Chapter 25
Uncharted
Roan
I’m doing something I haven’t done in three years. I’m sitting at my father’s kitchen table of my own free will.
Not the long oak table in the main house where pack meetings happen.
The small one in the private kitchen at the back, the one with the burn mark from when I was nine and knocked a candle over during dinner.
My mother scrubbed it for an hour before deciding the mark had character. My father has never replaced the table.
He makes tea the way he always has. Slow, methodical, warming the pot first because his mother taught him that and he’s never unlearned it. I sit in the chair that used to be mine and look at the kitchen I grew up in and try to work out what I’m doing here.
“You look like a man who wants to say something but hasn’t decided what it is,” my father says, setting two mugs on the table.
“I want to change the patrol structure.”
He sits down. Doesn’t react. Doesn’t lean forward or narrow his eyes or do any of the things he does in meetings when someone presents a plan for his approval. He just sits, and drinks his tea, and waits.
“The current structure is reactive,” I say.
“We run borders. We respond to incursions. We wait for them to come to us and then deal with what shows up. It worked when the rogues were disorganised, but they’re not anymore.
They’re rotating scouts. They’re mapping approach routes.
They’re gathering intelligence while we sit on our arses and patrol the same lines we’ve patrolled for decades. ”
“Go on.”
“I want forward patrols. Small teams pushing beyond the boundary, running the ridgeline and the eastern valley. Not waiting for them to cross into our territory. Tracking their movements before they reach us. If they’re building a picture of our defences, we build a picture of theirs.”
He’s quiet for a moment. The kitchen clock ticks. Outside the window, two pack children are chasing each other across the yard with the shrieking energy of a Tuesday morning.
“That’s a significant escalation,” he says. “Patrols beyond the boundary could be read as aggression by neighbouring packs. The Greymoor territory starts six miles east. If they pick up our scent on the ridge—”
“Greymoor’s been silent for years. They don’t patrol the ridge. They barely patrol their own southern border. I’ve been running that line for months, and the only scent I’ve picked up is rogue.”
His eyebrows lift. Not surprise. Something closer to confirmation. “You’ve been running beyond the boundary.”
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling anyone.”
“If I’d told anyone, someone would have tried to stop me, and we’d be having this conversation without the intelligence that makes it worth having.
” I drink my tea. It’s strong, too much milk, exactly the way my mother used to make it because my father never adjusted the recipe.
“I’m not asking for permission. I’m telling you what I think needs to happen, and I’m asking for bodies to do it properly. ”
He leans back in his chair. Studies me. I know what he’s seeing, because Rebecca told me last week in one of her characteristically blunt assessments: You’re doing the thing you swore you’d never do, and you’re pretending you’re not.
She meant leading. She meant stepping into the role I’ve spent a decade refusing.
She was right, and I told her to fuck off, and she laughed in my face.
“How many?” my father asks.
“Four wolves for the forward teams. Two pairs, rotating shifts, covering the eastern approach and the ridge. I’ll brief them myself. I’ll run with them for the first few rotations until the routes are established.”
“You’ll run with them.”
“I know the terrain. Nobody else does. Not at the level I do.”
“Because you’ve been running it alone for months. Illegally.”
“Against protocol. Not illegally. There’s no pack law that says I can’t run beyond the boundary. There’s a protocol that says patrols should be logged with the Beta, and I should have done that. I didn’t. I’m doing it now.”
The silence stretches. I wait for the lecture. The familiar recitation of responsibility, duty, the weight of the Mistwood name. The inevitable pivot to succession planning, to the role I’m supposed to fill, to the future my father has been holding open for me like a door I refuse to walk through.
It doesn’t come.
“I’ll give you Lewis, Jack, and two from the younger rotation,” he says. “Pick them yourself. Brief Rebecca on the schedule so she can integrate it with the existing patrols.”
I blink. “That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“I was expecting you to make this about something it isn’t.”
He wraps his hands around his mug. The gesture is so like mine that I have to look away.
“You came here. Sat at this table. Presented a tactical plan that addresses a genuine threat and asked for resources to execute it. That’s not a conversation about succession, Roan.
That’s a conversation about keeping people safe. ”
“Right.”
“Though if you wanted to talk about succession—”
“Don’t push it.”
He smiles. It’s brief and genuine. “Noted.”
I finish my tea and stand up. He walks me to the door the way he always does, as if I’m a guest rather than his son, and the formality of it used to irritate me and now just makes me tired.
Not the bad kind of tired. The kind that comes after you’ve been carrying something heavy and you’ve set it down, and your arms ache from the absence of the weight.
“Roan.”
I stop on the path. Turn back.
“Your mother kept a journal,” he says. He’s standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, and the morning light behind him makes it hard to read his face. “Did you know that?”
“No.”
“She wrote about everything. The village. The pack. You, mostly. She wrote about you constantly.” He pauses. “I found it after she died. Read it once. Put it away. I wasn’t ready for what was in it.”
My chest tightens. “Dad—”
“I think you should have it. When you’re ready. There are things in there about what she went through, the emergence, the bond, the early years. Things that might help Phoebe. Things I couldn’t give her because I didn’t understand them.” He clears his throat. “I’ll bring it to you. No rush.”
He goes inside before I can respond. The door closes. I stand on the path with the morning cold against my face and my throat full of something I don’t have words for.
My mother’s journal. Her voice, preserved on paper, twenty years after I last heard it in person. The thought is so vast that I can’t look at it directly. I have to approach it sideways, the way you approach a wound that’s too raw to touch.
I walk to Phoebe’s.
The route takes me through the village, past The Wren where Nell is setting out the sandwich board for the day.
She catches my eye through the window and gives me a small wave.
Past the post office where Mrs Hartwell is already arguing with the postman about something that is almost certainly not worth arguing about.
Past the shop where Helen is arranging apples in the window display with a precision that suggests she’s avoiding going home.
These people. My people. For years I’ve been moving through this village like a man passing through a train station, present but not stopping.
Now I notice them the way Phoebe notices things: with attention.
With the specific, quiet awareness of someone who understands that paying attention is its own form of care.
Phoebe is in her surgery when I arrive. I let myself in through the back door, which she leaves unlocked during the day despite my objections, and find her at the examination table with a rabbit.
The rabbit is enormous. It’s the size of a small dog, with black-and-white fur and an expression of absolute calm that suggests it has seen worse than a veterinary examination and survived. Phoebe is listening to its heartbeat with a stethoscope and frowning.
“Problem?” I ask from the doorway.
“This rabbit has a resting heart rate of a hundred and thirty.”
“Is that unusual?”
“For a rabbit this size, yes. Normal range is a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty, but this one’s been sitting in my surgery for twenty minutes without any increase.
No stress response at all. A rabbit in an unfamiliar environment with a stranger touching it should be at the upper end of the range, minimum. This one’s completely relaxed.”
“Maybe it’s friendly.”
“Rabbits aren’t friendly. They tolerate handling at best. This one…” She pauses. Leans closer. Her frown deepens into something I recognise: the look she gets when the data doesn’t fit the model. “This one is watching me.”
I move closer. The rabbit turns its head to track my movement. Not the startled, twitchy motion of prey responding to a predator. A slow, deliberate turn, followed by a long, assessing look from dark eyes that are, now she’s pointed it out, disconcertingly aware.
“Whose rabbit is it?”
“Maggie’s. She brought it in for nail clipping.” Phoebe sets down the stethoscope. “Roan. Is this a normal rabbit?”
“Define normal.”
“Is this a rabbit that is also sometimes not a rabbit?”
I look at the rabbit. The rabbit looks at me. Neither of us blinks.
“I honestly don’t know,” I say. “Maggie collects strays. Some of them are ordinary. Some of them are... less ordinary.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Welcome to Mistwood.”
She gives me the look. The one that says she’s going to add this to her notebook and cross-reference it with seventeen other observations and eventually corner me with a theory I won’t be able to deflect. I’ve learned to accept this look as an inevitability rather than a threat.
She clips the rabbit’s nails. The rabbit sits patiently through the procedure and then, when returned to its carrier, arranges itself in a position that can only be described as comfortable, as if it’s settling in for a pleasant journey rather than being confined in a box. Phoebe watches it with narrowed eyes.
“Seven,” she says.
“Seven what?”
“That’s the seventh animal this month that doesn’t behave the way its species should.
” She washes her hands. Dries them. Turns to me with the directness I fell for in this very kitchen the first time she handed me a cup of tea.
“I need you to tell me about the other species. Not wolves. The other things. Maggie’s garden is full of herbs that don’t grow naturally in this climate.
That rabbit is not a normal rabbit. The cat I treated last week healed faster than any feline tissue should, and it repositioned itself during treatment to give me better access to the wound. ”
“Phoebe—”
“I’m the village vet. If I’m treating animals that aren’t what they appear to be, I need to know what they are.
Not for curiosity. For their safety. What if I prescribe something that’s contraindicated for whatever they actually are?
What if I sedate an animal that shouldn’t be sedated?
I need the information, Roan. I need it to do my job. ”
She’s right. I know she’s right. The frustration isn’t with her. It’s with the fact that every week brings another layer of disclosure, another set of secrets I have to unseal, another brick removed from the wall between her world and mine.
“Sit down,” I say. “This is going to take a while.”
I tell her about the hedge witches. About Maggie’s lineage, the things she can do with plants that aren’t quite magic but aren’t quite gardening either.
About the animals that drift into Mistwood from the deeper forests, the ones that are older and stranger than any field guide would suggest. About the territory itself, the way the land holds memory and energy in ways that science doesn’t have vocabulary for yet.
Phoebe listens. Takes notes. Asks questions that are precise and practical rather than philosophical. She doesn’t ask how is this possible. She asks what are the clinical implications.
This is why I love her. Not the only reason. But the purest one. She encounters the impossible and asks how to care for it.
By the time I’m finished, she’s filled four pages of her notebook. The surgery is quiet around us. Afternoon light falls through the window in long, thin stripes.
“Thank you,” she says. “I know that wasn’t easy.”
“It’s getting easier.”
“That’s because I keep asking.” She closes the notebook. Looks at me. “Something happened this morning. Before you came here. You look different.”
“I went to see my father.”
Her eyebrows lift. Not surprise, exactly. Phoebe doesn’t surprise easily anymore. Interest. “Voluntarily?”
“Voluntarily.” I lean against the examination table. “I proposed a change to the patrol structure. He agreed without making it about succession. We had tea. He told me my mother kept a journal.”
The shift in her expression is immediate. Not pity. Phoebe doesn’t do pity. Something gentler. Something that says she understands what that sentence cost me and isn’t going to make me explain.
“Did you know?” she asks.
“No.”
“Do you want to read it?”
“Yes. Not yet. But yes.”
She nods. Doesn’t push. Stands up and crosses the surgery and puts her arms around me, her head against my chest, and holds on.
I hold her back. The surgery smells of antiseptic and rabbit and the particular clean warmth that is Phoebe’s scent underneath everything.
My wolf settles. The knot behind my ribs eases.
“I’m proud of you,” she says into my shirt.
“For having tea with my dad?”
“For going back to a kitchen you haven’t sat in for years and asking for what you need. Yes. I’m proud of you for that.”
I press my mouth to the top of her head.
Close my eyes. Stand there in the quiet surgery with this woman who has turned my life inside out and is now holding me together, and think about my mother’s journal sitting in a drawer somewhere in the house I grew up in.
Her handwriting. Her voice. The pieces of her I thought I’d lost.
Not yet. But soon.