The Forrester pack runs an organized corridor for moving wolves through their territory. The route is deliberate, worn from repeated use, with escort scents that match the compound. And Conner—the enforcer, the man who handles everything that happens on the ground—personally supervised a family transfer this morning. Drove them to the junction. Called in the truck. Watched a woman with a toddler and an eight-year-old boy climb into a vehicle with strangers and drive south. Likely to Syndicate holdings.
Last night, the thing that interrupted his hands on my body was the thing in this photograph.
I feel sick.
Cameron was seventeen when the Syndicate had him. Seventeen, and they cut him to ribbons.
That’s where the eight-year-old is going. That’s what’s waiting at the end of the road that Conner just put him on.
“Willow,” Briar says.
I can’t answer her. The rage is coming in like a tide. Not hot, not explosive. Cold. The kind that starts in my gut and rises through my chest and fills my skull with a clarity so sharp that everything in the room stands out in brutal detail. The pattern on the wallpaper. The dust on the lampshade. The blurry shape of a man in a photograph who put an eight-year-old child on the road to hell.
I want to kill him.
The thought is clean and absolute. Not a figure of speech. I want to drive to his house, drag him out of whatever chair he’s sitting in, and rip his throat out with my teeth. I want to watch the comprehension dawn in those dark eyes—the same eyes that looked at me like I mattered—while he understands exactly who I am and exactly what he’s been doing to my people.
My wolf thrashes within me, desperate, howling for him with a need that makes me want to tear my own chest open.
No.
I slam her down. Hard, total, with every ounce of authority I have. She fights. Snarls. Strains to force me to shift. I hold her. Pin her flat. Bury her so deep she can’t surface.
She howls from somewhere far inside me. A sound of anguish that I refuse to feel.
You don’t get a say. Not now. Not about this.
Silence. Not agreement. Defeat. The animal crushed under the woman’s fury.
“Willow.” Briar’s voice. Steady. Waiting.
I turn to face her. Whatever she sees in my expression makes her go still.
“I want to hurt him,” I say. My voice is expressionless. “I want to kill him, and I want to burn that compound to the ground, and I want to find every wolf who ever stood at that junction and watched a family drive south, and I want to make them understand what’s waiting at the other end.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I’ve been sitting across from this man for days. Drinking coffee with him. Laughing at his jokes.Fuckinghim. And the whole time—the whole goddamn time—he’s been walking families with children to a truck that takes them to a place where they get cut open.”
“I know, Willow.”
“Cameron’s scars. Do you know what they look like? The ones on his arms—they’re surgical. Precise. They opened him up to get at the magic in his blood. He was seventeen. This kid is eight.Eight.And the other one is little more… than a baby.”
I swallow down bile. My hands are shaking. Not from grief. From the physical effort of not driving to Cedar Falls, not tearing Conner Forrester apart.
I pace the room.
“God, I’ve been such a fool.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” says Briar. “You’ve picked up tons of intel.”
I spin to face her. “Really? Because from where I’m standing, you’ve been killing yourself out there, while I’ve been mooning over a fucking purist.”
Briar shakes her head, then raises her hand. “You gave us the map of the compound.” She ticks off a finger. “You figured out how many wolves were in there, and what their hierarchy looks like.” She ticks another finger. “You found out where the water points are and where the cattle move. That helped me plot out the primary routes.” Another finger. “You gave us the delivery schedules, what their logistics look like, how many vehicles they use.” Another tick. “Shall I go on?”
I stare at her. Not because of what she’s just said, but because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Briar use so many words in one sitting.
“I still feel like a fraud,” I mutter.