Merric. He’s appeared beside me without a sound—impressive for a man his size. He stands with his arms folded, watching the reunion. His face gives nothing away.
“Yeah,” I say.
“It should be.”
We stand in silence. The homecoming continues around us: tears, embraces, names called across the yard. Merric doesn’t leave. Doesn’t speak. Just stands beside me the way a wolf stands beside another wolf at a boundary marker: present, acknowledging, not yet committing to anything beyond proximity.
“You left your pack for her,” he says eventually.
“I left my pack because my family was betraying our kind. Willow was—” I stop. “Willow was the reason I looked. But the decision was about what I found.”
“That’s a good answer.” He unfolds his arms. “The guilt doesn’t go away. I can tell you that from experience. You learn to carry it and keep moving. And you earn what comes next by what you do, not by what you feel.”
“Is that what you did?”
“I’m still doing it.” He looks at me. A direct assessment, alpha to exile, the evaluation of a man deciding how much trust to extend. “Brenna will tell you you’re welcome here. She’ll mean it… with conditions. I’m telling you the conditions: Be useful. Be honest. Don’t expect anyone to thank you for doing the right thing ten years too late. And understand that some of the wolves in that yard would tear your throat out if Willow weren’t standing between you and them.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” He walks away. Conversation over.
A kid appears at the edge of the yard. Seventeen, lean, with dark hair and haunted eyes. He’s watching me from the porch of the main house with an intensity that makes me feel like I’m being read through a scope.
He walks toward me. Stops at ten feet. Studies me the way Willow studies things—direct, unblinking, with an intelligence behind the stare that misses nothing.
“You’re the Forrester,” he says.
“Conner.”
“Cameron.”
The name lands. Cameron. Willow’s cousin. The boy who was taken.
He’s standing in front of me. Alive. Thin and scarred and looking at me with the assessment of a survivor who’s learned to read threats.
“You were involved. You fed the Syndicate,” he says. Not an accusation. A fact.
“Yes.”
“And now you’re here.”
“Yes.”
He studies me. I hold still. Let him look. Whatever he sees, whatever he decides, I’ve earned the scrutiny, and I’m not going to flinch from it.
“I was in a facility for six months,” he says. His voice doesn’t change, the same steady, assessing tone. But his right hand moves to his left wrist, and his fingers trace a line across the skin that I can see from this distance. The scars Willow described. “They opened my veins eleven times. Drained the magic and studied what was left. I stopped counting after a while because the numbers stopped meaning anything.”
I don’t speak. There’s nothing I can say to that. No response that isn’t an insult to what he survived.
“She trusts you,” he says. Meaning Willow.
“She’s choosing to.”
“That’s different from trusting.”
“I know.”
“Good.” He holds my eyes for one more second. “Because if you hurt her—if you go back to what you were, or if you bring your brother’s people anywhere near this valley—I’ll kill you myself. And I won’t do it quickly.”