Chapter 27 #2
“She’s heard about Brenna,” Sarah says carefully. “The magic. She’s curious.”
“Is that a problem?”
“For us? No.” Sarah looks at Tom. Something passes between them—the wordless communication of a couple who’ve been together long enough to share opinions without speaking. “For some of the other families, maybe. They’re worried about their kids being around the boy. The magic.”
“Cameron isn’t dangerous.”
“We know that. But fear doesn’t listen to facts, Alpha. You know that.”
I do. I know it better now than I did a week ago.
Brenna finds me at the training ground late in the day.
She’s been working with Cameron and the young wolves—Lena, Mark, Kai—and there’s a looseness in her shoulders that I haven’t seen before.
Not relaxation. The easing that comes from doing something that matters in a place that’s been making her feel invisible.
“Cameron showed them his magic,” she says.
“How’d that go?”
“Lena asked if he could set her ex-boyfriend’s truck on fire. Mark wants to know if the magic is genetic. And Kai told Cameron he was the coolest person he’d ever met, which Cameron pretended to be embarrassed by and was clearly thrilled about.”
The image makes me smile. My son, finding his place. Not through force or politics but through the simple fact of being seventeen and interesting.
“Edda demanded a review period,” I tell Brenna. “Twenty days.”
She absorbs this without visible reaction. She’s developed the ability to take bad news without flinching. “How much damage can she do in twenty days?”
“Enough. If Bern is feeding her strategy.”
“He is. You know he is.”
“I know.”
She’s contemplative. Then: “The vehicles on the logging roads. Has Jonas confirmed anything new?”
“Some scouts tracked them last night. Three SUVs, unmarked, north approach. Different clearing this time—they’re rotating positions, checking the perimeter from multiple angles.”
“Thorough. They’re building an operational overlay—every approach corridor, every gap in coverage.”
“You’re right.”
“Merric.” She turns to face me fully. Her eyes are sharp, the field operative’s focus overriding the mate’s warmth. “Bern’s political maneuvering and now surveillance vehicles on your borders at the same time. That’s not a coincidence.”
“No. It’s not.”
“The political pressure keeps you focused inward: managing Edda, managing the council, managing the pack’s divided loyalties.
While you’re looking inside, someone’s positioning outside.
It’s a classic two-front strategy. I’ve seen the Syndicate run this playbook before.
Create internal instability, then exploit the distraction. ”
“You’re thinking this is coordinated.”
“I’m thinking that whoever sent the observer to the parley at Ravenclaw, whoever was behind the purist attack in the hills, and whoever is driving unmarked vehicles around Frostbourne in the middle of the night… they’re connected.”
I’ve been assembling the same picture. The pieces don’t form a complete image yet, but the edges are aligning.
“We double the night patrol,” I say. “And I want Cameron inside the compound at all times. No exceptions.”
“Agreed.”
We stand together at the edge of the training ground.
The compound is settling into evening. Wolves moving between buildings, the lodge chimney trailing smoke, the sound of laughter from somewhere inside.
A child running across the gravel, chased by the shed dog.
One of the kitchen women hanging a lantern on the lodge porch.
My pack. My territory. The place I’ve built and defended and sacrificed for. The place I sacrificed Brenna for because a man in a suit told me it was the only way to keep these people safe.
And underneath the evening sounds, a current running dark and fast. The sense that twenty days is generous. That whatever’s being planned, the timeline is shorter than Edda’s review period. That the vehicles on the logging roads aren’t gathering information for a future operation.
They’re confirming details for one that’s already set.
Brenna’s hand finds mine. She feels it too… The silence that precedes an attack.
“We should bring Cameron in,” she says.
“He’s in the lodge. Lena’s teaching him chess.”
“Good. Keep him there.”
She heads toward the cabin. I head toward Jonas. The evening unfolds around us, ordinary on the surface, and under it, something tightening like a wire wound around a post.
I don’t sleep well that night. Brenna curls against me in the dark, her back to my chest, and her breathing is even.
But I can feel her not sleeping either. Both of us lying motionless, performing rest for each other’s benefit, listening to the compound settle into silence and hearing the spaces in the silence where things might hide.
Her hand finds mine on her stomach. Twines our fingers together.
“I love this place,” she says into the dark. “I didn’t expect to. But it reminds me of Ravenclaw. The way it holds people.”
“It’s going to hold you, too. Whether Edda likes it or not.”
“I know.” A pause. “But something’s coming, Merric. I can feel it in the ground.”
“I know.”
“Soon.”
“I know that too.”
We lie in the dark, fingers clasped, listening. Outside the cabin, the compound is quiet. The mountains are quiet. The logging roads are quiet.
Too quiet.