Greta puts a bowl in front of me. I stare at it.
“Eat,” she says. “You need it, honey.”
I eat.
Merric finds me before I’ve finished the coffee.
“East ridge,” he says, setting the patrol map on the table without sitting down. “Dane flagged an unfamiliar scent on the south approach early this morning. Thought it was a transient.”He traces the approach line with one finger. “I want it confirmed. Take Sienna.”
Why me.
He reads my face. “Because you read terrain better than anyone I have.”
That’s true, so I don’t argue. Even though I have a sense of apprehension climbing up my spine.
Sienna is at the east gate when I get there. We shift and go out on four legs — faster, and the scent reads cleaner in wolf form. The morning air is cool off the ridge, carrying the night’s damp. The compound drops away behind us.
I pick up his trail within a quarter mile.
My wolf knows it before I do. She goes still mid-stride, nose working, every hair along my spine lifting in a slow wave. I stand there on the limestone with Sienna three yards back and let the full weight of it hit.
Male. Alpha. Dense with dominance. The concentration of him that I’ve been carrying in my head for days, and now it’s on the stone under my paws, fresh enough that he stood here less than twelve hours ago.
My body makes a sound I don’t authorize. Low, barely a vibration. Sienna’s ears rotate toward me.
Stop.
I move forward. Nose down. Reading.
He’s been methodical. The trail doesn’t wander, it circles, wide and deliberate, the pattern of an animal charting a territory rather than crossing it. He’s been checking the approaches, the gaps in patrol coverage, the places where terrain screens movement. This isn’t a wolf stumbling through unfamiliar ground. This is reconnaissance.
He’s been waiting.
We follow the circle east, then south, then back north, where it cuts toward the high ridge. Sienna tracks behind me, reading what I’m reading.
The resting place is in a hollow under a limestone overhang, screened on three sides by scrub. He’s been here more than once — the ground is worn, the same body in the same position, a shallow depression that holds his shape. I lower my nose to it.
Still warm.
My wolf goes rigid. The warmth in the stone and the scent rising from it — him, hours ago — hits my body like stepping into a current. The heat I’ve been managing since dawn comes up through the herbs and the cold morning and the sheer effort of this. I stand there breathing until it drops back to something I can cope with.
I shift to human. Sienna shifts beside me.
“Same wolf as the south approach,” I say. My voice comes out even. “He’s been circling. Single wolf, no contact attempted.” I look at the hollow, the worn ground. “Start back. Tell Merric what we found.”
“And you?”
“I’ll track north. See where the circle ends.”
She nods. She goes where she’s sent and asks the questions that need asking. The question she doesn’t ask — the one I can see in the way she holds herself before she turns back down the ridge — I’m grateful for.
I wait until she’s out of scent range. Then I follow the trail north.
I already know he’s up here. My body has known since I stepped out of the east gate this morning. The pull tightens with every step. I follow the trail. I keep my nose on the stone.
The trail ends in the boulder field at the ridge’s crest.
Not ends. Stops. The scent is the strongest it’s been all morning. He’s here now.