Page 61 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
Then Declan, from his usual spot near the back, raises one hand with the particular energy like he’s been waiting to say something for a long time now. "So we can stop pretending to be normal people?"
"You never managed that particularly convincingly," Nora quips from across the room.
A sound moves through the group that is somewhere between relief and laughter. I let it run for a moment because it's genuine and it's earned, and the pack has been carrying the weight of the secret alongside me without complaint.
"She asked good questions," Mateo adds, quieter, to the room. "She processed it the way you'd want someone to. Without panic, without running. She stayed in the room, and she asked for evidence, and when she got it, she accepted it." He pauses. "She's going to be alright."
"She's been alright," Declan corrects, and there's genuine warmth underneath the usual irreverence. "She's been morethan alright. She's been one of us since she stepped foot on the territory; we were merely the only ones who knew it."
"Finally, the Alpha's mate knows the whole truth," Nora announces, making no effort to hide her satisfaction—she has been longing for this exact development, and everyone in the room knows it. "Things are going to be considerably less complicated around here."
A murmur of agreement moves through the room. Someone near the back says something I don't catch that makes the people around them laugh, and I feel the pack's collective exhale—all this time of careful management, partial truths, and deliberate silences, and now all of it lifting in the particular way things lift when the thing you've been bracing for turns out to be the thing you were hoping for.
I hold the room's attention for a moment longer, letting the welcome settle.
"There's more," I announce.
The room refocuses.
I nod to Mateo, who steps forward with the particular directness he brings to intelligence reports—no padding, exclusively the shape of what he knows.
"Private investigators have been active in the nearby towns for the past several days," he reports. "We've confirmed two separate firms. They're questioning locals—gas stations, diners, the hardware stores that see through traffic. The specific question they're asking is whether anyone saw a woman in a wedding dress or an abandoned white Subaru near the mountain road." He pauses. "They have photographs. One of them matches Harper. One of them matches her car."
The room is very quiet.
"How close are they to the logging road access?" Garrett inquires from his usual spot near the wall.
"The south town is the most active," Mateo answers. "If they're working systematically, the logging road access is their next logical step. The southern approach is the most likely route they'll take."
"Then we make sure they don't find it useful," I state. "Garrett. I need cameras on every logging road entrance. All of them. Motion-activated, feeding to the main monitor. If a vehicle we don't recognize turns onto this mountain, I want to know about it before it reaches the bridge."
Garrett nods once, already calculating. "I can have the south entrance done by tonight. The east access will take until tomorrow morning."
"Do the south first," I confirm. "That's the approach."
I turn to Nora. "Southern ridge patrol teams. I want rotating coverage—younger wolves, fresh legs, people who know that terrain in both forms. Day and night rotation. The southern ridge is where we're most exposed and where investigators will probably enter from, and I want it covered properly."
Nora is already pulling out her phone, pulling up the schedule she's been running in her head since the moment I started talking. "I've got six people I can put on that rotation right now," she announces. "I can have a full schedule built by noon."
"Build it," I instruct. "And Nora, make sure everyone on the southern teams knows what they're doing and why. I want eyes, not confrontation. If investigators reach the ridgeline, we document, and we withdraw. Nobody shifts anywhere near a camera."
"Understood," Nora confirms, already typing.
"Expanded patrols on the east trail and the logging road itself," I continue, moving through the logistics the way I have moved through them for six years — efficiently, without wasted motion. "Mateo will coordinate the schedule. Any unfamiliarvehicles, any unfamiliar faces on the approach roads, any investigators making contact with anyone connected to this property—I want to know within ten minutes."
The pack absorbs this without resistance. That's the thing about the Greybacks—they don't argue with a clear threat and a clear plan. They execute. It's one of the things I love most about them and have relied on most heavily in the years since my father put this territory in my hands.
The meeting runs another twenty minutes through specifics—communication protocols, what to do if contact is made, and who covers which approach in which shift. By the time it breaks up, the room has the particular settled energy of people who know exactly what they're doing and why.
As the pack files out, I catch Mateo's arm.
"Stay," I murmur.
He does.
We wait until the lodge empties, and then Mateo leans against the table with his arms crossed and looks at me with the intensity that means he already knows what I'm about to raise and has already formed his position on it.
"I want to consider moving Harper out of the territory," I open, keeping my voice level. "Get Garrett to take her somewhere quiet—a town they haven't reached yet, somewhere she can sit tight while we deal with Dawson's people."
