I’m in human form. The boulder field in early afternoon is limestone and shadow and scrub pressing up between the rocks. The wind comes from the east. I’m downwind of everything east-facing.
He’s standing in a gap between two boulders, forty feet north. Brown wolf. Gold eyes. The size of him — the kind that registers in the spine before the eyes catch up — watching me with the stillness of an animal that knew I was coming before I cleared the tree line.
I stop.
He doesn’t move.
We stand there in the boulder field with forty feet of rock between us and the afternoon wind in the scrub and nothing else. The heat builds, urgent and focused on him with a precision that is honestly insulting, given everything I know about this man.
Don’t.
He shifts. The wolf contracts, and the man comes through, and I wish he hadn’t, because the wolf was easier. The wolf, I could respond to with something uncomplicated. The man is the person who didn’t close the door when I pushed Mia’s nightmare through, and that is harder to stand forty feet away from.
He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
The afternoon holds still around us. Neither of us crosses the forty feet.
Then I turn and walk back down the ridge.
He doesn’t follow. I hear him shift behind me — the soft sounds of it — and then nothing. He’s gone back to ground. Still there. Not following.
Patient.
I make it back to the compound before dark.
The lodge kitchen is lit up, voices carrying through the screen door. Merric at the table. Dane. Brenna. Sienna must have reported already.
I go in.
“Briar.” Merric looks up. The map is spread on the table, Sienna’s finger on the east ridge approach. “What did you find?”
I pull out a chair and sit. Then I tell them what I found — the trail, the circle, the resting place. How long he’s been there. What his pattern says about his intent. I tell them he’s a big male, experienced, moving like a wolf who knows surveillance. I tell them the hollow under the limestone overhang on the upper east ridge is his base point.
I don’t tell them where the trail ends.
I don’t tell them I stood forty feet from him in the boulder field, and neither of us moved. I don’t tell them he shifted to human, and I didn’t run. I don’t tell them that I know exactly where he is right now, that the pull is so strong I could walk to him in the dark without a light.
Merric is watching me. Reading my face the way he’s read my face since I was a teenager. Whatever he sees there, he files it.
“I want the east ridge patrolled through the night,” he says. “Observe and report. Don’t engage.” He looks at Dane. “Dane. First light. Full trail. Sienna with you.”
“Fine.”
The conversation moves on. Dane talks about perimeter rotation. Brenna asks about the south approach. I sit at the table and answer what gets asked and don’t say the thing I’m not saying. I’m aware of the not-saying every second.
I know who he is.
I know why he’s here.
I know exactly where he’s sleeping.
And I’m sitting in this kitchen, giving a partial report to the people who trust me to give a complete one, and I don’t understand why.
Chapter 15
Briar
After the report back, I go to my room, but I don’t sleep. I lie on the cot with the herbs wearing off by degrees and the dark pressing against the window. I’m thinking about what I did in that kitchen.