She pulls the map closer. Her eyes narrow, not reading it, seeing something behind it. “Three more. At least. I overheard guards talking.” Her finger drifts northeast. “One somewhere in this corridor. East Texas, maybe Louisiana. They referred to it as ‘the farm.’ Larger capacity. Agricultural cover.”
“How do you know?”
“Supply trucks. When they opened the loading dock, I read the labels. Feed company out of Shreveport, soil amendments from a distributor in Tyler. Agricultural supplies going to a facility that didn’t have a single plant growing within its walls.” A thin, bleak smile. “They weren’t careful about that. Why would they be? We were livestock. Livestock doesn’t read shipping labels.”
I hold her gaze. “You’re not livestock. You never were.”
She looks at me. Something shifts behind her eyes. “I know that.”
“Good. Keep going.”
She keeps going. A second facility, south; from what she’d picked up, she guessed it was on the Gulf Coast. A third she knows almost nothing about except a guard’s offhand reference to “the mountain place,” which could be anywhere from the Rockies to the Appalachians.
“That’s approximate. All of it.” She straightens, pulling her hands off the map and folding them in her lap. “I’m not an intelligence operative. I just paid attention because paying attention was the only power I had.”
“Arden.” I wait until she meets my eyes. “That’s exactly what an intelligence operative is.”
She blinks. For a second, something loosens in her face. Then she’s back to business, and I let her lead.
She’s smart. Methodical. The kind of asset that Brenna will build an entire operation around. When I reach out to squeeze her shoulder, she flinches—a sharp, involuntary jerk away from contact. I pull my hand back. No apology. No acknowledgment. We both pretend it didn’t happen.
In the afternoon, I’m at the barn when I hear the work.
Conner is helping Rook repair a fence section damaged in last week’s storm. He works one-armed—the bad shoulder strapped—and Rook doesn’t slow down for him. They don’t talk. Rook hands him posts, Conner sets them, and the rhythm of the labor fills the silence between two men who have nothing to say to each other except what the fence requires.
I lean against the barn door and watch. Not hiding it, not advertising it. But I feel the bond, and Conner’s awareness of me registers as a slight shift in his posture—shoulders easing a fraction—before he goes back to the post in his hand.
Then the group appears. Six rescued wolves heading to the dining hall, walking close together the way the freed ones do, shoulders nearly touching, a herd instinct that captivity drilledinto muscle memory. They round the corner of the barn and see Conner.
The reaction ripples through them at once. Two of the women pull closer together. A teenage boy stiffens, then deliberately looks away. But it’s the man at the front—stocky, hard-faced, a wolf I don’t recognize from any Ravenclaw family—who stops dead.
He stares at Conner. The recognition crosses his face in stages: confusion, certainty, then something hot and bright and furious.
“Fucking Forrester.” He spits on the ground between them.
Rook straightens. His hand tightens on the post he’s holding, and I feel his energy spike; not fear, readiness. Preparing for this to go sideways.
Conner sees the man looking. He doesn’t stop working. Doesn’t look away. Doesn’t stiffen or flinch or square up the way an enforcer would if challenged. He holds the man’s eyes for a long, measured second. Not challenging. Not apologetic.
Present. Willing to be seen for exactly what he is.
My wolf surges. Every instinct says,“Go to him, stand between them, bare your teeth.”The bond screams it. He’s mine, and they’re looking at him like he’s something scraped off a boot. The primal part of me doesn’t care about context or justice or the fact that this man probably rode in a truck that Conner loaded.
I don’t move. I grip the barn door frame, and I stay where I am.
Because this isn’t mine to fix. And Conner isn’t asking me to.
The man holds the stare for another heartbeat. Then he turns, mutters something to the woman beside him, and moves on. The group shuffles past. The teenage boy casts one last look over his shoulder, and then they’re gone.
Rook exhales. Glances at Conner. “Gonna be a lot of that.”
Conner sets the post. Reaches for the next one. “Yeah.”
That’s it. No discussion, no processing, no moment of vulnerability. He goes back to the fence. Rook goes back to handing him posts. The rhythm resumes.
Nobody thanks him. Nobody will. That’s part of the price, and he’s paying it without complaint, and watching him do it does something to the knot in my chest that I thought was permanent.
I turn away and head across the compound. I find Mia in the children’s room. She’s been moved from the medical tent—a good sign, according to Healer Sable, the older Frostbourne woman who runs things with a quiet authority that reminds me of Brenna. Sable meets me at the door, keeping her voice low.