I keep walking.
“Not just here. Outside. The wolves who left after Conner… they didn’t leave quietly. They went to other packs, other territories, and they’ve been saying things.” She matches my stride. “About a ledger. About payments through the corridor. About what was at the other end of the trucks.”
“People talk.”
“Garrett. A woman I trained with six years ago called me from East Texas last week. She’s with the Darrow pack now. She asked me if it was true that the Forresters were running wolves to the Syndicate for money. She asked me if I knew.”
Her voice cracks on the last word. The sound of a loyalty developing a fracture.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her it was bullshit. I told her Conner had a breakdown and people were spinning stories.” She stops walking. I stop too. “Was I lying?”
I could give her the sanitized version. The words are right there: good faith, deception, a program run on assurances. I’ve been saying them for weeks. They’re smooth with use.
They don’t come out.
“Was I lying, Garrett?”
“Yes.” I don’t sugarcoat it.
Jessie doesn’t break stride. Doesn’t flinch. But I hear her breathing change, a sharp intake, held, released slowly.
“All of it? The payments for—”
“All of it.”
Fifty yards of fence line pass without a word. A hawk circles the south pasture. The cattle don’t look up.
“Jesus, Garrett,” she says at last. “I know they’re not like us, but that’s just wrong.”
“I didn’t know what was on the other end,” I say, hating that it feels like an excuse. “I didn’t know about the facilities. The tables. What they did to the wolves we sent. I knew they went south. I didn’t know what south meant.”
“Did you ask?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was a fool. And afraid.”
I’ve never said that word out loud. Afraid. Alphas have duty. Responsibility. Fear is for wolves who follow.
Jessie looks at me. Not anger. I’d braced for anger. Not disgust. Something I can’t read. Somehow, that makes it worse.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know.”
She picks up a fence staple that’s fallen into the grass. Examines it. Presses it back into the post with her thumb.
“I’m not leaving,” she says. “I need you to know that. I’m angry, and I’m… I don’t have a word for what I am right now. But I’m not leaving.”
“Why not?”