Brenna doesn’t flinch. She’s been handling this kind of pressure since before I knew her, the alpha who holds the line when the pack wants blood.
“I hear you, Martin. I hear all of you.” Her voice carries the weight she puts on words when she means them. “What was done to your families is unconscionable. The people involved will answer for it. But we answer through the system — councils, testimony, evidence — because if we answer with violence, we become what they were.”
“They raided our homes. Took our children. Fed us to—”
“I know what they did.” Steel under the calm. “I know because my wolves dismantled that facility. Because my operative tracked the corridor to their doorstep. Because Conner Forrester is sitting at this table right now, building the testimony that will end their operation permanently.” She pauses. “Burning their compound gives them a common enemy. It unifies them. Right now, they’re fractured… wolves leaving, the alpha losing support. Let the fracture do its work.”
Martin looks at Conner. The look is complicated. The man who loaded his family into a truck is sitting three feet away with a child on his hip — a child who came out of the same facility Martin’s family went into. His expression shows the inner conflict.
“You want me to wait,” Martin says. “While the man who signed our death warrant—”
“He didn’t sign anything.” Conner’s voice. Quiet. “There were no warrants. No signatures. Just a phone call to a contact number and a truck at the junction. Garrett didn’t see your faces. Didn’t know your names. You were a line on a schedule.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you understand what we’re dealing with. My brother didn’t target your family. He ran a system. The system was evil, and he maintained it, and hedeserves everything the councils throw at him. But attacking the compound means attacking wolves who didn’t know. The families who live there. The younger wolves who grew up believing the same lie I believed.”
Martin’s wife speaks for the first time. “Our children grew up in a facility, Forrester.”
The room goes quiet. Conner doesn’t answer. There’s no answer. Mia shifts on his hip, her dark eyes tracking the room, reading the tension the way she reads everything — silently, completely.
I’m standing by the back door. I haven’t spoken. I almost never speak in these meetings, and nobody expects me to, which is why the room shifts when I open my mouth.
“Martin.”
He turns. Everyone turns.
“You’re right that the hearings will be slow. And you’re right that Bern will try to bury it. But attacking the Forresters right now is the worst move you could make.”
“With respect, Briar, you don’t know what—”
“I spent weeks on that compound’s perimeter. I know their defenses. I know their terrain. And I know what a raid on a fortified position with our current numbers looks like.” I keep my voice flat. “It looks like dead wolves. Ours.”
Martin opens his mouth.
“The Forresters have doubled their patrols since Conner left. They’ve locked down access points. They’re running scared, which means they’re running alert. You take ten wolves into that terrain, and their sentries spot you two miles out, and whatever element of surprise you think you’ve got dies out there.”
“So we do nothing?”
“We do the smart thing. The Forresters are falling apart from the inside. Wolves are leaving. The alpha’s own people are starting to doubt him. I’ve seen the signs.” True enough. Isaw evidence of it. The smaller training groups. The compound running stressed. “A pack that’s eating itself doesn’t need an enemy at the gate. An enemy at the gate is the one thing that would unite them.”
Martin stares at me. “You sound like you’re protecting them.”
The words hit closer than he knows. My hand wants to go to my collar. I don’t let it.
“I’m protecting us. Ten wolves against a fortified compound isn’t justice. It’s a funeral.”
Martin doesn’t respond immediately. His wife touches his arm. The younger man shifts in his seat. Kessa, at the window, watches me with an expression I can’t read.
“I’ll wait,” Martin says finally. “Not because I agree. Because I don’t have a better option. But if the hearings don’t produce results—”
“They will,” Brenna says.
“They’d better.” He takes his wife’s hand, and they walk out. The others follow. Kessa is last. She pauses at the door and looks at me, and the look is something I recognize. The flat assessment of a wolf who’s spent time in a cage and knows the difference between people who talk about justice and people who deliver it.
She hasn’t decided which kind I am.
Fair enough. Some days I haven’t either.