“How long have you been running?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer.
“You’re on Forrester land,” I say. “Historically, that’s been a problem for wolves like you.”
Still nothing. Her hands are tight on the fence post.
“We don’t do that anymore,” I say. “There’s no danger to you here.” I stop three feet from her. “I’m telling you this because you should know what’s changed, and because you’ve been standing here long enough.”
Ellis is watching me from ten feet back. Reading the conversation the way Dawes read my return — carefully, without inflection, collecting data.
The woman’s hands loosen on the fence post. Fractionally.
“What do you want?” she says. Barely there.
“To get you food and let you rest before you decide what’s next. That’s all.” I look at Ellis. “Lodge. Ask my mother to feed her.”
Ellis moves. His pace matches hers when she pushes off the post — unhurried, a body-length between them, his hands visible.
Jessie is at the training yard. She’s seen it. She comes across when the woman is out of earshot.
“That was different,” she says.
“The protocol is finished. What we had in place is finished.” I watch the woman walk toward the lodge with Ellis. “She needed food, and she needed to stop running. That’s all.”
“And if more come?”
“Then we feed them, and we don’t call the contact number.”
Jessie is quiet for a moment. The same careful look from the fence line, the one I couldn’t read then. I can read it now. She’s deciding whether what she’s seeing is collapse or construction.
“The hearings are coming,” she says. “Conner’s testimony. The ledger. Brenna Corvus is building a case that’s going to lay all of this out in front of every pack in the southern territories.”
“I know.”
“Some of the pack have been talking. Not just the ones who left — the ones who stayed. They’re hearing what Conner’s been saying. They’re looking at you and trying to figure out which version is true.”
“Both versions are true. The version where I protected this pack for five years, and the version where I fed wolves into a machine. At the same time.”
She takes this in. Considers it.
“What are you going to do when the hearings happen?”
“Tell the truth.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“That’ll destroy the Forrester name.”
“The Forrester name has been destroying other people for a decade. Maybe it’s time it took some of the damage.”
“The Syndicate,” she says. “They’re not going to wait for the hearings.”
“No. They’ll move before the hearings make the corridor public. Right now, they can threaten to expose us. After the hearings, there’s nothing left to expose.”
“You think they’ll hit us?”