Chapter 6
Willow
We stopped in town for provisions on the way out this morning.
Water, trail food, a better map. Quick in and out, nothing worth mentioning.
Except that when I was loading the bag into the truck bed, I looked up, and he was there.
Across the street. Looking at me the way he looked at me last night, except in daylight, without whiskey to blame.
I gave him nothing. A nod. Turned away.
That was three hours ago, and I still can’t shake it.
Briar and I split at the creek crossing. If she noticed I was distracted, she didn’t say anything. She went east, following the scent trail that went cold yesterday, hoping the terrain past the creek gives her something to work with. I took the western ridge for the thread-sense.
“I’ll make my own way back,” she said before we separated. “I want to push further south. Could be a while.”
I didn’t argue. Briar works best alone, and she doesn’t need me hovering. She’ll walk back to the motel when she’s done; ten miles through rough country wouldn’t even register as inconvenient for a wolf who spent years working impossible assignments for the Frostbourne pack.
So I’m on the ridge. Alone. Trying to do the thing I came here to do, and failing because a man I shouldn’t be thinking about is taking up residence in my skull.
Focus, Willow.
I close my eyes. Reach south. The Hill Country spreads out below me, and somewhere past the trees and the ridges and the ranch roads, my people are breathing.
I don’t know how many, but they’re out there.
The thread hums at the edge of my perception.
Fainter than I want, but there. A whisper of Ravenclaw kinship, pulling from the same direction it pulled yesterday.
South. Consistent. Not a voice. Not a location.
Just a direction, and the knowledge that someone at the other end is alive.
I hold it for maybe thirty seconds before the concentration slips.
Not enough to track by. Not yet. But it’s more than I had yesterday, and the south-pulling consistency matches what Briar’s been finding on the ground.
I work the ridge through the afternoon. Checking the terrain, noting the sight lines, mapping the landscape in my head, the way Brenna taught me.
Where would you route wolves through this country if you didn’t want them seen?
The ridges give hard ground that doesn’t hold prints.
The creek beds give concealment but limit your movement. The ranch roads are fast but exposed.
If someone was moving families through here—families who didn’t want to be seen, or who were being moved by people who didn’t want them seen—the corridor would follow the hard ground, drop into the creek for cover, and connect to a road at the far end.
That’s what Briar’s scent trail suggests. Someone designed this route.
By late afternoon, my legs ache, and I’ve gone as long as I can on trail mix and stubbornness. The notice board at the hardware store is still on my list. If local ranches are advertising for seasonal hands, that’s the path the missing family would have followed. And I need a real meal.
I drive into Cedar Falls. The town has the drowsy feel of a Sunday afternoon.
A few trucks on the main street, the church parking lot empty, the shadows starting to lengthen.
I check the hardware store notice board first: a couple of flyers for ranch hands, a church bake sale, a lost dog.
I photograph the ranch hand numbers with my phone. Then I head for Dutch’s.
The diner is quieter than it was yesterday morning. The lunch rush is gone, and the evening crowd hasn’t arrived. Patty’s wiping down the far end of the counter. She spots me and waves.
“Hey, hon. Grab a seat.”
I pick a table at the far end of the diner and order a turkey sandwich and coffee.
The diner settles around me: a couple in a booth by the window, three older men arguing gently about something at the far end, a woman reading a paperback over a plate of pie.
I eat and listen. The talk is ordinary: cattle prices, a leaking roof, someone’s truck that won’t start.
The kind of conversation that tells you nothing and everything about how a place works.
The door opens.
My wolf lifts before I register why.
Conner walks in.
And the room adjusts.
Not a silence, not a collective turn. Something subtler.
Patty reaches for a specific mug—his, already set aside—and starts pouring before he’s even sat down.
One of the older men lifts a hand. “Conner.” Easy.
Familiar. A younger wolf who was heading toward the counter adjusts his path, giving space without being asked.
He heads to a booth across the diner and slides into the seat with the ease of familiarity.
I’m pretty sure I’m out of his line of sight, but if he sees me, he doesn’t acknowledge me.
After this morning, I’m not surprised. I froze him out.
He’s either returning the favor or just hasn’t noticed me. I wish I could say the same.
I eat my sandwich. Watch without watching.
Patty brings his coffee and says something that makes him shake his head with half a smile.
A man approaches—fifties, rancher build—and launches into something about a feed delivery.
The man’s posture is respectful. Deferential.
Not submissive. Just the natural body language of a wolf addressing someone with rank.
The room orients around him. Not dramatically—just the automatic adjustment of a pack that knows its structure. He’s at the center of it without trying to be.
“Who’s the guy over there?” I ask when Patty drifts back with the pot. Keeping it light.
Patty gives me a look. “That’s Conner Forrester.”
The sandwich turns to concrete in my mouth.
“Forrester?”
“The Forresters run the big ranch outside town. Been here longer than anybody.” She tops off my coffee.
“Their alpha’s Garrett… Conner’s older brother.
Conner handles the enforcement side. Been doing it since he was practically a kid.
” She gives me a conspiratorial smile. “He’s single, if that’s what you’re working up to. ”
I manage something that might be a smile. “Just curious.”
“Uh-huh.”
She moves on. I stare at my plate.
Forrester. The name Margaux warned me about.
The pack that’s been traditional for generations.
The compound northeast of town, the biggest operation in the area.
And traditional, in the southern wolf territories, means purist. Anti-magic.
The kind of pack that would see bloodlines like mine as contamination.
The man from the Railhead. The man whose mouth was on my throat last night. The man whose hands I can still feel on my skin.
He’s a purist. The enforcer of a purist pack.
I can’t finish the sandwich. I leave money on the counter. Thank Patty. Walk out.
The air doesn’t help. The name keeps turning over—Forrester, Forrester, Forrester—and every rotation connects to something else.
Briar’s scent trail running within half a mile of the compound.
The corridor through their territory. “You don’t route wolves through someone’s core land without cooperation. ”
And me, in a bar restroom, with my legs wrapped around the man who helps run it all.
I sit gripping the wheel, letting the information reorganize everything I thought I knew.
I slept with a Forrester wolf. Not just any Forrester. The enforcer. The man who handles threats to the territory. The man who decides what belongs on this land and what doesn’t.
My wolf twists in my chest, and I can’t tell what she’s feeling.
Not revulsion; that would be simpler. Something tangled.
The pull toward him hasn’t dimmed with the knowledge of who he is.
If anything, it’s sharper, edged with a danger that makes my skin crawl.
She wants him. She wants him more now that she knows he’s forbidden, and that terrifies me.
I drive back to the motel. The room is empty. Briar’s still out.
I sit on my bed. Try to think like an operative instead of a woman whose body is still humming from a man she should be running from.
What do I know? The Forresters control this territory. Purist, anti-magic. Their land is where Briar found the Ravenclaw scent trail. If the families passed through here, the Forresters either saw them and did nothing… or saw them and did something.
I sink back onto my pillow, close my eyes, and try to clear my spinning head.
I hear the door an hour later. Briar comes in, scratches on her forearms from the cedar brush, pale dust on her knees. She drops her pack by the door.
“Made it past the creek,” she says. “The trail continues south on the other side. Still fragmentary—wind’s taken most of it—but the direction holds. Ravenclaw signatures.” She unfolds her map and marks the new section. “The trail isn’t random, Willow. It leads somewhere specific.”
“I found out who runs the compound,” I say.
“Forrester family. Saw the sign on the gate.”
“The younger brother’s name is Conner. The older one—Garrett—is the alpha.” My throat tightens. “Conner’s the enforcer. He handles boundary security. Everything that moves through this territory goes past him.”
Briar stops marking the map. Looks at me.
“And?”
“And I…” I clear my throat. “The dress. The bar. Shit.” I run a hand through my hair. “I think I might have fucked him.”
Something flickers behind her eyes. Calculation at speed. “Might have?”
I huff a breath. “Okay, I did. I fucked goddamn Conner Forrester.”
“That’s a problem,” she says.
“I know.”
“Or it’s an opportunity.”
“An opportunity?” I frown, though I think I know where she’s heading.
“He’s inside the pack. He has access to information we can’t get any other way. Whether they’re directly involved or not, they control this territory. They know what moves through it. If he’s interested in you—”
“Don’t.”
“— then that’s an asset.”
“I said don’t.”
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what we have.” She picks up the pencil. “If you can get close to him without compromising what we’re doing, that’s useful. If you can’t, we do this the hard way.”
She’s right. I hate that she’s right. A connection to a ranked Forrester wolf gives me access to the local intelligence network. Conner could know something without knowing its significance. He could be my way to the families.
“Another thing,” I say. “I spent yesterday canvassing the town. General store, gas station, diner… It wasn’t any better at the bar. Every person I spoke to gave me the same thing: a smile and nothing. These people have been handling outsiders their whole lives.”
“Then stop pushing,” Briar says. “You’re drawing attention for no return. Let him come to you. You’ll learn more from one conversation where he’s relaxed than from a week of knocking on doors nobody’s going to open.”
I press my fingertips to my throbbing temples.
“I need to call my aunt.”
“Take the second phone.”
There’s a trail behind the motel that leads up a low hill. I climb until I can see Cedar Falls below me: rooftops, water tower, the Forrester compound in the distance. Orderly. Prosperous.
Somewhere south of here, three Ravenclaw families are waiting to be found.
I call Brenna. Give her the picture: Briar’s found Ravenclaw scent trails heading south through a corridor that runs close to a compound.
The route is deliberate—someone chose the terrain.
The Forrester pack controls this territory, and they’re hardline purist. “Not confirmed as involved. But they’re sitting on the route, and Briar says the trail doesn’t look random. Someone managed the transit.”
Brenna listens. Then: “The Forrester pack. I know the name. Purist for years. No Syndicate ties that I’m aware of. But packs like that don’t need Syndicate connections to make magic-blooded wolves disappear. They just need to look the other way.”
“It might be more than looking the other way. Briar needs a few more days to build the picture, but the corridor runs through their core land.”
“Then build it. Carefully.” A pause. “Conner Forrester. You said you met him.”
“At the bar. The night we arrived. He seemed to… take an interest.”
“What’s your read on him?”
“Respected. Has authority. He’d know what moves through this territory. Could be a source.”
“Can you get close?”
“I think so.”
“Be careful, Willow. If he finds out what you are—”
“He won’t. I’ve hidden my magic signature like you taught me.”
“Good. Call again in forty-eight hours.”
She ends the call. I sit on the hillside. My wolf is still restless, attention aimed at a man who’d hand me over to his pack if he knew what I carry.
I don’t know what it means. I’m not ready to find out.
But I know I’m going back into that town. And I know I’m going to find him.
That should scare me more than it does.