Page 75 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
Garrett nods once, already standing to go.
"If Dawson's people attempt to access the property," Logan continues, "nobody engages first. We hold position, we document everything on camera, and we let him make the first move in front of witnesses." He holds the room. "He wants a confrontation that makes us look dangerous and Harper look like she needs rescuing. We are not giving him that footage."
"And if he pushes past the property line with his security?" Declan asks, direct and serious, the humor entirely absent.
"Then we meet him at the line," Logan states. "Fully. As a pack." He pauses, and there is something in the quality of it that makes the room very still. "If Dawson Whitaker steps onto Greyback territory with the intention of removing someone under our protection by force, he will find out exactly what that means." His eyes move around the room, landing on each face in turn. "We do not shift unless it becomes unavoidable. But we stand. Every one of us. Between him and Harper, for as long as it takes."
The room holds that for a long moment.
"Declan," Logan continues, "I want the main access gate secured and the secondary trail entrances physically blocked with the logging equipment. Nothing gets up this road by vehicle unless we let it."
"On it," Declan confirms, already moving toward the door.
Lila—medical supplies staged in the main lodge are accessible. I want your kit where you can get to it without going to the clinic."
"Already done," Lila says quietly from her end of the table.
"Harper." Logan looks at me last, and his voice is the same as it is for everyone else in this room—direct, clear, the voice he uses when something matters and he needs it understood. "You're not alone in this. Whatever he brings up on that road, he's bringing it to all of us."
I look back at him across the table.
"I know." Said plainly, because it is. "That's why I'm staying."
The meeting disperses with the calm, practiced economy of a group that has been here before—not in this exact situation, but in the essential shape of it, the moment when something that has been approaching from a distance finally arrives and requires a response rather than a contingency.
I stay at the table after the others leave, looking at the patrol map, running the approach routes in my head, the way I'd run an event layout—where are the pressure points, where are the gaps, where does the plan hold, and where does it need reinforcement.
Nora drops back in, grabs her coffee, and stops beside me.
"You doing okay?" she asks, in the direct way she asks everything.
I consider the question honestly. "I'm not scared of him," I say finally. "I think I should probably be more scared of him than I am."
"Why aren't you?"
I look at the patrol map. At the coverage, the observation posts, and the overlapping sight lines mean nothing comes up this mountain without the pack seeing it first. At the table, where I recently sat as a matter of course and not as a guest.
"Because I'm not alone this time," I answer.
Nora pauses and peers at me. Then she nods—the small, certain nod that means the matter is settled—and finishes her coffee and goes.
My eyes trace the map.
Dawson is forty minutes south with his security and his lawyers and his version of events, and he is about to find out that the woman he's been describing on national television as unstable and lost has spent the past several days building something he doesn't have a category for.
I'm ready.
28
LOGAN
The positions go in overnight.
I don't sleep much. Neither does Mateo, from the sound of his boots on the lodge porch at two in the morning when I'm already outside running the southern sightlines in my head for the fourth time. We don't say anything to each other—we don't need to. He goes east. I go south. We walk every approach route in the dark, checking angles, checking cover, checking everything that needs checking before the light comes up and makes all of it real.
By dawn, the operation is in place.
Mateo and Declan are posted at two separate points along the main logging road—far enough apart to cover both the primary approach and the secondary cutoff and close enough that radio communication between them is instant. They're in the treeline, both of them, invisible from the road and from any vehicle coming up it. Declan had accepted the assignment with the particular quiet that comes over him when something serious is actually happening, and the humor has been set completely aside.
