CHAPTER THREE
The Kane house sat at the highest point of the cleared land the pack had carved out of the southern interior.
Wood-frame, one story, big windows on the south side.
Emma's herb beds were brown-edged from the late-summer heat.
This porch had hosted many conversations of his adult life.
He'd stood on it the night Dominic asked him to take security.
The morning Emma moved in. The day Marcus came back from a four-day patrol with a piece of glass in his shoulder, refused the clinic, and let Emma dig it out herself while Dominic stood two feet away making a sound that was not a growl but was close.
Today he stood on it because he needed to ask his alpha a question and have his alpha not call him on the lie underneath it.
"Run point," Dominic said, before Jackson finished.
Jackson didn't finish. He didn't need to. Dominic had read the request thirty seconds in.
Emma came out with a coffee mug and set it in Jackson's hand without ceremony, the way she'd taken to doing with people who didn't look like they'd been hydrating. She was barefoot. The mug was hot. She didn't look at him when she said:
"Welcome back."
Then she went inside.
Jackson held the mug. Dominic was watching him over the rim of his own.
"That was for Claire," Jackson said.
"Yes."
"She's met Claire?"
"Briefly. Last contract. They overlapped at the clinic when Claire came in about access protocol and Emma gave her a tour she didn't need." Dominic took a sip. "Emma liked her. Emma also reads people. Emma chose her words."
The wolf had gone quiet. Jackson noticed and chose not to examine it.
"The court mandate is sixty days," he said. "Legal has it. I'm running monitoring rotation, perimeter, same protocol as last contract but tighter. Cascade Valley sent a VP last time. They'll send one this time. We can assume they're more organized."
"I assume that."
"I want the sole point of the consultant."
"Granted."
He didn't say thank you. Dominic didn't need it. They watched the herb beds for a beat.
"Run it the way you need to run it," Dominic said. "Pull whoever you need. The pack knows the situation."
"They know about the filing."
"They know more than that, Jackson."
Jackson didn't respond.
Dominic drank his coffee. Jackson drank his.
"I told the wolf to shut up," Jackson said finally. He didn't know why he said it. He was not, generally, a man who said things he didn't need to say.
"How's that going?"
"It's not."
Dominic almost smiled. Did not.
"It didn't go well for me either."
Jackson set the mug on the porch rail. Looked at the south boundary of the property, sloping down through the trees toward the main pack road. The wolf was calm for the first time in four days. He'd think about that later, when he was alone.
The pack felt steadier around Dominic. Jackson had known it thirteen years and never quite gotten used to it. Not a wolf thing — an alpha settled in his own territory, the land and the wolves in it organizing around him like iron filings around a magnet, no word required.
Something in Jackson, just for a moment, recognized the signal and stood down.
"Go," Dominic said. "You've got work."
Jackson went.
He walked the perimeter on the way back to his cabin, by foot, in the bright late-summer midday. The wolf stayed quiet. He was waiting, and he could wait.
At the cabin he didn't go inside. He stood on the porch and looked at the road that came up from the south.
Three days, then her.
He went inside.
* * *