Chapter 32 #2
Cameron is in the cabin kitchen with Lena.
They’re sitting across from each other at the table with a chessboard between them, and from the look on Cameron’s face, she’s winning.
Lena glances up when I come in and has the good sense to look slightly guilty, though I suspect the guilt is about the chess demolition rather than being in the alpha’s cabin.
“Dinner’s in twenty minutes,” I tell them. “Lena, your squad’s on evening patrol.”
“Yes, Alpha Corvus.” She stands, tips Cameron’s king with one finger, and leaves with the cheerful efficiency of a young wolf who knows she’s gotten away with something.
Cameron resets the board. “She’s really good.”
“At chess?”
“At everything.” He lines up the pawns. Doesn’t look at me. “Ma. When are we going home?”
The question I’ve been waiting for. The one I don’t have an answer to.
“There’s work to do here first,” I say. “The situation with Bern—”
“I know about the situation with Bern. I know it’s complicated and political and dangerous. I know it takes time.” He sets the last piece in place. “But the wards at Ravenclaw aren’t going to hold forever. You said so yourself. And Willow’s got no magic-user.”
He’s not wrong. He sounds like me… and that’s the part that scares me.
“We’re working on it,” I say.
“Okay.” He picks up a knight. Studies it. “I just don’t want to wait until something happens to find out we waited too long.”
He goes to his room. The door closes. A deliberate, quiet click that seems louder than any slam could.
I stand in the kitchen. The chessboard is on the table, pieces aligned, ready for a game nobody’s playing.
The evening light through the window is cold and blue, nothing like the amber warmth of Ozark sunsets.
My son’s voice rings in my head: I just don’t want to wait until something happens to find out we waited too long.
I pull out my phone and call Willow.
She answers on the second ring. “Hey.” Her voice is steady. Bright. The brightness that means she’s working hard to sound fine.
“How’s the ranch?”
“Good. Quiet. The barn roof is done. It’s solid. We’re running double patrols. The wards are holding.”
“Holding how?”
A pause. Fractional. The kind of pause Willow gives when she’s deciding how much truth to share and how much to carry alone. I know it because I taught it to her.
“Holding,” she says. “The north boundary is strong. South and east are thinning. Nothing critical. I’m monitoring.”
Thinning. The wards I poured everything into before I left, strong enough to last months, I’d told myself.
It’s been weeks, and they’re already thinning.
Because wards aren’t walls. They’re living systems that need a magic-user’s connection to the land, to the pack bond.
Without someone to feed them, they starve. Slowly at first. Then all at once.
“Willow. Tell me the truth.” I’m silently cursing the fact that I let her send Sienna and the others back to Frostbourne, adamant they could manage without them
There’s another pause. Longer. I hear her breathe. Hear the ranch sounds behind her: a door, a voice, the wind.
“The south boundary dropped a full grade yesterday,” she says. “I didn’t want to worry you. It’s functional; anything crosses it, we’ll know. But it’s not going to hold off a coordinated push. Not the kind you described.”
Not the kind Bern would send. Professional. Syndicate-backed. Operatives with anti-magic darts designed for Corvus magic. A design they probably perfected while experimenting on my son.
“How long?” I ask.
“Weeks. Maybe a month if nothing hits it.”
Weeks. Maybe a month. The same timeline Merric laid out for the coalition. And if Bern moves before then… If he decides that Ravenclaw without its matriarch is a target worth hitting before we can build our case—
“I’m coming back,” I say.
“Brenna, don’t. You’ve got work to do there. The Bern thing—”
“The Bern thing means nothing if he hits the ranch while I’m miles away playing politics.”
“We can hold—”
“You can hold against a patrol. Against scouts. Against anything Bern has sent before. But not against what he’s capable of sending now that he knows we have the evidence. He’s cornered, Willow. Cornered animals don’t send patrols. They send everything.”
Silence on the line. I can feel her processing, the stubborn independence warring with the reality she can’t argue away. Willow doesn’t ask for help. She doesn’t need to, because I can hear the truth in what she’s not saying.
“When?” she asks.
“Soon. I need to figure out the logistics.”
“Don’t come alone.” Her voice is quiet. “Whatever you’re bringing, bring enough.”
I end the call and stand at the kitchen window. The Frostbourne compound spreads out below the cabin… the lodge, the training ground, the rebuilt south gate. A stronghold of wolves, well-trained, well-resourced, organized under an alpha and a council and a structure that’s held for decades.
And to the south, my pack sits with thinning wards and a woman who learned to be brave by watching me leave.
The equation is simple and impossible. I can’t stay here. I can’t go back alone. I can’t split myself in two, no matter how many years of practice I’ve had at trying.
Merric comes in from the compound and hesitates when he sees me. He reads my face the way he reads everything about me now: through the bond first, then the eyes.
“You called Willow,” he says.
“South boundary’s thinning. East isn’t far behind.”
He’s silent. I feel the information landing, being processed, running through the same calculations I’ve already run. He arrives at the same place I did. I can feel it.
“How long?” he asks.
“Weeks. Maybe less if Bern pushes.”
He nods. Sits down at the table. Looks at the chessboard. Picks up the same knight Cameron was holding and turns it in his fingers.
“Cameron asked when we’re going home,” I say.
“I know. He asked me the same thing this morning.”
“He’s right. We need to go back. I need to go back.”
“I know.”
The word hangs between us, carrying the significance of everything he’s built and everything I’m asking him to let go of. The lodge his grandfather built. The compound he shaped. The pack that’s finally starting to heal from the crisis he brought to their door.
“I won’t ask you to come with me,” I say. “This is your pack. Your home. You’ve already given—”
“Don’t.” His voice is quiet. Firm. The knight goes back on the board. “Don’t give me the speech about sacrifice and duty and doing this alone. I’ve heard that speech. I gave that speech. Eighteen years ago, to you… and it was the worst thing I’ve ever said.”
I close my mouth.
“I’m not having that conversation again,” he says. “Not from either side of it.”
He stands. Crosses to the window. Stands beside me. The compound below us, the mountains beyond, the cold blue evening settling over everything he’s known.
“I need to think,” he says. “Give me a day.”
“A day.”
“And then we figure it out.”
“Okay,” I say.
He puts his arm around me. I lean into him. We stand at the window and watch the compound go dark, light by light, while the bond between us carries the shape of a decision that hasn’t been made yet but is already taking form.