her. "Her siren magic is weakened.
The pregnancy is drawing everything she has.
She chose this island not because she wanted to, but because she was too weak to defend open water anymore, and too desperate to care that she was nesting next to a pack that could kill her on sight.
She didn't come here because she's dangerous.
She came because she had nowhere left to go. "
Diego held her gaze for a long moment, then gave a short nod. Not agreement, exactly. Acknowledgment that she'd answered the question.
"And if she changes her mind?"
"Then you'll have a siren in your waters whether you made a deal or not. At least this way she has a reason to cooperate."
Marcus opened his mouth again and the energy shifted.
The wolves who wanted the siren gone were gathering momentum.
Ryker could feel it in the way bodies angled and the way murmurs built in the corners.
The same pattern as the meeting where he'd accused her.
Different target, same energy. And Willow was standing in the middle of it, steady and alone, holding her ground the way she always did.
His wolf surged against his ribs. Not the frantic keening of the past two days but something harder, cleaner. A decision had to me made. He moved before he thought about it.
Later, Gray would tell him that every wolf in the room tracked him when he crossed the floor.
That the room went quiet in stages, conversation dying like dominoes as heads turned to watch the man who'd started all of this walk past the stills and the crates and the gathered wolves to plant himself beside the woman he'd tried to destroy.
He didn't stand in front of her. She didn't need a shield. He stood next to her, shoulder to shoulder, facing the room.
"She went into that water alone." His voice came out rougher than he intended, but his wolf was bleeding through at the edges and he couldn’t be stopped.
"She found a siren that none of us could find and she talked it down without weapons or any other help.
She risked her life to save this festival and our income for the entire winter season. "
He looked at Marcus. At the younger wolves behind him, and all the other faces that had nodded along when he'd painted her as a threat.
"I stood where Marcus is standing and I told you she was dangerous. I was wrong. And now she's standing here bleeding through her boot because she went into the frigid water to solve a problem we couldn't” He let that settle. "If you can't see her value, the problem isn't her. It's you."
The silence that followed vibrated energy through the room. Damien stepped forward into it. “Can the witches’ magic offer us protection from the siren?”
Willow thought for a moment and then stood straighter. “Yes. With all of us working together, I believe we can.”
Damien nodded. "Okay then. The deal you made stands.
For now. We'll assign patrols to the north cove perimeter and the sanctuary witches can monitor the situation with their magic. Diego will handle the coordination. This way the siren gets her protected territory on a temporary basis, and the pack gets calm waters for the Plunge. If anything changes, we’ll address it then.
Anyone who has a problem with that can bring it to me privately. "
The meeting dissolved after that. An Alpha decision was final, and there was no more point in arguing it.
Assignments were given, patrols scheduled, and the logistics of protecting a siren's nest were folded into the same framework they used for any territorial issue.
Wolves filtered out in small groups, some stopping to speak to Willow.
Not all friendly, but none overtly hostile.
A few even nodded to her, which on this island counted as a standing ovation.
Ryker didn't approach her again. Instead, he stayed near the back while she handled the questions and the logistics and the careful diplomacy that was second nature to her, and he watched the way she favored her left ankle and the way his jacket shifted on her shoulders when she moved and he didn't let himself think about what it meant that she was still wearing it.
Gray caught his eye from across the room and gave him a single nod. Approval, or maybe just acknowledgment that he'd done the right thing.
He slipped out the side door when the crowd thinned.
The cold hitting him the second he stepped outside.
It was dusk now, the sky bruised purple above the tree line, and the festival's string lights flickering to life across the village.
He leaned against the distillery's weathered cedar siding and breathed.
He didn't expect her to follow him. But the side door opened a few minutes later and there she was, backlit by the warm glow from inside, his jacket still around her shoulders. She let the door close behind her and the festival noise muted to a distant hum.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The lights swayed above the cobblestones, casting moving shadows and her breath fogged in the cold air.
"You didn't have to do that." Her voice was quieter than it had been inside. Stripped of the presentation-mode steadiness. "Stand against your own pack."
"Yeah. I did."
She studied him. He held still under the weight of it, letting her look as long as she needed. His wolf was pressing forward, straining toward her, and he held it back with everything he had. She wasn't ready. Pushing now would ruin this.
"I saw you with Neve," she said. "At the Ice Carving. Moving her crates."
Surprise must have shown on his face because her mouth twitched, not quite a smile but close.
"That was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing. Not to her. Not to me."
The words landed somewhere deep in his chest. He didn't trust himself to respond so he just stood there, letting them settle.
The silence stretched between them, comfortable in a way nothing between them had been since the morning he'd destroyed everything. She was struggling with something, he could see it in the way her jaw tightened and released, and he waited. Trying not to push.
"I'm starting to see you differently." The words came out like they cost her. "And it terrifies me. Because last time I let myself feel something for you, you nearly destroyed me."
He absorbed those words without flinching, though his wolf was howling inside his chest and his hands wanted to reach for her so much his fingers ached.
"I know."
"Your wolf was silent while you hurt me. Now it's screaming and you want me. How would I know for sure the man is choosing me? Not just the wolf?"
He deserved that question. Although he wasn’t sure she would like the answer.
"You don't. Not yet." He held her gaze. "I have to show you until you feel it. However long that takes."
She searched his face. He let her see whatever was there, the fear and the want and the raw, aching certainty that she was the only thing that mattered, and he didn't try to dress it up or hide the parts that were ugly. She'd earned the right to see everything.
She nodded. Slow and deliberate, like she was committing to something she hadn't mapped out yet.
Then she turned and walked toward the path that led back to her cabin.
His jacket moved with her, the hem brushing her thighs, and when she looked back over her shoulder it was different from every other time she'd walked away from him.
He watched her until she disappeared in the fog, and then he stood in the cold for a long time after that, his wolf pressing against his ribs and the memory of her voice saying I'm starting to see you differently playing on a loop in his mind.
She was still wearing his jacket. It was silly and probably meaningless but he didn’t care. She hadn't given it back. It wasn't proof of forgiveness or trust. But it was something, and he'd take something over nothing for the rest of his life if that was all she'd give him.