Page 58 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
He stares at me with those cool, steel grey eyes. "A wolf shifter," he says. "What you saw this morning—that's what I am. What most of the people on this mountain are."
The words land in a specific order. I let each one settle before I move to the next.
"Most," I repeat.
"Not all," he concedes. "Garrett is human. Lila is human. Everyone else you've met—" He pauses. "Yes."
I sit with that for a moment. Then: "How long?"
"My whole life," he tells me. "My father's life. His father's before that. The Greyback pack has been on this mountain for generations."
"The pack," I echo, and now that word is landing differently too, the word I've heard and not heard since day one, sitting in every conversation I've had on this property in plain sight the whole time. "That's what you've been calling yourselves."
"Yes."
"And the territory. The patrols. The perimeter." I lean forward. "That's not for timber. That's for this."
"The patrols keep the territory secure," Logan confirms. "The territory keeps the pack hidden. The businesses support both." He straightens slightly. "What we are isn't something the worldcan know. The way we live depends on staying hidden. The mountain gives us the space to do that."
"And the people you brought in," I push. "The extra faces I've been seeing for three days. That's not seasonal labor."
"No," he admits. "That's the pack preparing for a possible confrontation with Dawson's investigators."
I absorb that. "You lied to me."
"I gave you what I could at the time," he counters, level and without flinching. "I'm giving you all of it now."
The morning light has started to come through the kitchen window in long, pale streams by the time the knock at the door comes—enough time that the initial shock has had space to become something more complicated, something I'm still working out the shape of. Logan doesn't look surprised by the knock. He crosses to the door and opens it, and Mateo comes in first, still in his patrol jacket, moving with the brisk quiet of a guy who’s been outside and is bringing in information. Behind him, Nora, and behind Nora, Lila with her notebook tucked under her arm.
They arrange themselves in the cabin's small space with the particular quiet of a group that has been through significant moments before and knows how to hold them without making them bigger than they need to be.
"She knows," Logan says to the room.
"How much?" Mateo asks, looking at me directly.
"All of it," I interject before Logan can moderate the answer. "I know all of it. Or I know what he's told me, which apparently is all of it." I look around at each of them in turn. "Which means I have questions for all of you."
Mateo nods, unsurprised. Nora uncrosses her arms slightly. Lila opens her notebook.
"Mateo," I begin, because Mateo is the one who will give me the straightest answers, and I know that about him now. "The patrols. How long have you been running them?"
"Since before you arrived," he verifies. "The rotation intensified when we identified Dawson's investigators in the nearby towns. The extra people you noticed were pack members from the outer territory brought in to cover more ground."
"The businesses," I push. "The timber contracts, the land management. Those are real."
"Completely real," Mateo confirms. "Licensed, contracted, audited. Everything is above board. The operation supports the pack's livelihood and keeps the territory economically viable. It also gives us a reason to be here that the outside world accepts without question."
"And nobody who works with you externally?—"
"Knows what we are," Mateo states. "No."
I turn to Nora. "You've known since I arrived."
"Since before you arrived," she corrects, with the particular Nora energy of being honest even when honesty is complicated. "Logan told us about you the first morning."
"And you were—" I pause, working out what I'm actually asking. "You were welcoming. All of you. Immediately. That wasn't—that was real."
"That was completely real," Nora states, and there's a fierceness in it that lands differently than I expect. "You didn't need to be one of us for us to want you here. That's not how this works."
