Chapter 18
Merric
She didn’t come back. I sat on the bunkhouse steps until well past midnight, feeling her, a bright, restless heat moving through the eastern hills. Running. The rhythm of paws on hard ground, the quality of a wolf who’s covering distance not to get somewhere but to get away from something.
From me.
Around two in the morning, the running stopped.
She settled. High on the eastern ridge, curled against the earth, her presence going still.
Not sleeping. Holding. I felt her exhaustion, and underneath it, something rawer.
Fear. Not of danger. Of the door that opened between us in that bunkhouse, and what it means if she walks through it.
I stayed on the steps. Didn’t follow. Didn’t sleep. Just sat with her fear bleeding through. And nothing I could do about it that wouldn’t drive her further away. I’ve never felt so helpless.
Dawn finds me in the kitchen making coffee with the gritty autopilot of a man who’s been awake for thirty-six hours. Sienna comes in, takes one look at me, and pours a second cup without asking.
“You look like hell.”
“Feel like it too.”
She sits across from me. Studies my face. “Is this about what I walked in on last night? Because I’m sorry, I should have knocked, Greta gave me the plate and—”
“It’s fine, Sienna.”
“It’s clearly not fine. You look like you haven’t slept, and Brenna’s wolf was running the hills half the night… Don’t look at me like that, Briar heard her. Everyone heard her.”
Great. So the whole ranch knows that something happened between us, and Brenna handled it by bolting into the forest in wolf form. Subtle.
“I’ll handle it,” I say.
“Will you? Because from where I’m sitting, you look like a man who’s about to handle exactly nothing.”
Before I can answer, the bond flares. Brenna’s moving. Coming down from the ridge, heading toward the ranch. The exhaustion is still there, but overlaid now with something harder. She’s armoring up. Rebuilding the walls that I spent all week watching her dismantle.
I set my coffee down. “She’s coming back.”
Sienna raises an eyebrow. “How do you—?” She stops. Reads my face. “Right. Bond thing. Got it.”
Brenna comes in through the back door ten minutes later. Dressed, hair damp, face composed. She looks at me for exactly one second, and then she looks at Sienna.
“Morning,” she says. Neutral. Composed.
“Morning,” Sienna says, equally neutral.
The kitchen fills with the tension of three people who all know what happened and are all pretending they don’t. I open my mouth to say something—anything, some version of “can we talk”—when Rook appears in the doorway.
“Merric. We’ve got company.”
His voice has that flat, careful quality it gets when he’s delivering bad news without editorial comment. I’m on my feet before the words fully land.
“How many?”
“Three vehicles. Coming up the main road from the south. Black SUVs. Council plates.”
Council plates. My stomach drops.
“Bern,” I say.
“That’d be my guess.”
I’m moving. Through the kitchen, across the yard, Rook falling in beside me. Behind me, I hear Brenna’s boots on the floor. She’s following, whatever happened last night shelved with the iciness of a woman who can compartmentalize a nuclear explosion.
The convoy is visible from the front gate. Three black SUVs, polished, moving in formation up the dirt road that leads to the ranch. They look obscene against the Ozark landscape. Too clean, too purposeful, like a corporate delegation arriving at a disaster zone.
They stop at the gate. Doors open. Six wolves emerge: four fighters in dark clothes, a younger man with a tablet who looks like an aide, and Nathan Bern.
Fuck.
I haven’t seen him in person in over a year.
He looks the same. That’s the worst part.
Silver hair swept back from a high forehead, clean-shaven, lean in the way of a man who maintains his body as carefully as he maintains his reputation.
Charcoal suit. No tie. The top button of his shirt open just enough to suggest informality, which is calculated to the millimeter.
Everything about Nathan Bern is calculated.
He walks through the gate with the unhurried stride of a man who believes every door in the world opens for him.
He’s the man who sat me down, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me that mating with a Ravenclaw witch would destroy my pack.
That the other southern alphas would never accept a magic-blooded luna.
That Frostbourne would be isolated, sanctioned, cut off from the political infrastructure that keeps a pack alive.
He gave me a choice that wasn’t a choice. And I took it. Because I was young and scared, and I believed him when he said it was for the best.
I believed him.
Standing at the gate now, watching him approach with his suit and his smile and his entourage, I feel something cold and hard settle into the place where the intimidation used to live.
The clarity that comes when you finally see a man for exactly what he is and realize you’ve been looking at a mask for twenty years.
“Merric.” Bern extends his hand. The smile is warm. The eyes are measuring. He doesn’t use my title. “I apologize for the unannounced visit. I sent several messages that went unanswered. Given the, ah, evolving situation, I thought a personal conversation might be more productive.”
I shake his hand because refusing would be a declaration I’m not ready to make. His grip is firm, dry, briefer than friendly.
“Elder Bern. Long drive from the packlands.”
“Quite. The roads through the Ozarks leave something to be desired.” He scans the ranch with the cool sweep of a man conducting an assessment…
the repaired barn, the reinforced fence, Dane’s construction work visible along the south line.
The Ravenclaw wolves who’ve emerged to watch from porches and doorways. “You’ve been busy.”
“There was a lot to do.”
“So I see.” His eyes land on something behind me, and his posture shifts a fraction, just enough that I catch it because I’m watching for it. I follow the line of his attention.
Brenna is standing on the main house porch.
She’s positioned herself deliberately. Not hidden, not advancing. Just… there. Her arms are at her sides, and her face is unreadable.
Bern’s composure holds. But I watched the parley with Hatchett, and I know what a man looks like when his assumptions collapse. This is slower. More controlled. A shift behind a diplomatic face.
“Well,” he says. “Reports of Brenna Corvus’s death were apparently inaccurate.”
“Apparently.”
He looks at me. The warmth hasn’t left his face. Bern’s warmth never leaves; it’s structural, the foundation of every manipulation he’s ever built. But something behind it has changed.
“That’s quite a development, Merric. One I’m surprised you didn’t share with me.”
“It’s recent.”
“How recent?”
“Recent enough that I’m still processing the implications. Same as everyone else.”
He nods. Measured. Then he turns to face the ranch fully, hands clasped behind his back, and adopts the posture of a man surveying territory. Not with hostility, but with the interest of someone who believes the southern wolf world is his to manage.
I stifle a snort.
Good luck with that, asshole.
“I’ve come to discuss several matters,” he says.
“The council’s concerns about your presence here.
The formal recognition of Ravenclaw’s status.
And the reports I’ve been receiving about purist activity in this region.
” He pauses. “I intend to stay for a day or two. Get a proper sense of the situation on the ground.”
Stay. He intends to stay.
Goddammit!
“There’s not a lot of room,” I say. “We’re stretched thin on space as it is.”
“My team is self-sufficient. We’ll set up at the boundary. Shouldn’t be any imposition.” He says it mildly. Reasonably. The way he says everything, wrapped in enough courtesy that refusing feels petty.
Behind me, I feel Brenna’s attention. Sharp. Alert. She can’t hear this conversation from the porch, but she can read body language, and mine is telling her something she doesn’t like.
Willow appears at Brenna’s side. Two Corvus women on the porch, watching an Elder Alpha stake his tent on their land.
“I’ll need to discuss it with the Ravenclaw leadership,” I say. “This is their territory.”
“Of course.” Bern’s smile widens by a fraction. “I wouldn’t dream of overstepping. Perhaps you could introduce me? I’d like to pay my respects to Ms. Corvus. Both of them.”
He says it like a courtesy. It lands like he’s claiming ownership.
I walk him toward the house. Rook follows three paces behind, and I can feel his tension without seeing it; the watchfulness of a second who’s running threat assessments on a man who arrived with smiles and council plates and the implicit authority to destroy everything we’ve built here.
Brenna meets us at the porch steps. Up close, the exhaustion from last night is visible in the shadows under her eyes, but her composure is flawless.
“Elder Bern.” Her voice is even. Correct. Giving nothing.
“Brenna.” He takes her hand. Holds it a beat too long. “I’m profoundly relieved to see you alive. The southern packs mourned your loss. Your mother’s legacy—”
“Is standing right here.” Brenna withdraws her hand. “My mother’s legacy is a pack of thirty wolves who survived years of raids and isolation while the council offered nothing. But I appreciate the sentiment.”
Bern absorbs the hit without blinking. “You’re right, of course. The council could have done more. That’s partly why I’m here. To see what’s needed and what can be provided.”
It’s perfectly delivered. Humble. Accountable. Constructive. And underneath it, I hear the machinery turning. Bern positioning himself as benefactor, as the man who came to help, who can be credited with whatever recovery follows.