The house in the trees had a way of holding sunlight, catching it in the seams where cedar met steel. Panels across the roof drank a cold Montana morning and fed it into quiet batteries beneath the floorboards. A diesel generator sat on a concrete pad out back, a square hulk with a weather-stained hood, dormant unless called on. The forest breathed around it—thin frost on fir boughs, a jay heckling the world from a high branch, distant water finding stones in the Kootenai.
Thane stood on the porch and watched the line where green gave way to mountains. Cabinet peaks wore snow like careful crowns. He rested his forearms on the railing—scarred, fur a dark brown grizzled with gray—and let the cold work into his joints. It hadn’t bothered him in years, not really. The body healed, the blood remembered. But he liked the ritual of feeling it anyway. A small reminder that he was still here.
His medallion hung cold against his chest—wolf head, heavy and bright, on a black leather cord. The metal caught the morning. He felt the weight of it without looking.
Behind him, the door creaked open. A draft of heat and the bitter scent of coffee slipped out like a secret.
“Your watch,” Gabriel said, voice deep and amused, “is the least exciting show on Earth, and I’ve seen Mark reorganize Ethernet cables by color.”
Thane didn’t turn, but a part of his mouth wanted to smile. “My watch keeps you alive.”
“That too,” Gabriel said. A ceramic mug appeared at Thane’s elbow, steaming. A black paw—clawed, careful—balanced the handle as if it were a relic. Gabriel’s fur was pitch, his eyes a slice of winter sky. He was younger by decades and made of quicker lines, but he held still when he wanted to. He leaned his hip on the porch rail and watched the same mountains like he was listening for a line in a song.
“Town grid dipped for five seconds about an hour ago,” Gabriel said. “Came back before I could finish swearing.”
“Genset hiccup,” Thane said. “Freeze on the fuel line maybe.”
“Mark’s already writing it a love letter.”
“Of course he is.”
Inside, footsteps padded—soft, deliberate. Mark stepped into the doorway with a yellow notebook in one hand and a pencil tucked behind his ear. Gray fur with white edges framed a face that always looked on the verge of a mild, tolerant smile. “If the generator hiccups again,” he said, “they’re going to lose the south block. It’s a distribution thing—old breakers. I told Hank I’d come down after breakfast.”
Thane nodded once. He knew the beat of their mornings: Gabriel stoked the woodstove and brewed coffee like a ritual; Mark made lists and solved problems with pencils; Thane walked the edges and looked for trouble in the shape of birds taking flight all at once. It wasn’t the old world’s routine. It was better. Honest.
He took the mug and breathed it in. Coffee was a scarce, holy thing now. Gabriel had traded two spools of copper wire and a working inverter last month for a vacuum-sealed bag from a rancher who’d been hoarding beans since before RKV-23. It tasted like a memory of something simple.
“Town wants you at the morning meet,” Mark went on. “There were tracks up past the quarry road. Human. Two, maybe three. Hank’s deputies followed, lost ‘em at the river cut.”
Thane’s thumb tapped the mug. He glanced at Gabriel, and they didn’t need language for the small exchange that passed between them: I’ll go. I’m with you.
“Breakfast,” Thane said. He pushed off the railing, voice gravel as always—scar tissue turned to tone. Years ago, a blade had missed something essential by less than a breath. He spoke through that history every day. It suited an alpha. People listened.
They ate at the small table under the window—venison and rice from a sack they were stretching, a jar of late-summer pickles opened like a holiday. Mark’s notebook sat beside his plate; he drew a little schematic of the town’s grid between bites, arrows pointing from the generator building to a blocky cluster marked LIBBY CENTER.
“Comms are down again beyond line-of-sight,” Mark said. “The repeater on Blossom Ridge needs a new capacitor. I can cannibalize one from the saline pump we pulled out of that clinic.”
Gabriel’s ears tipped back. “I liked the pump. It was shiny.”
“You liked the switch,” Mark said, dry. “It had a satisfying click.”
“It did,” Gabriel admitted, the corner of his mouth pulling up. “Like a tiny door closing on your problems.”
“Repeaters before toys,” Thane said. He spoke it soft, and Gabriel’s eyes flicked to his and stayed a moment longer than necessary. The medallion at Gabriel’s throat flashed when he turned to skewer a piece of meat.
After dishes, Thane slung his pack and checked the Motorola clipped at his belt. “Channel three remains town,” he said. “Channel five for us.”
Gabriel waggled his own radio. “Check, check, hello future,” he said, playful, then sobered. “I’ll walk you in and cut to the ridge for that repeater with Mark.”
They took the path down from the house, a narrow vein between fir and pine, frosted needles snapping under bare pads. The earth smelled copper-cold and clean. Sun laid a honeyed line across the snow’s crust; Thane stepped through it like crossing an old boundary.
Libby had survived because it already knew how to be small and stubborn. Power still ran because water still fell and a handful of people cared enough to keep the turbines free of debris. The old world’s noise had tapered here into something almost musical—diesel engines, generator coughs, laughter that knew better than to be loud, the clean crack of an axe.
The town hall—once a library—wore a hand-painted sign that read COMMUNITY in block letters. Inside, a dozen souls gathered around a table scarred by maps and coffee cup rings. Hank, the sheriff who still wore a badge because someone ought to, nodded when Thane entered. A woman with a braid coiled like a rope around her head—Marta, part-time mayor—raised a hand in greeting.
“We had visitors,” Hank said without preamble. He pointed to a smudged map with a pencil. “Tracks along the quarry lane. We figure they came in at dusk, scouted, left when they didn’t like what they smelled.”
“And what did they smell?” Gabriel asked, pulling a chair around with a clawed toe and dropping into it, legs long, grin quick. He made the room’s edges soften without trying.
“Walls we actually watch,” Hank said. “Folks who’ve had breakfast. It puts people off these days.”
Thane studied the map. “Two or three?”
“Three,” Hank said. “One small. Might be a kid.”
Marta exhaled. “If they were only hungry, we’d make room.” She glanced at Thane. “If they’re scouting for more, we need you on the ridge tonight.”
“I’ll take the north run,” Thane said. “Mark’s got the repeater; he’ll be on the ridge at noon. Gabriel—”
“—watches your back,” Gabriel finished, bright. “And drinks all the coffee I can find.”
Marta’s mouth twitched. “We’re rationing.”
“Ration me hope and we’ll have trouble,” Gabriel said, but he lifted both hands in surrender. “Fine. Two cups. Maybe one and a half.”
The meeting rolled on—fodder stores, a flu case (not RKV-23; that word lived like a ghost in their silences), the broken pump at the shared well on Spruce Street. Thane took assignments the way he always did: with an economy of words and the promise of results.
They stepped back into thin sunlight. Across the street, two kids kicked at ice with boots too big for them. One looked up, saw Thane’s silhouette, and froze. That old fear flashed and faded. He raised a mittened hand. Thane dipped his chin, a small bow.
“Still weird sometimes,” Gabriel said softly. “Being the monster that fixes fences.”
“We are what we are,” Thane said. “We decide what that means.”
Mark joined them at the corner with a canvas bag slung crosswise. The top bulged with wire and something that clinked like metal against glass. “If I die,” he said, “tell my students I finally finished the thing with the thing.”
“You don’t have students,” Gabriel said.
“Everyone is my student,” Mark said, serene.
They cut across town and took the service road that climbed toward Blossom Ridge. Snow thinned and the sun grew teeth; they shed jackets and let the air touch their fur. The repeater tower stood like a prayer, a thin finger of latticework pointing nowhere.
Mark unlocked the equipment box with a key that had long ago stopped belonging to anyone official. Inside, the smell of baked dust rose. He squinted at the circuit board and made a pleased noise. “It is indeed the capacitor. Praise the gods of predictable failure.”
“I brought you a donor,” Gabriel said, producing the saline pump’s heart with a flourish. “Its click will live on in glory.”
They worked easily: Mark explaining, Gabriel handing tools, Thane posted at the edge of the clearing, eyes on the tree line, radio turned so he could feel it hum against his hip. A hawk drew a lazy line across the sky. When Mark soldered the replacement in place, the repeater’s tiny status light blinked from dead to green. Gabriel made the tiny door-click with his tongue and grinned.
“Channel check,” Mark said into his radio. “This is Ridge. Tell me I’m beautiful.”
Static, then Hank’s voice: “You’re beautiful, Ridge. South block just came back on. Marta says your student loan is forgiven.”
“I don’t have— Never mind.” Mark’s voice warmed. “Copy. Repeater online. We should see better handoffs between town and east pasture.”
They ate on the ridge—jerky, two apples, the last of a loaf that had gone brave. Gabriel picked up his battered acoustic from where it lived in a nylon sleeve lashed to his pack. He tuned by feel, claws careful, and played something with open strings and patient bones. The sound hung in the bright cold.
“Remember when the internet was a thing?” Gabriel said, half to the guitar. “You could type ‘how to fix your life’ and get twelve million answers in less than a second.”
“Most of them wrong,” Mark said. “But the speed was comforting.”
Thane said, “I miss not missing anything.”
Gabriel’s hands stilled on the strings. “Say that again.”
“I miss not missing anything,” Thane repeated. “Coffee didn’t need to be an adventure. Roads were just roads. You didn’t have to count bullets when you hated math.”
“We don’t use bullets,” Mark said, automatically.
“Exactly,” Thane said. Then he looked at them, both of them, and let the corner of his mouth shift. “I don’t miss everything.”
“There it is,” Gabriel murmured, and returned to the guitar, something light now, stubbornly joyful. It drifted out over the trees toward the town that had decided to survive and toward the mountains that would outlast all names.
The radio clicked.
“North watch, come in,” Hank’s voice said. “We’ve got motion at the quarry lane again. Small. Might be our visitors.”
Thane was already standing. “On our way,” he said. To Mark: “You good here?”
“I’m perfect here,” Mark said, peering into the equipment box like it held the secrets of time. “If I hear gunfire, I’ll…not come running. Because I’m smart.”
“No gunfire,” Thane said. “No need.”
Gabriel had the guitar slung and the pack shouldered in a single easy move. He fell in beside Thane, steps matching without thinking. As they dropped off the ridge path, the forest tightened, fir shadows crossing their fur like bars that never held. The town lay below, a patchwork of smoke and stubborn roofs.
At the curve above the quarry, Thane lifted a hand and Gabriel melted into the treeline with him. Down the lane, three figures moved cautiously—two adults and a child. The small one wore a too-big coat, sleeves flapping like flags. No weapons visible. Their heads jerked at every sound.
“Hungry,” Gabriel breathed.
Thane sniffed. Beneath the cold and resin and the iron of old machines, he found it: thin sweat, fear, exhaustion, the dry smell of sick that wasn’t RKV-23, just living hard.
“Let me go first,” Thane said. “You circle. If it turns south—”
“I know,” Gabriel said, and was gone, a dark shadow ghosting left.
Thane stepped out into the lane, hands open, claws empty, posture low. The adults froze. The child made a small sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob, eyes huge at the sight of him.
“We don’t want trouble,” the taller adult said. His voice shook around the edges, but he kept his shoulders over the child like a shield.
“You found the wrong town for trouble,” Thane said, and the gravel in his throat came out softer than usual. “You hungry?”
The man’s eyes flicked to the medallion at Thane’s throat and back to his face. He swallowed. “We heard…this place has lights at night,” he said. “We thought lights meant…something.”
“It means work,” Thane said. “It means staying. We can talk to the council. There are rules.”
“We can follow rules,” the man said too fast.
The radio clicked again, a thread of noise against the cold. Hank’s voice came filtered and small. “North watch, just so you know—we’re getting a weird carrier spike. Might be nothing. Might be…something. Mark’s chasing it.”
“Copy,” Thane said. He looked down at the kid, who stared at his hands like they were the most interesting knives in the world. “You like apples?” he asked.
The kid nodded, solemn as a judge.
Thane pulled the last one from his pack and put it into the small palms. “Welcome to Libby,” he said.
From the trees, Gabriel’s voice came, warm and easy: “We’ve got you.”
In the town below, a filament glow pulsed once along Main like a heartbeat. On Blossom Ridge, the repeater’s little green eye blinked, blinked, and then paused—a hiccup Mark didn’t see because he was frowning at a second light, one that wasn’t supposed to be there. It pulsed in a slow pattern, not town traffic, not radio drift. A signal tapping at the edge of their world like a polite, patient hand.
He wrote two words in his notebook before keying the mic.
Old network, the pencil scrawled.
Hello?