Chapter 26 Before Shane
Shane POV
The slide had cracked the patrol sled’s cowling and bent the left steering arm. I was going through every machine we might need for the trip across the river, and I had its front end jacked and the damaged arm stripped off when I looked up through the open bay door and saw them.
Six wolves sat on the East bank in a line at the bridgehead, dark shapes on the snow in the last gray light. They weren’t patrolling. They weren’t moving. They sat with their ears forward and their heads high, and every one of them faced the West gate.
I set my wrench down and walked to the bay door.
The river ran between us, black where the ice hadn’t closed, and the bridge sat empty in the failing light. Nobody on the road. Nobody at the gate. Just six wolves in a row, watching.
I counted them again. Six. The thickset wolf at the center was Kurt. I didn’t need his scent to know that bulk or the way the others had arranged themselves around him.
Six was enough to make a point. Kurt’s loyalists could sit at the river without their Alpha’s leave, in plain sight of our gate and every East wolf who drove across the bridge. We see where you are. We see who you’re with.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and keyed the radio. Dominic answered from the north fence, and I gave him the count. He told me to keep my eyes on them and call again if one of them stood up. They weren’t crossing. They weren’t even standing. This was theater, not a raid.
I went back inside and picked up my wrench. The replacement steering arm lay on the bench beside a mug of coffee that had gone cold while I worked.
I heard boots on the concrete behind me and knew from the hesitation that it wasn’t Dominic or Liza.
“Tolliver.”
I didn’t turn around. “Garage is closed.”
Everett walked in anyway. His footsteps were uneven, one boot dragging slightly, and when he stopped beside the workbench I could smell the rejection sickness on him underneath Dominic’s borrowed soap. The scent was chemical and wrong, like a fever burning through bad fuel.
“Saw them from the lodge,” he said, glancing through the bay door.
I waited for him to bring up my mark on Liza and shove me into the wall again. He kept his eyes on me instead.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
I checked the replacement arm against the damaged one to make sure the mounting points matched.
“I’m sorry.”
That got me to look. Everett stood in the fluorescent light with his left arm strapped to his chest.
He looked like shit. Weeks of sickness had hollowed him out, and there was nowhere left for his pride to hide the damage.
“For the wall,” he said. “Outside the garage. I put my hands on you, and I had no right.”
I leaned against the bench and crossed my arms. “No. You didn’t.”
“I told myself you’d stolen something. That the mark was taken from me.” He swallowed, and I watched the tendons in his throat work. “She chose you. She bared her throat and told you to bite.”
He looked past me toward the river. “You protected her happiness. I protected my image.”
Outside, the six wolves hadn’t moved. I could see them through the bay door, dark and still against the dying sky.
“You believed fate gave you more right to her than my choice did,” I said.
Everett flinched, small but real.
“Yes,” he said. “I did. The Goddess chose her for me, and I thought that meant I had a claim no one else could match. Even after I threw the claim away.”
I studied him for a long moment. The anger I’d carried since he slammed me against the wall had cooled over the past two days. It could wait for the moment it mattered.
“Say it,” I said.
“Say what?”
“The mark. Tell me what it is.”
He raised his eyes. They were bloodshot and rimmed red, and they held mine. “Permanent,” he said.
“And?”
“And it’s for good. Whether she takes me back or not. Whether the Goddess gives her ten more bonds or none. Your mark is on her skin, and nothing I do or say or become will change that.”
“Good.” I uncrossed my arms and picked up the wrench again. “Now I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to hear it, because I’m only saying it once.”
Everett waited.
“Liza carries enough. The scar. The rejection. The pack that watched and said nothing. She carried all of that across the bridge in a blizzard, with one bag and no truck, and she built something on this side of the river that nobody handed her.” I turned the wrench in my hand without using it.
“If you ever make her carry your jealousy on top of it, or if she ever has to manage your feelings about my mark, Dominic’s bond, or anything else she has with somebody who isn’t you, I’ll finish what you started at that wall. And I won’t stop when you let go.”
The garage was quiet except for the low hum of the overhead lights. Snow was still coming down outside, thin flakes drifting through the bay door and melting on the concrete.
Everett said, “I hear you.”
His voice was steady, which surprised me.
Whatever the sickness had taken from his body, it hadn’t reached the part of him that could stand still and accept a threat he deserved.
“I won’t put that on her. My jealousy, my grief, the fact that I wake up every morning feeling what she feels and knowing I’ll never be the reason for it. None of it.”
I looked at him for another few seconds, and then I nodded toward the machine.
“Hold the lamp.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I need both hands to seat the replacement. You’ve got one good hand. Hold the damn lamp so I can see what I’m doing.”
Everett looked at the new steering arm, then at me. Something crossed his face that might have been confusion or gratitude or just exhaustion; he’d expected to be thrown out and instead got handed a job.
He picked up the work lamp with his right hand and angled it toward the sled’s front end.
I fitted the replacement arm over the spindle.
Everett aimed the light where I needed it.
He shifted when I moved, keeping the beam ahead of my hands.
When I reached for a socket, he braced the lamp on the jack stand long enough to pass it to me.
He’d done this kind of work before. He watched the job and had the next tool ready.
I tightened the retaining nut, connected the tie rod, and set the ski back in place. Everett put the lamp down, found the torque wrench, and passed it over when I held out my hand.
I checked the setting and fitted the final socket. He picked up the lamp again while I torqued the nut.
Through the bay, the East bank had gone dark. I stepped outside and looked.
The wolves were gone.
Everett followed me to the doorway, still holding the lamp. He turned it off and set it on the bench behind us, then stood beside me and looked across the river at the empty East bank.
“Kurt’s showing them,” he said.
“Showing them what?”
“That their Alpha is on the wrong side of the river.” Everett sounded tired and precise.
“Every wolf who was out there saw me standing in a West Valley garage, holding a work lamp for the man who marked my mate. They’ll be at the gathering in two nights, and Kurt will make sure the rest of the valley knows I was doing another pack’s grunt work. ”
“Were you?”
He considered that. “I was fixing a steering arm.”
“That’s all it was.”
We went back inside. I was checking the ski alignment, with Everett holding the lamp on the tie rod, when the lodge truck pulled up outside.
She came through the bay door with her patrol jacket zipped to her chin and snow on her shoulders. The sight of her steadied something in me.
Her gaze moved from Everett and the work lamp to the newly mounted arm.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey yourself.” I wiped my hands on the shop rag and kissed her, tasting cold air and the faint salt of a long patrol shift.
My mark sat dark above her right collar, and I pressed my thumb against it briefly because I could.
Because it was mine and she’d asked for it and I would never stop being glad.
“You see them?” I asked.
“See what?”
“Kurt was at the East bridgehead with five others at dusk. Sitting in a line, watching the gate. They pulled out at full dark.”
Liza’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes went sharp. Her attention turned toward the river and the empty bank beyond it.
“Six,” she said.
“Six. Didn’t cross. Didn’t move. Just sat there.”
“He’s counting heads,” she said. “Making sure we know he can put bodies at the bridge whenever he wants.”
“That was my read.”
She pulled off her gloves and tucked them into her jacket pocket. “Dominic knows?”
“Called it in when I spotted them. He kept the north crew on the fence until they pulled out.”
“He’ll want to adjust the crossing if Kurt’s putting wolves at the bridgehead.” She looked at the freshly mounted steering arm. “You got it fixed.”
“Had help.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask, and I didn’t offer. Whatever Everett had said in this garage belonged between him and me. Liza didn’t need to carry it.