Chapter 13
Brenna
The preparation meeting happens in the kitchen because it’s the only room big enough to fit everyone and still close a door.
Willow sits at the head of the table because I put her there. This is her pack—and the purist delegation needs to see her as authority, not as someone’s niece holding a seat warm. She didn’t argue when I told her. Just nodded, squared her shoulders, and sat down like she’d been born to it.
She might have been. The Corvus women have never lacked for spine.
Greta takes the chair to Willow’s right. Arlen stands behind them, his one good hand resting on the back of Greta’s chair. The three of them form the Ravenclaw side of the table—elder, leader, fighter. Thin ranks, but the optics are solid.
Merric’s people fill the other side. Rook leans against the counter with a cup of coffee and that watchful air I’m learning to respect, even though it makes me uneasy.
Dane stands by the door because Dane apparently doesn’t sit.
And Sienna is at the table, directly across from Willow, with a notepad and a pen and the focused competence of a woman who walked into someone else’s crisis and started taking minutes.
She’s wearing a green flannel shirt that makes her eyes vivid. Her hair is braided back, and she looks rested, which is an achievement in a house where nobody sleeps properly. When Merric comes in, she slides a coffee toward him without looking up from her notes. He takes it. Routine. Seamless.
I watch this from the doorway and feel something small and hot flare behind my ribs. I’m not going to examine it.
“Everyone’s here,” Willow says. “Brenna.”
I step into the room and take the chair at the opposite end of the table from Willow.
Between us: the map, the plan, and the man I kissed by the river eighteen hours ago, who is now sitting at my right with his face freshly shaved and his scent filling my side of the table like he’s doing it on purpose.
He’s not doing it on purpose. Scent isn’t something wolves can turn off. I know that.
It doesn’t help.
“Cade Hatchett runs Ashfall Pack out of the Mark Twain National Forest, southeastern Missouri.” I keep my voice level.
Operational. “Sixty fighting wolves, give or take. Old-fashioned alpha, dominance hierarchy, no tolerance for magic-blooded wolves, runs his territory like a feudal estate. He’s been aligned with the purist movement for at least a decade, but until recently, he was more talk than action. ”
“What changed?” Willow asks.
“Someone started organizing them. The purist packs used to be isolated—individual alphas with individual grudges. But they’ve started coordinating. Shared intelligence, joint operations, standardized communication. The ambush on this ranch wasn’t Hatchett acting alone. It was part of a pattern.”
“The network you mentioned in the briefing,” Rook says. “Someone feeding them Ravenclaw locations.”
“Same source. I believe whoever’s running the network is also coordinating the purist packs into something more structured. An alliance.”
Rook’s eyes narrow slightly. He’s doing the calculations I’ve already done—connecting the purist coordination to the council-level leak, running the implications. Smart wolf. Dangerous in the best way.
“The parley,” I continue. “Hatchett will invoke the old territorial accords. He’ll come with a delegation: his second, a few fighters, possibly representatives from Stoneridge and Blackhollow if they want to show solidarity.
He’ll expect us to hand over his wolves and be grateful he didn’t come with his whole pack. ”
“He’ll expect Ravenclaw to be what it was two months ago,” Willow says, an edge in her voice. “Thirty wolves with no alpha and no defenses.”
“Exactly. And that’s what we use. He’s coming with outdated intelligence. He doesn’t know about the Frostbourne wolves. He doesn’t know the wards are being restored. And if the runner from the ambush hasn’t figured out who I am yet, he may not even know I’m alive.”
I’ve been thinking this through since the attack. I revealed myself in wolf form, not human. They may not have identified me yet.
The room absorbs that.
“So we surprise him,” Sienna says. She’s looking at me directly, pen paused over her notepad. She seems open, analytical. Not hostile… engaged. The look of a woman who appreciates a good tactical setup. “He walks in expecting a weak pack and finds a fortified position with an alpha and a ghost.”
“That’s the idea.”
“What’s the desired outcome? We’re not trying to start a fight at the boundary.”
It’s a good question. Direct and practical. I’d resent her less if she weren’t so consistently useful.
“The desired outcome is intelligence,” I say.
“Hatchett isn’t the head of the snake. He’s a regional alpha taking orders from someone higher.
I want to read his delegation… who defers to whom, who’s nervous, who’s carrying messages they didn’t write.
If we can identify even one link in the chain between Hatchett and whoever’s coordinating the network, that’s worth more than three captured wolves. ”
“And if he reacts badly to the surprise?” Merric’s voice, calm and low beside me. The first time he’s spoken. “If he sees a dead woman and a Frostbourne alpha and decides the parley is a trap?”
I turn to face him. Mistake. He’s close; the kitchen table isn’t wide, and the chairs are pushed together.
His shoulder is eighteen inches from mine.
I can see the faint bruise along his jaw where a wolf caught him during the ambush, the silver scar underneath it, the silver-blue of his eyes that I used to think looked like winter sky over Frostbourne.
I used to think a lot of things. Most of them got me nowhere.
“If he reacts badly, we have Briar on the ridge, Dane and Arlen at the flanks, and reinforced wards along the north line.” I hold his eyes because looking away would be worse. “We’re not walking in unprotected.”
“I didn’t say you were. I’m asking what happens to the parley if it breaks down.”
“Then it breaks down, and we’ve learned something from how it breaks. The way a man loses his composure tells you as much as the way he keeps it.”
Something moves behind his features. Not disagreement. Recognition. He knows I’m right. He also knows I’m describing both of us right now, and the faintest shift of his lips tells me he caught it.
I look away first. Back to the map.
“Positioning.” I trace the north boundary with my finger.
“The parley point is here… open ground, fifty yards from the ward line. We stand inside the wards. They stand outside. The line is visible if you know what to look for, which Hatchett won’t, but his wolves will feel it. That gives us a psychological edge.”
“Who stands where?” Willow leans forward.
“You and me at the center. Merric to my left.” The words come out before I’ve fully considered them. Merric to my left. The traditional position for a mate or ally in formal wolf proceedings. I see Rook register it. I see Sienna’s pen pause for a fraction of a second.
I could correct myself. Move him to the flank. But the positioning is sound. His alpha presence reinforces ours, and having a high-ranking Frostbourne wolf at the parley table tells Hatchett this isn’t just a Ravenclaw problem anymore.
That’s the reason. The only reason.
“Rook behind us,” I continue, pushing past it. “Sienna with the Ravenclaw wolves at the ward line. Visible numbers, visible readiness. And Greta.”
Greta looks up from her chair. “What about me?”
“You stand wherever you want. You’ve been this ranch’s spine for sixty years. Hatchett’s grandmother probably heard your name and flinched.”
The old woman chuckles. “His grandmother and I had words once. At a gathering in ‘78. She didn’t enjoy the experience.”
Arlen coughs. Willow grins. Even Rook looks faintly amused.
“Dane stays back with the settlement,” Merric says. “He’s our fallback if things go sideways at the boundary.”
“Agreed.” I scan the room. “Hatchett arrives tomorrow afternoon. That gives us eighteen hours to reinforce the north wards, position our people, and decide what we’re doing with the prisoners.”
“We return them,” Willow says. Firm. “At the parley. It’s the legally correct move, and it denies Hatchett his grievance.”
“Agreed,” I say. “But we return them with a message. Ravenclaw honors the accords. We respect the old laws. And if anyone comes for our people again, the old laws also cover what we do in response.”
The room holds that for a moment. Then Willow nods. Merric nods. Rook drains his coffee. Meeting over.
People move. Rook catches Merric’s arm, and they have a brief, murmured exchange, Rook’s mouth barely moving, Merric’s head tilting to listen. Pack shorthand. Wordless communication that comes from years of proximity.
Sienna stands, stretches, and crosses to Merric’s other side. She says something about the supply inventory and touches his arm—brief, functional, the kind of contact that means nothing and looks like everything.
She touches him the way I used to touch him. Easy. Habitual. Like his arm is a familiar surface her hand knows without thinking.
My wolf snarls. I strangle her silent.
Willow appears at my shoulder. She’s watching me watch them, and I know she’s monitored everything: the direction of my attention, the tension in my back, the way my hands have gone flat against the table.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Fine.”
“You’re doing that thing where you say fine and mean the opposite.”
“I’m doing that thing where I say fine and mean we have eighteen hours to prepare a parley, and I don’t have time for whatever you’re about to ask me.”
Willow studies me for a beat longer than comfortable. Then she nods and lets it go, which tells me she’s storing it for later. Willow never lets anything go. She just files it somewhere and waits for the right moment to pull it out again.
The kitchen empties. I stay, staring at the map, running scenarios. Hatchett’s approach, his likely delegation size, the conversation tree. What I’ll say if he pushes, what I’ll say if he threatens, what I’ll do if his wolves twitch.
I’m working through the fourth scenario when Greta passes through on her way to the pantry.
“You put him at your left,” she says, without stopping.
“Logical position.”
“Mmm.” She opens the pantry door. “Cormac stood at my left for forty-three years. Logical position, too, I suppose.”
She disappears into the pantry. The door swings shut behind her.
I focus on the map until the lines blur, then I push back from the table and walk outside to start on the wards, because the wards don’t have opinions about where I put Merric Rourke.
The afternoon is a grind. North boundary, four hours of ward work, feeding magic into lines that drink it up like parched earth.
My reserves are running low. Each section takes longer than the last. By the time I reach the parley point, my hands are trembling, and the white fire is more flicker than flame.
I sit on the boundary stone and drink from the canteen Merric filled this morning. The water is cold and clean. He packed food too. A sandwich, an apple, a piece of the cornbread Greta baked this morning. Thought went into this. Attention.
Not protein bars.
I smile, eat the sandwich, and try not to think about the hands that made it.
The north boundary stretches before me, open meadow sloping gently toward the line where the ranch property ends and unclaimed ground begins.
Tomorrow, Hatchett’s wolves will walk out of those trees.
They’ll see the ward line glowing blue in the grass.
They’ll see Willow and me standing side by side.
They’ll see Merric at my left shoulder, six-foot-five and radiating alpha authority.
And they’ll see a dead woman who isn’t dead, and the whole game changes.
I finish the apple. Check the ward line one more time—holding, bright, solid. Not perfect, but enough to make a statement.
Tomorrow.
I walk back to the ranch as the sun drops behind the western ridge, and I’m halfway across the pasture when I hear it.
Laughter from the yard. Multiple voices.
I come around the barn and see Dane—silent, granite-faced Dane—teaching some of the Ravenclaw kids to build a sawhorse.
Cameron sits on a fence rail watching with something on his face I haven’t seen since before my “death.”
He’s smiling.
Not the careful almost-smile from the first days. An actual smile, unreserved, brought on by the sight of a giant blond wolf communicating an entire carpentry lesson through grunts and gestures while a boy tries to copy his technique and keeps putting the nails in crooked.
Sienna is nearby, sitting on the porch with Greta, helping shell beans. They’re talking in the low, comfortable way of women who’ve found common ground across a generational divide. Greta says something, and Sienna laughs—warm, full, the laugh of someone who’s genuinely enjoying herself.
I stop at the edge of the yard. This scene—the kids learning, Cameron smiling, Sienna and Greta working together in the fading light—is exactly what this ranch has been missing. Life. Not just survival. The messy, noisy, imperfect business of people building something together.
Merric’s people did this. In less than a week, they’ve put cracks in the isolation that’s been suffocating Ravenclaw. Not through force or strategy. Through showing up. Hauling lumber. Shelling beans. Teaching a kid to build a sawhorse.
I watch Cameron laugh at something Dane says, and for one unguarded moment, the anger I’ve been carrying since I came down that hillside loosens its grip.
Maybe I was wrong about Merric Rourke.
Not about everything. Not about the choice he made, not about the years of silence.
But maybe about what he’s capable of now.
The thought sits uncomfortable and warm in my chest, and I carry it into the house without looking at the bunkhouse steps where a man might or might not be sitting in the last of the evening light.