It’s the first time anyone has said those words to me in months. I don’t deserve them. But she says them anyway, and I don’t know what to do with them, so I just nod once and step back.
“Dawes. Get them to the bunkhouse.”
Dawes moves. The family goes with him, slowly, the children walking between their parents with the careful steps of kids who have learned not to attract attention. I watch them until they reach the compound buildings, and then I turn and look at the empty cage. The door is still hanging open. The note in my pocket.
I walk back to the house, and I tell Dawes to pull the pack together in the meeting hall. Then I stand at my father’s desk for ten minutes, collecting myself for what I’m about to do.
It takes fifteen minutes for everyone to gather — word moving through cabins, through the barn, through the training yard. By the time I stand at the front of the meeting hall, there are dozens of them in rows of chairs. My mother in the back. She hasn’t come to a pack meeting in a decade, but Dawes must have told her this was different, because she’s here, in the chair she used to take when my father ran the pack. My father isn’t here. He’s in his chair on the porch, where he’s been for ten years, and he won’t come out for this.
I don’t have a prepared speech. I didn’t have one for the hearing either, and this isn’t the hearing.
“This afternoon, I stood in front of a Southern Inter-Pack Council and confirmed that the corridor operated under my authority for over a decade. I confirmed the payments, the transfers, the handoffs. I didn’t defend the operation. There’s no defense for it.”
The room is quiet.
“The wolves who went through the junction were taken to Syndicate facilities. At those facilities, they were experimented on. Children were separated from their parents on arrival. Some survived. Some didn’t.”
A younger wolf in the third row puts his head in his hands.
“The corridor has been closed for weeks. I closed it myself. Today, the Syndicate delivered its response. A cage at our gate, with a magic-blood family inside it. There was a note that told me to resume operations and start with them.”
A sound from the back. Disgust. Someone making a noise they couldn’t contain.
“I opened the cage. The family is in the bunkhouse. Ravenclaw is sending a team to collect them tomorrow morning.”
My mother’s hand rises to her mouth.
“The Syndicate will respond. I don’t know when. Days, maybe. A week at the outside. Whatever they send, they’ll send it here, and the compound will be the target unless I make sure it isn’t.”
Jessie, from her seat near the front. “What does that mean? ‘Unless I make sure it isn’t.’” She already knows.
“It means the Syndicate wants me specifically. I’m the one who refused them. They hold leaders accountable; that’s how they operate. When they come, they’ll come for me. I’m going to make sure they can find me somewhere other than here.”
A voice from the side. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m drawing them off. Once the family is safe at Ravenclaw, I’ll move. I’ll go somewhere they can track me without finding the compound at the end of the trail.”
My mother stands up.
The room turns.
“Garrett.” Her voice is small, but it carries. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that when they come for me, I’ll be somewhere else. The compound won’t pay for what I did.”
“You’llpay for it.”
“Yes.”
She sits down. Slowly. Her hands are folded in her lap, and they’re shaking.
I look at the room.
“Any of you who want to leave — leave now. Tonight. Take what you need and go. I won’t hold it against you. If you stay, you stay knowing that the Syndicate may be coming. That the Forrester name is going to be dragged through every council proceeding in the south. That the alpha whose authority you’ve served just confirmed at a formal hearing that the corridor was exactly what people said it was. This isn’t the pack you joined. It never was. I’m the one who made it that, and I’m the oneunwinding it. Anyone who doesn’t want to be part of what comes next should go.”
Silence.
A woman in the fifth row — an old friend of my mother’s — stands up. Gathers her bag. Walks out. Two more follow. A young couple with a baby. The door closes behind them.