“You are. That stupid crooked thing your mouth does. Stop it.”
“I can’t help my mouth.”
“Youcanhelp directing it at me.”
“I really can’t, actually.”
She throws the straw at me. It bounces off my chest. I catch it. Hold it up.
“You missed.”
“I don’t miss. I chose not to hit you.”
“Ah. Important distinction.”
“Very.” She stands and brushes hay from her jeans. “Jessie called.”
“I know. Conner told me.”
“The compound is stable. Syndicate has pulled back.”
“I know that too.”
“Are you going back?”
The question. The one I’ve been turning over since Conner asked it an hour ago. The one that has Briar’s name written through it.
“Yes,” I say. “I need to go back. The pack needs its alpha, even if the alpha is a different person than the one who left. The compound needs rebuilding. Jessie’s held it, but it’s still Forrester land, and I’m still a Forrester.”
“Okay.” Her voice is flat. The Briar mask is back. The one she wears when something lands hard, and she doesn’t want anyone to see the impact.
“I want you to come with me.”
The mask slips. Just for a second, her eyes widening, her lips parting, the unguarded flash of a woman who wasn’t expecting that sentence.
“That’s—”
“The compound has a house. A barn. Land. Good land, Briar. Hill Country land with room to run in wolf form and hills that go on forever and a creek that doesn’t dry up even in August.” I set the pitchfork down and face her fully. “I’m not asking you to give anything up. I’m asking you to come home with me. Make it home. For you, for the baby. A place where our child can grow up with space and pack and—”
“You’re asking me to live on the land your corridor ran through.”
“Yes.”
“On the territory where wolves were loaded into trucks.”
“Yes.”
“And you think I’d want to raise a child there.”
“I think you’d want to raise a child in a place where the man responsible for those trucks has spent every day since trying to make it into something else. I think you’d want to be part of the making.” I hold her eyes. “I think you’re not the kind of woman who runs from hard ground. I think you’re the kind who plants things in it.”
She stares at me. The hay bale is between us. The horses are quiet in their stalls. The barn smells like straw and animals and the warmth of a building that’s been standing a long time and will stand a long time more.
“You’re asking me to be the alpha’s mate,” she says. “At the Forrester compound. You understand what that means. To the survivors. To the wolves who were hurt by—”
“I’m asking you to help me change what the Forrester compound means. Not erase it. Change it. The corridor is the history. What comes next is the future. And the future needs you in it.”
“Because of the baby.”