The rest of the room stays.
Jessie stands. “What do you need from the ones who stay?”
“I need the compound held. I need the wolves who know how to fight ready for whatever the Syndicate sends after I’m gone. And I need someone to run this place while I’m elsewhere.”
“Who?”
I look at her. “You.”
Jessie doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. The only movement in her face is a slow, deliberate nod.
“All right.”
“Dawes stays on for oversight. You take the pack. My mother keeps the house. The Forrester compound stays Forrester. It just stops being what we were.”
“And what does it become?”
“That’s up to the wolves who stay.”
I turn to Dawes. “You good with that?”
He nods. “Suits me.”
Dawes has no aspirations for leadership. He’s happier this way.
The meeting ends. Wolves disperse in clusters, talking low. Some move toward their cabins. A few approach my mother, who’s still sitting in her chair, not quite willing to stand up.
I walk out of the hall. The night is clear. The stars are up over the ridge. The air is cool and smells of tree sap and dust.
I cross the yard to the patio, where Pa is sitting in his chair, looking out at the hills silhouetted in the darkness. He looks up when I step beside him.
“I’m handing the pack to Jessie,” I say. “Dawes takes oversight. Ma stays in the house with you.”
He looks at me but doesn’t say anything.
“I was at the council hearing this afternoon and confirmed our role in the Syndicate network. I told the pack tonight. The Syndicate is coming. I’m going to draw them away from here.”
He looks at me for a long time. Whatever is behind his eyes is something I haven’t seen there in ten years. It might be grief. It might be the ghost of the alpha he used to be before Maren died.
He nods once.
I leave the patio and head inside. The house is quiet. Outside, the meeting hall is empty. The wolves who stayed have dispersed to their cabins. The ones who left have done their leaving. Tomorrow, the family in the bunkhouse will be handed off to a Ravenclaw team that will give them more safety than I ever could.
I walk to the window in the main room. The pasture where the cage was is empty now. Dawes moved the cage into the back of the equipment barn, out of sight. The grass where it sat is flattened in a rectangle. By morning, the dew will have lifted most of it.
Out in the Ozarks, Briar is home. Maybe in her bed, staring at the ceiling, her thoughts as turbulent as mine are right now.
I put my hand flat against the window. The glass is cool.
The Syndicate will do what they do. I’ll face what I have to face. The compound will hold because Jessie will hold it in ways I never did.
And somewhere on the other end of what’s coming, if I’m still standing, there’s a woman who straightened my collar in a storage closet and didn’t voice the thing I could sense in her.
I’ll find out what it is. Or I won’t.
Chapter 23
Briar