I yawn, stretch, and then grimace.
“Shoulder?” she asks.
“Stiff.”
“Liar.” She touches it through the shirt. Gentle, careful, her fingers exploring. “You slept on it wrong.”
“I slept on a cot built for a child with a woman sprawled across me. Everything’s wrong.”
“Complaining?”
“Happiest I’ve ever been.”
The smile widens. She leans down and kisses me, quick, firm, her hand on my jaw for a half-second. Then she’s pulling on her boots and heading for the door.
“I’ve got Arden’s debrief this morning. I’ll find you after.”
The door closes. The cabin is quiet. I lie on the cot that smells like her and listen to the valley waking up. Voices. A door. The creak of the lodge porch.
I give myself a minute of it. Then I get up.
I’m outside, heading for the equipment shed, when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I check the screen, and my stomach drops.
“Conner.” Garrett’s voice. Taut. Controlled. The alpha frequency stripped of everything except authority. “I know where you are.”
The morning goes cold. Not fear. I’m past fear with Garrett. But the recognition that I’d been waiting for this call, and now it’s here, and whatever comes next is going to be ugly.
“Then you know I’m not coming back,” I say.
“Ellis tracked the convoy north. Three vehicles, one van, headed into Ravenclaw territory.” A pause. “You’re on their land. Living with the people who ran an intelligence operation against your own pack.”
“They ran an intelligence operation against a pack that was selling wolves to the Syndicate. There’s a difference.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
“Then don’t call me expecting me to apologize.”
Silence. The kind Garrett uses when he’s recalculating. I know every one of his silences: the dismissive ones, the dangerous ones, the ones where the alpha is deciding how far to push. This one is the third kind.
“You handed them the ledger,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Pop’s handwriting. The payment records. The communication logs. Everything.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve done?”
“I’ve given them what they needed to prove it. All of it. I didn’t hand them anything that wasn’t true, Garrett.”
“You’ve destroyed this family.”
“This family destroyed itself. I just opened the drawer.”
His breathing changes. Rougher. I’ve heard Garrett lose control exactly twice in my life: the night Maren died, and the morning I walked out of the meeting hall. This is the third time, and the sound tells me more about where he is than anything he’s said.