Page 12 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
"Tell them she's not ready for all of them at once," I say. "A few people. Controlled. And nobody says anything they shouldn't."
Mateo nods. "I'll handle it."
He stops on the path and looks back at me. The sky behind him is beginning to pale at the edges, that first thin shift from black to gray that happens before the world decides to notice.
"Mateo." He waits. "Thank you. For all of it."
He holds my gaze for a moment, and whatever he finds there makes something in his demeanor go quiet and genuine in a way he doesn't show often. "Don't mention it," he says. "Get inside. She'll be up soon."
He turns and walks into the trees, and I listen until I can't hear his footsteps anymore.
When I get back inside,the note is still on the counter where I left it.
I pick it up and look at it for a moment—backbefore morning, door's unlocked—and then fold it once and push it to the bottom of the trash. She's still asleep. She doesn't need to know I was gone; she doesn't need to start her morning piecing together where and why I went, on top of everything else she's already carrying. It's early. The least I can do is let her wake up to something that looks ordinary.
I put the kettle on, lean against the counter, and listen to the cabin settle around me. The fire is going. The sky outside the window is starting to pale at the edges. Upstairs, she's deep in it still—the same steady breath as an hour ago.
I pull down two mugs.
I stand there for a moment looking at them—the automatic assumption of it and the way my hands moved without asking my permission—and I leave them both where they are.
One thing at a time.
5
HARPER
Iwake up not knowing where I am.
It lasts about three seconds—that particular blank panic of an unfamiliar ceiling, unfamiliar light, and unfamiliar weight of a quilt that isn't mine—and then it all comes back in a single, organized rush. The venue. The east wing corridor. The drive. The mountain. The cabin. The man who answered the door and saidit's alrightlike he meant it.
I lie still for a moment, stare at the ceiling, and take inventory.
I'm alive. I'm warm. I'm in a stranger's guest room on a mountain I couldn't find on a map, wearing clothes that belong to someone twice my size, and outside the window, the sky is the particular pale gold of early morning in a place that has never heard of light pollution. I can see the tops of the pine trees from the bed, dark green against the brightening sky, moving slightly in a wind I can't hear yet.
It's genuinely beautiful, which feels like a rude thing to notice given the circumstances.
I sit up, push my hair back, and get on with it.
Downstairs, the fire is going, the kettle is on, and Logan is in the kitchen with two mugs already out, which does something small and unexpected to my chest that I don't examine. He looks up when I come down the stairs—that same steady gray attention, taking stock without making a production of it.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning." I stop at the bottom of the stairs and look around the cabin in daylight for the first time. It's different from how it was last night—less overwhelming, more itself. The bookshelves are packed with a mix of field guides and worn paperbacks. The stone hearth takes up most of the far wall. Through the kitchen window, I can see the treeline, close and dense, and beyond the porch, the beginning of a clearing that I couldn't make out in the dark last night.
No road. No other buildings. No visible sign of anything resembling a town in any direction.
"How far are we from—" I pause. "From anywhere?"
"Nearest town is about forty minutes down the mountain." He sets a mug on the counter in front of me. "No shortcuts."
I wrap both hands around the mug and look out the window again. Forty minutes. I think about that for a moment—and then, underneath the obvious inconvenience of it, something else moves through me entirely. Forty minutes means no one will show up at the door. Forty minutes means the phone calls and the questions, and Dawson's carefully constructed version of yesterday can't reach me yet. A couple of days with a broken car on a mountain—I'm not on any map means I can breathe before I have to figure out what comes next.
I take a sip of coffee and decide that's not the worst thing.
"My car," I say.
"Garrett has it."
