“Seven months.” The number comes out tired. Seven months on the road with two small children. I try not to think about what that looks like: the motels, the gas stations, the camps in ravines, hoping nobody finds you.
“And I need to ask about bloodline.”
The mother’s arms tighten around the toddler. The eight-year-old goes rigid. The father’s face doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes closes, a door slamming shut on whatever hope he was carrying that this would go differently.
“The kids carry,” he says. Quiet. Factual. Like he knows there’s no point in lying about it. “Magic. Both of them. Low-level. They can’t do anything with it; the older one barely manifests. The little one doesn’t know he has it.”
“And you?”
“Clean. Both of us. It’s a recessive line. Skipped us, hit the kids.”
The mother is looking at me now. Her eyes are steady and dry and old in a way that has nothing to do with her age. She knows what the question means, and she knows what comes next. One hand goes to the toddler; the other reaches behind her and finds the eight-year-old’s shoulder, pulling him close.
The kid looks up at me. Straight at me. Dark eyes, skinny face, too old for his age. He’s scared, and he’s trying so goddamn hard not to show it that something in my chest cracks.
Not my wolf. Me.
“The protocol,” Tate says quietly beside me.
I know the protocol. I’ve executed it a dozen times. Magic-blooded wolves on Forrester territory are relocated. Escorted tothe handoff point on the county road, transferred to the contact who takes them south. It’s clean. It’s efficient. It’s what we do.
“We’ll need to move you along,” I say, professional, calm, the enforcer delivering a decision that isn’t personal. “Forrester territory doesn’t accommodate magic bloodlines. It’s a safety issue. We’ll escort you to a transfer point where you’ll be connected with people who can place you in a community that’s better suited to your situation.”
The father nods. He expected this. It’s no secret that Forrester territory is purist. He shouldn’t have stopped here in the first place. His body sags with the resignation of a man who’s heard this line before. Different words, different territories, the same outcome.Keep moving. You don’t belong here. Someone else will take you.
“When?” he asks.
“Today. I can give you an hour to pack up. Then we’ll take you to the transfer point.”
“Where are we going? The transfer point… where does it lead?”
“A network that places magic-blooded wolves in appropriate communities. Safe places.”
It’s the answer I’ve always given. The answer Garrett gave me. The answer that sits in a box labeled PROTOCOL in my head, sealed and unexamined.
The father looks at me. Studies me. “You’ve done this before.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve checked? That the places are safe? That the families you’ve sent south are—”
“The network handles placement. That’s not our operation.”
“But you’ve checked.”
The question hangs. I feel Tate’s attention on me. Feel the boy’s stare. Feel my wolf twisting inside my chest with a discomfort that’s getting harder to override.
“Pack up,” I say. “I’ll give you the hour.”
I walk back to the truck. Tate follows. We stand on the ridge above the ravine and wait while below us, a family of four folds their tent, packs their bags, loads their cooler into a car that’s held together by rust and prayer.
The boy carries firewood to the fire pit and douses it with creek water. Methodical. Practiced. He’s done this before, too. How many camps has this kid broken down? How many mornings has he packed everything he owns into a car because a wolf like me told his father to move?
Tate shifts his weight beside me. “The transfer point. Is that the junction on the county road?”
“Yeah.”
“And then what happens?”