The Wolf's Territory (Pine Ridge Shifters #3)

PROLOGUE

Jackson was reviewing the weekly security report when the email arrived.

The report was standard. Perimeter and sensors functioning, no abnormal readings since the ward stabilized the land. Pine Ridge was quiet. The good kind of quiet. The kind that should have felt like success.

It didn't.

He scrolled past the summary. Opened the attachment from the county clerk's office. Something routine that came in every week and said nothing.

This one said something.

Cascade Valley Development had rehired a geological consultant for Phase II of the environmental survey.

Court-approved access mandate. Sixty days.

Unlimited access to the north boundary survey sites.

The mandate was ironclad. The legal team had already reviewed it, and the answer was the same answer it had been for every Cascade Valley filing: legal but infuriating.

The consultant's name was Claire Dunn.

He read it twice. Three times. The letters didn't rearrange into someone else's name. They stayed. The way she'd stayed in his head for the last four months despite his best efforts to file her under resolved threat and move on.

He read the line under her name. Consultant requested. Cascade Valley confirms continuity is essential to the integrity of the data.

He read that twice too.

Cascade Valley had pulled her off the Phase I contract.

He'd read every Cascade Valley filing of the last four months.

He'd watched the company absorb a loss to do it too.

The replacement, the delay the replacement introduced into their development timeline and pay it rather than keep her on.

Whatever her preliminary report had said, it had cost them enough to eat that loss.

Now they were putting her name on the Phase II filing as if she'd been their preference all along.

She had said yes to that.

He sat very still at the desk, turning the idea over.

She either didn't know what they were doing with her name or she knew and had been pressured.

Or worse yet, she knew and had decided to continue.

The third one was the one he couldn't work out.

It would be the one that told him the most about who would be stepping out of a truck on the access road within the week.

The wolf was not turning anything over.

The wolf, who he’d spent four months telling to shut up since she'd driven away from the Route 410 turnoff, lifted his head.

Not stirring. Not restless. Alert. The kind of alert that preceded a hunt. The kind that said found and again and this time.

Mine, the wolf said.

Because the wolf always said it first. Because he had been saying it for the last four months and he'd been pretending not to hear.

Jackson closed the email. Opened the security report. Read the same line four times.

The wolf did not shut up.

He sat at the desk. The office was dark except for the monitor and the small lamp on the corner of the desk. He noticed the lamp because he noticed details and if he didn't notice details people he loved would die. He had built a life on noticing.

He had not noticed that four months ago his life stopped being only that.

Outside the window, the security building's lot was empty. The pack's vehicles tucked against the tree line. The county road beyond was quiet.

Sixty days.

She'd be on-site within the week.

Mine.

Jackson did not move from his desk.

He did not move from his desk for a long time.

When he finally stood, the lamp had burned down. The monitor had gone to the screensaver. The wolf was still saying it.

He drove home. Shifted in his front yard. Did not bother with the cabin door.

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