The word sits between us. Simple. Undecorated. The most honest thing I’ve said since I told her about the swimming hole.
She nods. Not agreement. Acknowledgement. Something has been offered, and she’s not ready to accept it. But I’m not withdrawing the offer. Ever.
“We need to get these wolves to Ravenclaw,” she says. “Brenna’s arranging transport north. It’s a long drive.”
“I know a few things about moving wolves across territory. It’s time to use it for the right reasons.”
She looks at me. For one half-second, something crosses her face. Not a smile. Not forgiveness. But something that lights a glimmer of hope in me.
Then it’s gone, and she’s walking back toward the barn, and the wolves and the work. I stand at the fence with the dawn on my face, and my wolf settled for the first time since I met her.
Not content. Not happy. Settled. The way an animal settles when it can finally see the thing it’s been running toward, even if it hasn’t reached it yet.
I follow her. Not beside her. Behind. At whatever distance she needs.
It’s a start.
Chapter 29
Willow
It’s Brenna who finds me. Not in the barn with the wolves. Not at the fence line where I left Conner. I’m in the small room at the back of the ranch house that I’ve claimed as a temporary office, maps on the table, Briar’s notes, Nadia’s satellite printouts. The work that needs doing. The work I’ve been hiding inside for four hours because work doesn’t ask me to feel anything.
Brenna sits on the edge of the table. She doesn’t look at the maps; she looks at me.
“When did you last sleep?” she asks.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does, actually. I need you functional. The convoy leaves tomorrow.”
“I’m functional.”
“You’re running on anger and adrenaline and whatever’s left after your magic burned through half its reserves at the facility.”She picks up one of Briar’s pencils. Turns it between her fingers. “And you’re avoiding something.”
“I’m not avoiding anything. I’m working. That facility was just the start. There are others out there. More of our Ravenclaw wolves. The woman and her son that Margaux told me about. Others who were there and then moved on. We need to—”
“I know all that. And you’re avoiding him,” she cuts me off.
I don’t answer. Brenna waits. She’s always been good at waiting—the intelligence operative’s most underrated skill. She’ll sit there turning that pencil until I crack or until the sun goes down, whichever comes first.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say.
“About the bond?”
“About any of it. The bond. Him. What he did. What I did. How I’m supposed to reconcile a man who carried a toddler out of a burning building with the man who put her there in the first place.”
Brenna sets the pencil down. “You’re not supposed to reconcile it. People aren’t one thing, Willow. They’re everything they’ve done: the worst of it and the best of it, stacked on top of each other. You don’t reconcile it. You decide what matters more.”
“And if I can’t decide?”
“Then the bond decides for you. And you spend the rest of your life resenting it.”
The bluntness is so purely Brenna that I almost laugh. No comfort. No reassurance. Just the truth, laid out like a map: here’s where you are, here are your options, choose.
“You forgave Merric,” I say.
“Forgiveness is a generous word for what I did.” She looks out the window. The ranch yard. The vehicles. Somewhere out there, a man with a dislocated shoulder is probably making himself useful because it’s the only thing he knows how to do. “Merriclied to me. Kept secrets. Made decisions about my life without consulting me. And when the truth came out, I wanted to burn him alive.”