I feel Briar warm in my chest.
She’s been awake most of the night. I’ve felt her moving with the steady presence of a woman going about her business. She doesn’t know what I’m doing. She can’t. The connection between us carries emotion and presence, not specifics. She knows I’m alert and moving and focused. She doesn’t know I’m driving to a grain depot to hand myself over to an organization that will probably kill me by tomorrow.
I reach for her. The compulsive touch I’ve been performing for weeks. She’s there. Warm. Steady. The pull that hasn’t let up since the clearing pulls back at me. For a second, I let myself feel her without filter, the shape of her in my mind, small and ferocious, the presence that has held my wolf still for weeks.
She’ll feel it when they take me. Not the act of surrender; that’s mine to make, and I’ve made it. The consequences. The restraint, the pain, the fear I’ll try to smother before it carries. She’ll feel what comes after. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, but that’s one thing I can’t control.
I drive.
The grain depot comes into view a little after one-thirty. I’m early. I park on a rise a mile out and use the binoculars I keep under the seat. One vehicle at the depot — a black van, nondescript, the kind used for moving things discreetly. No other visible activity. No personnel in sight. They’ll be inside, or concealed nearby. They’ll have watchers on the approach roads. They’re not stupid.
I wait until two minutes before two, then drive down and park next to the van.
The depot is a concrete shell. Rusted tin walls, the remains of a loading dock, grain silos that haven’t held grain in decades. The interior smells of dust and old metal and something older… the memory of working machinery and the rats that came after it.
He’s waiting inside. The voice from the phone. Mid-forties, average height, a suit that looks out of place. Four men are with him. Hard men, the kind with the stillness of people whose job is to do what they’re told. They don’t raise weapons. They don’t need to.
“Mr. Forrester.”
“I’m here.”
“Alone.”
“As agreed.”
“We’ll verify.”
Two of the hard men move past me. Check the truck. Check the approach road. Use small devices to sweep for transmitters, wires, anything. I stand still with my hands visible. The contact watches me. His eyes are pale and steady, and they don’t give me anything.
After ten minutes, the men return. “Clean.”
“Good.” The contact steps forward. “The agreement is as follows. You surrender to us. You come with us voluntarily. You cooperate fully with all questioning, extraction protocols, andany other procedures our people deem necessary. In exchange, your compound and your pack remain intact and unharmed, permanently. If at any point we determine that you have violated this agreement — by withholding information, attempting escape, or cooperating with outside parties — the protection agreement terminates, and the compound becomes a target. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Do you agree to these terms?”
“I agree.”
“State your name and the full agreement for the record.”
One of the hard men is holding a recorder. They need this on tape — leverage, evidence, the paperwork required by criminal organizations that operate under a banner of civility.
“My name is Garrett Forrester. I am the alpha of the Forrester pack. I voluntarily surrender myself to Syndicate custody in exchange for the guaranteed protection of my pack and compound. I will cooperate with all procedures. I understand that any violation of this agreement will result in the termination of protection for my pack.”
The contact nods. The hard man with the recorder steps back.
“Hands.”
I offer my wrists. Runes activate the moment the metal closes. A pressure, deep and immediate that flares like fire whenever my flesh presses against the steel. My wolf recoils from it. I feel the shift in him, the sudden constraint, the way an animal feels a trap close.
“In the van.”
I walk to the van. The doors are open. The interior is lined. Padded, soundproofed, fitted for transporting someone who shouldn’t be heard or seen. They gesture to a seat. I sit. One of the hard men snaps a second restraint from the seat frame to the cuffs at my wrists. I’m not going anywhere.
The contact watches from the depot doorway as the doors start to close.
The last thing I see before they shut is the afternoon sun over the Hill Country. Trees on the ridges. The sky a hard, flat blue.