Author: Thane Page 6 of 9

By the time the last nails were hammered and the final boards replaced, Libby looked almost untouched by war. The square smelled of soap and smoke; roofs gleamed under a clean dusting of snow. No scorch marks, no wreckage. Even the gouges in the dirt road had been filled in. It was the kind of normal that people build after chaos—thin, maybe, but determined.

Marta called a town-hall meeting that afternoon.
The benches were full, and the mood felt different now—tired but proud. Hank’s deputies leaned along the back wall, rifles slung. Thane came in last, the two massive ferals trailing him like thunderclouds. Holt and Rime didn’t speak; they didn’t need to. The chuckles from the benches came easy and nervous—Libby had gotten used to its Alpha having two shadows.

Marta tapped her clipboard. “Alright. Libby’s standing again. But we need to talk about Glendive.”

The room went still.

Hank cleared his throat. “They’ll think we’re weak if we just patch the walls and sit here. Voss sent those men. He’s still breathing.”

“We could send a message,” one farmer said carefully. “Not revenge. Just… a reminder.”

A few heads nodded. “Make them think twice next time.”

Eyes turned to Thane. He leaned back against the wall, arms folded, listening. Everyone expected him to end the idea before it started. Mercy had been his banner since the day he’d walked into Libby.

Instead, he said, “A message sounds right.”

Marta blinked. “You’re agreeing?”

“I am,” Thane said. “No fire, no killing. Just fear. Enough to keep them home.”

That pulled a murmur through the room—half surprise, half relief.

Sable sat near the window, white fur silver in the late light. Her voice carried clear and calm. “We move night. Only Voss. No others. He wake small. We leave before sun.”

Mark gave a low whistle. “We can handle power and comms. Gabriel and I’ll make sure their whole town blinks out like someone pulled the plug.”

Gabriel smirked. “Just long enough to get everyone jumpy. They’ll have no idea what hit ‘em.”

“Good,” Thane said. “Do it clean. Leave no trace.”

---

The days leading up to the mission were quiet and precise. Holt and Rime took night runs, learning the edges of Glendive’s defenses. Mark and Gabriel mapped power lines and radio towers, whispering back and forth in easy conversation—joking one minute, engineering the next. “We kill the juice at 0200, get a full blackout for twenty,” Mark said, tracing an invisible line in the air.
“Plenty,” Gabriel replied. “They’ll think it’s the end of the world… again.”

When the moon came thin and bright, they moved.

Libby stayed lit, its fires steady, while the pack vanished into the forest. Pads pressed snow; claws ticked on frozen grit. Sable’s northern ferals joined silently—ghosts among trees. Mark and Gabriel worked in the dark like men tuning a guitar: steady hands, quiet voices, perfect timing. A quick twist of wire, a single pull, and Glendive’s lights went out all at once. Radios sighed into silence. Pumps stopped. The town slept inside its own heartbeat.

Thane and the wolves crossed into Glendive’s edge. They entered only one house—the one with the warmest chimney, where Garrick Voss, self-proclaimed commander of the Black Winter, slept heavy and sure. A black bag went over his head, ropes followed, and within moments he was dragged into the dark without a single alarm.

No one in Libby saw a thing.
No one in Glendive knew—yet.

---

They tied him between four young pines at the camp just outside town. The ropes were thick, the knots expert. When the hood came off, he was staring into firelight and a circle of faces that made the night feel small.

Thane stood in front of him, arms loose at his sides.
Sable watched with that steady, predator’s calm.
Holt and Rime loomed like carved figures at the fire’s edge, silent and waiting.

Voss tried to snarl, but his voice cracked. “You can’t do this—”

Thane’s gaze never wavered. “You sent men to raid Libby. They died. So did some of ours. You built Black Winter on fear. Tonight, you learn it.”

“You think I’m scared of a few mutts?” he spat, forcing a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes.

Holt moved in one step, no words—just a growl low in his chest. He gripped the rope at Voss’s wrist and pulled until it strained. Rime mirrored the motion at the opposite arm, slow and deliberate, stretching the man’s frame tight. Voss grunted, legs trembling.

Thane’s voice was soft, but it carried the weight of command. “You feel that? That’s how easy you were to take. Your men slept while we walked into your town.”

Voss tried a laugh, desperate and hollow. “You’re bluffing.”

“Try me,” Thane said.

Holt leaned close, breath hot against the man’s face. “You want know how hard we pull?” His tone wasn’t mocking—it was measured, dangerous. “We find out.”

Rime’s claws pressed against the rope, tightening it just enough to make the man gasp. The campfire hissed.

Voss broke. “Wait—please! I’ll stop the raids! I’ll—”

Thane didn’t move. “You’ll trade. Fairly. You’ll leave Libby alone. You’ll tell your people to leave every other town alone. You’ll stop pretending you’re building something when you’re just stealing.”

Voss’s head jerked in frantic nods. “Yes! I swear it!”

Thane tilted his head slightly. “Louder.”

“I SWEAR IT!” His voice tore the quiet forest.

Sable’s expression didn’t change. “Good,” she said softly. “He mean it now.”

Holt gave one last deliberate jerk on the rope, hard enough to make Voss yelp—a punctuation mark. Then he looked over his shoulder at Thane.

Thane stepped forward until his shadow swallowed the man. “Go home. Tell them we came once. If they try again, we won’t stop at lessons.”

He gave Holt and Rime a subtle nod. The ropes went slack. Voss collapsed onto the snow, chest heaving. Holt hauled him upright by the collar and shoved him toward the dark line of trees.

“Run,” Holt said.

Voss stumbled, then ran—bare feet slipping, half-falling into the dark until the night swallowed him whole.

The wolves stood still until even the sound of his panic faded.
Then Holt exhaled, rolled his shoulders, and let out a deep, rumbling laugh.

“Did you see eyes?!” he said.

Rime grunted, a dry noise that might’ve been approval.

Gabriel appeared from the shadows, brushing snow off his sleeves. “We’re good. Power and comms will come back on in half an hour. They’ll wake up confused as hell.”

Mark smirked. “Perfect. By the time he makes it home, they’ll be wondering why he looks like he saw ghosts.”

Thane nodded once. “Good work.”

---

By dawn, Glendive’s lights blinked back on, street by street. Radios hissed to life, pumps groaned awake. The people found their leader stumbling back through the snow, trembling, eyes wide. He didn’t speak of what had happened, only barked orders that no one should ever go near Libby again. No one argued.

Back home, Libby’s morning began like any other.
The smell of baking bread.
A pair of kids racing through the square.
Holt and Rime sitting outside the café, mugs of coffee steaming in their paws. Holt nudged Rime. “Could done it,” he muttered with a grin. “Messy, though.”

Rime’s ear flicked. “Next time maybe.”

Thane overheard them as he passed and shook his head, smiling faintly. “You two are hopeless.”

They both laughed, low and rumbling, and went back to their mugs.

Marta found Thane near the well. “It’s done?”

“It’s done,” he said simply.

She studied him. “And?”

“And they’ll stay put,” Thane said. “Fear travels fast.”

Her nod was quiet approval. “Then we can breathe again.”

That night, Thane sat in the radio station with Sable standing beside him. The faint hum of the old console filled the silence.

“You think he remember?” she asked.

“Oh, he’ll remember,” Thane said. “Every time the lights flicker, he’ll wonder if we’re coming back.”

Sable huffed softly—maybe amusement, maybe respect. “You bent branch,” she said. “Did not break.”

Thane let the words settle. “Let’s hope it stays bent.”

Outside, Libby slept in peace.
Inside, the wolves watched over the lights they’d kept burning.
And far to the east, Garrick Voss sat awake in a warm room, hearing phantom sounds in the wind, certain that somewhere in the dark, claws were waiting.

The town of Libby smelled of smoke and iron. The kind of scent that clung deep in fur and memory, the kind that didn’t wash out for weeks. The snow had stopped falling, but flakes still drifted from the trees, shaken loose by the wind or the quiet tread of wolves moving among the ruins. Everywhere, steam rose where blood met the cold. The battlefield was turning to silence.

Thane stood near the southern barricade, a blackened rifle slung across his shoulder and a half-healed gash under one arm. He looked like a statue carved from stormcloud and grit, watching humans and wolves alike move through the wreckage. The raider trucks were burnt-out husks now, their twisted frames already crusted with frost. Crows circled overhead, waiting for the living to finish tending the dead.

He let out a breath that turned white in the air. Beside him, Gabriel limped slightly, one arm bound and singed but still carrying his guitar case like a relic. Mark was crouched near a shattered inverter bank, running his fingers along the bent metal as if taking inventory of what could be saved. Holt was there too — huge, scarred, and bandaged from ribs to shoulder — grinning despite it all, holding a steaming mug of something that smelled like burnt tea. “No coffee,” Gabriel had warned him, and for once Holt hadn’t argued.

“You did it, Alpha,” Holt said hoarsely. “We held the line.”

Thane didn’t smile, but something softened in his eyes. “We did.”

He started walking, slow and deliberate, pads pressing the crusted snow, claws ticking softly against frozen grit.

“Twenty-three wounded,” she said quietly. “Six dead. Could’ve been the whole damn town.”

Thane’s gaze swept across the square. Wolves carried planks, humans patched walls. One of Sable’s northern ferals was gently hauling a beam off a trapped mechanic. Another knelt by an old woman, brushing snow from her shoulders. “Could’ve been,” he said. “But it wasn’t.”

From behind them, a low, resonant throat-note rolled through the air — the kind only a wolf could shape, breath and chest humming in one steady line. Rime stood atop the town well, wind tugging his pale fur, letting the sound drift long and low like a wordless prayer. One by one the wolves answered, and the square filled with a quiet chorus — a mourning howl, low and beautiful, rising over the town like smoke.

Thane closed his eyes for a moment and let the sound wash through him. We are still here. That’s what it meant. Always had.

Sable approached from the northern street, her white fur stained with soot, one ear torn. She carried her spear like a staff now, using it for balance. A handful of her pack trailed behind her, limping but alive. She stopped beside Thane and stood in silence for a long while, both of them watching the wolves howl over the dead.

“You were right.”

Thane didn’t turn. “About what?”

“Mercy,” she said. “And strength. I once thought they could not live in same den. But I saw it today.” She looked around at the square — wolves and humans working side by side. “Your kind of hard saved lives. Mine would have burned all.”

Thane gave a small nod. “Your kind of hard kept us alive long enough to make mercy matter. We needed both.”

Sable’s muzzle twitched, a ghost of a smile. “Then both right, maybe. Both still breathing.”

He extended a hand — claws blunt but steady — and after a pause, she clasped it. Her paw was rough, the grip iron. The moment lasted longer than a handshake; it was an oath, spoken without words. When they released, there was no doubt left between them.

Gabriel’s voice cut through the cold air. “Hey! Holt’s claiming he single-handedly scared off a truckload of raiders by flexing.”

Thane turned, one brow raised. Holt puffed out his chest, mock-serious. “Wasn’t a flex. Just breathed real big.”

Rime chuckled, a rare, deep sound that shook frost from his whiskers. “They fled the scent alone.”

Even Sable laughed — a short bark, but it carried real warmth. The tension cracked like ice under sunlight. For a moment, Libby felt alive again.

Mark straightened from his work beside the power lines and came over, rubbing his palms together. “I can patch this whole southern grid in two days,” he said, nodding toward the cables. “Maybe one, if we don’t sleep.”

“You won’t,” Gabriel muttered.

Mark ignored him. “After that, we’ll run the generator for the clinic first. Then water pumps. Once we’ve got enough juice, we can bring the radio back up.”

“The radio’s alive,” Gabriel said with a grin. “Barely. She’s purring under a blanket of duct tape and prayer.”

Thane’s mouth twitched. “Then we’ll let her purr.”

For the next few hours, the work continued — slow, steady, and strangely peaceful. The wolves cleared debris with their strength, hauling twisted metal and lumber into piles while the humans sorted salvageable parts. Marta set up soup pots near the fire pits. Holt stationed himself beside one of them, “supervising” in the loosest possible sense, making the children laugh with exaggerated stories of how he “caught a truck” midair. Every now and then, Rime would mutter a quiet correction, which Holt dramatically ignored.

By midafternoon, the snow had started again — light, clean flakes this time, not ash-laden. The world softened. Burnt wood turned to gray velvet. Thane walked through it all, silent, checking in with each group. Every nod, every whispered “Alpha” or “sir” was met with the same calm look. He carried his pain quietly; the bandage under his coat was spotted with red again, but he didn’t slow.

Sable joined him on the walk. “You could rest,” she said.

“So could you.”

She huffed a faint breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Fair trade.” Her eyes moved over the rebuilding effort. “You build more than walls here. They follow because you see them — all of them. Few leaders do.”

He glanced her way, expression unreadable. “Seeing is the easy part. Keeping them fed through winter — that’s the real trick.”

She gave a small, tired smile. “You will manage. You have wolves, humans… and one giant who thinks himself made of stone.”

At that, Holt sneezed loudly enough to startle two pigeons off the roof.

When dusk fell, the survivors gathered in the square. Fires burned low in barrels, the flames reflected in tired eyes. Marta stepped forward first, holding a small metal plate. She set it down near the base of the old flagpole, which now flew a tattered white cloth — neutral, peace-born. One by one, people followed, placing tokens — a spent casing, a scrap of fur, a wrench, a ribbon. A memorial, improvised but real.

Thane waited until the last had stepped back. Then he approached the pile and placed one thing: a bent radio knob, burned and cracked. The room control dial from the KLMR console. He rested his paw on it for a heartbeat. “They fought as pack,” he said quietly. “And that’s how we remember them.”

No one spoke. The only sound was the snow whispering against roofs.

Finally, Marta turned toward him. “You should say something.”

Thane’s gaze lingered on the small pile of mementos. Then he faced the gathered crowd. “The storm came,” he said simply, voice rough but steady. “And found us standing together.”

He let it hang there — no grand speech, no rally cry. Just truth. The wolves bowed their heads. The humans stood straighter. The fire cracked and hissed.

Later, when the crowd began to disperse, Gabriel touched his arm. “You should do the sign-off.”

Thane gave a slow nod. Together, they walked through the quiet streets to the rebuilt radio shack. The door creaked open, letting in the faint hum of the old analog board. Mark had managed to patch it together again — one channel humming, the red light half-broken but still glowing faintly. Rime and Holt followed them inside, watching curiously.

Thane sat, adjusting the cracked headphones, claws brushing dials like old friends. The smell of dust and warm circuitry filled the air. He cleared his throat, and the mic crackled.

“KLMR-FM,” he said softly, “broadcasting from Libby.”

Static hissed in reply, then steadied.

He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a near whisper that carried the weight of the day. “To anyone listening… we are still here.”

Gabriel reached out and turned the music fader just enough to let a slow instrumental roll in — something soft, clean, full of light. The notes drifted out into the cold night, over the mountains and through the trees, carried on invisible airwaves.

Outside, Sable’s wolves heard it first. They stopped their patrols and lifted their heads, ears turning toward the sound. In homes and cabins, humans stilled, listening to the faint echo through battered transistor radios. The signal wasn’t strong, but it was enough.

The howl rose again — dozens of voices, north and south, meeting in harmony over the snow. Wolves and humans stood together, faces to the wind, the music and the howls merging until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Thane sat back, eyes closed, letting the sound wrap around him. Holt leaned against the wall with a tired smile. Rime bowed his head. Gabriel exhaled, shoulders finally dropping.

For the first time in days, there was peace.

Outside, the fires burned low, casting soft orange halos against the snow. The ash that had choked the sky was gone now, washed clean by the storm’s end. Above, the moon hung pale and perfect, and the world — what was left of it — seemed to breathe again.

And in the quiet heart of the town, the Alpha of Libby whispered to himself, a promise carried only by the wind.

“Little by little,” he said. “The world gets better.”

Snow didn’t fall so much as tear itself to pieces in the wind. It came in white veils that ripped and knit and ripped again, swallowing the east road until the world was nothing but motion and sound: engines straining, men shouting, rifles coughing, wolves howling. The barricade had lost its clean lines and become a humped, ragged thing of logs and cars and packed snow; beyond it, the trucks sat on their chains like wounded animals, noses buried, metal ticking in the cold.

Thane moved along the inside face with Holt on his right and Rime on his left, a steadying heat at his shoulders. Pain lived under his scar like a lit coal, but it didn’t own him. Each breath burned and cleared, burned and cleared. Visibility collapsed and opened in pulses; men were silhouettes, then faces, then silhouettes again, muzzles flaring in white flashes that left afterimages on the eye.

The first clash after the charge was teeth and timing. Sable’s wolves hit the raider flank like a winter landslide—werewolf bodies slamming through powder, claws cutting, breath smoking. Gunfire climbed to a panicked clatter and then broke into the short, ugly barks of men who could no longer see what they were shooting at. A sled went end over end and vanished; a man stumbled and spun and disappeared in a spray of snow as a white wolf hooked him by the belt and dragged him out of the lane. Thane saw Sable once through a torn seam in the storm—her fur rimed silver, her eyes bright and narrow as she flowed around two men who tried to brace back-to-back and took them both down with a low, efficient sweep that looked like grace until you saw what it did.

“Hold the center,” Thane said, not into the radio, just aloud, so Holt and Rime could take the order from his ribs and not his mouth. Holt bared his teeth and nodded, shoulders hunching in that way he had before he put something heavy where it needed to be. Rime had already moved—calm as a metronome, eyes soft and distant the way they went when the world slowed for him. He caught a raider’s forearm as the man tried to climb the wrecked bumper of a sedan, rolled his wrist, and let the man’s own momentum lay him down in the snow. No drama. No waste.

On the tower, Gabriel became a shadow among cables and rails, breath fogging, headset cable looped under his collar so it wouldn’t snag. Bullets pinged against the struts, and the whole structure shivered once, twice, like something big breathing. He kept one eye on the cables feeding the floodlamps Mark had wired to the switchboard and the other on the thin runnels of men trying to snake through cover toward the square. When the next wave surged, he flipped the breaker.

Day exploded along the wall.

Light roared out across the churned street—cold and hard and flat, washing the storm to a shining sheet and freezing raiders in mid-step. Men squinted and turned their heads, guns dropping a fraction. For that half-breath, wolves moved like ink in water. Holt went from shadow to shape, covering ten yards in two strides; a man swung his rifle butt and found only air as Holt slid under the blow and rose with both paws into the man’s ribs, lifting and throwing together in a motion that felt like a trick until the man hit the hood of a truck and folded. Kira took a knee behind a half-buried tire and used it like a spring, pouncing into the back of a raider who had just realized his gun was empty, pinning him with a forearm to the neck while her other paw calmly swept his sidearm into the snow.

“Good morning,” Gabriel said into the mic, wild with adrenaline. “Enjoy the sunrise.”

Thane didn’t answer. He had a man by the collar and the belt and was turning him sideways to put him on the safe side of the barricade without breaking him. Mercy when there was time. Teeth when there wasn’t. A ping struck the plate by his ear and sang along his jaw; he felt the shot in his teeth. The second ping hit lower, too close to deliberate to call luck.

“Sniper’s back,” he said over the net. “East cut, ten degrees right of the big pine. He’s ranging off the plate.”

Gabriel leaned into the rail, counted the beat between that careful tap-tap he’d learned to hear, and let the next ping be his metronome. On the pause, he leaned out and stitched three rounds into the darkness where the trees looked a shade too heavy. The storm flinched. A voice out there swore once, small and human. The careful rhythm stopped.

Down at the powerhouse, Mark worked like a man playing two pianos with one hand. He had the generator humming at a notch it didn’t like and the substation relays covered in frost that kept trying to build a bridge to ground, and he had no patience left for either. He hammered a cover plate back in with the heel of his palm and read the needles with a squint. They told him everything he needed: load steady; surge capacity in reserve; breakers warm but not hot. He put his mouth to the radio and breathed into it like it might hear him better if it felt his lungs. “East grid steady. If they breach the yard, I black it all.” He paused and added, softer, “You better not let them breach the yard.”

“Working on it,” Thane said.

The big truck that had been stalled on the rope found a grudging inch and then another. The wedge shoved snow and twisted caltrops aside with small complaining clinks. A man behind it with a crowbar shouted and waved, a foolish little victory that had death already running toward it. Hank’s men came up with a fuel barrel on a dolly and let gravity take it, the rope snubbing it tight against the truck’s nose. They backed away fast, shoulders bumping, one of them tripping and the others catching him by habit more than design.

“Don’t light it,” Thane said, even as the idea rose in four minds at once. “We might want the heat later.”

Someone behind him laughed in a hard, surprised way that came out more like a cough. You found room for jokes where you could. It meant you still owned the shape of your mouth.

The fight lengthened. The first shock broke, as shocks do, and the thing became a grind: pressure applied, pressure answered, the field tilting in slow degrees. The raiders tried to flow around the right flank and found the ice glaze under the powder there, went down on knees and elbows and made frantic snow angels with their guns. They tried the left and found Ari waiting in the lee of the hardware store; she moved like a dancer, all lean lines and angles, and left a trail of men sitting down hard and wondering why their hands didn’t work anymore. They tried the ladder on the tower and learned that a clawed foot at the right time can carry a sermon.

Then the grenade came.

It was small and handmade, a Mason jar baptized in gasoline and love, lit with a rag and thrown from too close. It hit the tower’s lower platform and burst into a sudden, hungry clamor that licked up the railings and bit at the cable bundles in orange teeth. Gabriel swore and went down hard, rolling to smother the jacket that had decided to be a torch. A second jar arced in, wobbling, lazy-looking because the man who threw it didn’t understand the wind.

Holt did.

He moved before anyone could say his name. One bound took him to the tower leg, the second put him between the falling jar and the cable run. He swatted the thing aside with a paw like a man bats at a wasp and took the blow on his flank when it burst—flame, glass, the fast, ugly chew of shrapnel. He went down on his shoulder, rolled, and came up on one knee with his teeth bared in a sound that made three men who had not thrown anything decide this wasn’t their job anymore.

Thane slid to him on both knees, snow piling up against his shins. “Holt!”

“Still strong,” Holt said through his teeth. He tried to grin and made a grimace. “Not dead.”

“Keep it that way.” Thane pressed a paw over the worst of it. The cuts were ragged but shallow; the heat had singed fur but not cooked flesh. A human would have needed stitches. A wolf needed time. Holt’s breath slowed, not because it hurt less, but because he remembered not to show he minded. Thane looked up the tower and shouted without the radio, voice carrying through the metal. “He’s fine! Work!”

Gabriel leaned over the rail, pale for a black wolf, eyes too wide. He held up a hand, fingers shaking from adrenaline, and gave a sloppy thumbs-up. Then he turned back to the breaker and did the work in front of him because the work in front of him was what kept men alive.

The battle wobbled and surged. Rime took a round through the thigh and didn’t make a sound; he went down and came up limping, kicked a gun away without bending, and waved off the hands that reached to drag him back. Kira came out of the drift just long enough to haul an injured volunteer by his jacket collar to the second line and push him into Marta’s waiting hands. Marta didn’t flinch at the blood or the sound; she packed a wound and swatted the man’s shoulder and he went back out because her eyes didn’t leave space for anything but obedience.

Sable and Thane found each other midway through the worst of it. It happened the way it always did with them: the storm tore open for a second and there she was, her fur rimed white and her mouth a red stroke, moving like a thing the wind had sharpened; and there he was, scar hot and eyes cold, standing where the line was thin because he wouldn’t stand anywhere else. They came together without words and turned their separate fights into one. She took high ground—a drifted hood, a step onto a bumper, a leap to the cab roof—cutting down into the men who thought elevation made them safe. He went low, threading through axles and ankles, an old street-brawler’s knowledge wrapped in a wolf’s speed, taking feet from under bodies and leaving those bodies to wiser heads.

A raider tried to rush Thane with a knife and the vestigial idea of heroism. Thane knocked the blade hand aside, stepped into the man’s chest, and put him down gently because something in the man’s eyes said he’d been following orders he had talked himself into believing were sensible. Sable swept past and put her paw on the knife hand with weight enough to explain the lesson without blood. The man went still and let go. “Good boy,” she said without looking at him, and he didn’t know what to do with the warmth in the words so he just breathed.

On the ridge above the substation, one of Hank’s spotters—old Frank with the good eye—ran out of the .30-06 rounds he’d hoarded since before the fall and switched to watching with binoculars. “They’re thinning,” he said into the radio, voice dry, like he was remarking on a river level. “Not because they want to. Because they have to.”

“Let them,” Hank said. “We don’t chase.”

Men who could stand started standing fewer to a group. A hand went up here, then another there. Someone shouted “back!” with a voice that had held orders before and found no purchase now. The big truck groaned and shut itself off with a series of reluctant coughs that sounded like surrender. The floodlamps threw the field into a sharp, cruel kind of honesty.

“Hold,” Thane called. “Weapons down. No rush. No hero moves.”

Holt, pink with heat under the burn and stinking of gasoline, took one step forward and then stopped when Thane’s paw found his shoulder. “Mercy,” Thane said, not as a rule now but as a reminder. Holt’s throat worked. He nodded once, stiff as if the motion hurt.

The last of the gunfire snapped and died like a string breaking. In the sudden quiet, the town’s noises returned: the hiss of wind along the wire; the single clank of a loose sign in the gusts; someone sobbing sharp and quick and being shushed by a voice that belonged to a friend. Wolves moved through the field, not hunting now, but sorting: weapons one way, wounded another, dead to a third place out of the road. Humans did the same on their side of the barricade, faces flat with that unheroic courage that lets hands keep doing while heads are loud.

Hank came up with his hat lost and his hair full of ice. He looked at Thane, then at Sable, and let out a breath he’d been saving since the first movement on the ridge. “We held.”

“We did,” Thane said. “You did. They’ll run east.”

“They’ll tell Voss,” Hank said, already annoyed at the idea.

“Good,” Thane said. “I want him to know the first bite drew blood from his own mouth.”

Sable stood half-turned to the trees, chest still heaving in a rhythm that was slowing. Her pack arrayed behind her in a rough crescent, shapes ghosting in and out of the lifted snow. She looked at Thane with an expression that belonged to wolves before language and to people after it. “Your town fights like it wants to live.”

“They do,” he said. “They learned how.”

“From you?”

“From each other,” he said, and then, because some truths needed their full names, “and from us.”

Something gentled in her eyes, then sharpened. “You were almost taken,” she said, meaning the bullet that had moved him out of the world and then not.

“I was,” he said.

“Don’t be again,” she said, as if that were a thing he could file with the day’s orders.

“I’ll add it to the list,” he said, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

Gabriel came down the tower ladder one rung at a time because his legs had become theory for a minute. His coat smelled like smoke and singed hair, and there was a black line across his cheek where a cable had kissed him. He looked at Holt first. Holt bared his teeth in what he thought was a grin and failed at subtlety. “Still pretty?” Holt asked, the words rough-edged.

“Too pretty for this town,” Gabriel said, and put his forehead to Holt’s for one quick press that meant I saw you jump and I’m going to pretend to be mad later so you won’t do it again, but I’m grateful now.

Mark limped up from the powerhouse with two fingers blistered and an expression of someone who had won an argument with physics and intended to dine out on it. “Grid’s stable,” he said. “Took a bite out of their truck’s batteries and gave it back to the ground like the old days at the station. If the lights flicker, it’s because I asked them to.”

“Good,” Thane said. “Find anything that looks like it could blow and make it less so.”

“That,” Mark said dryly, “is my whole personality.”

Marta emerged from behind the second barrier with a streak of someone else’s blood on her sleeve and a list already forming in her head. She looked at the bodies in the snow and at the ones still breathing and adjusted the list. “We’ll need a tally,” she said to no one in particular and everyone who could hear. “And a meal. And a fire that isn’t made out of a truck.”

“We’ll have all three,” Thane said.

“Of course we will,” she said, and moved to the next problem.

By late day, the wind lost its edge and fell into a long, sulking hiss that sounded like a kettle left on the back of a stove. The floodlights clicked off one by one and the gray world came back, not kinder, just less bright. The wounded were laid out in rows in the community hall, wolves curled near their human friends in ways that would have seemed like a story a month ago and now seemed like sense. Sable’s pack took the northern treeline and drifted along it like a weather front, eyes on the empty spaces between trees. Hank’s men walked the rounds with their chins tucked into their collars and their hands the warmest places on them.

Thane stood a long time at the edge of the square, looking east. He wasn’t counting, not exactly. He was listening for the thing that comes after battle: the group breath, the mutual bargain you make with a night that has stopped trying to kill you so loudly.

Holt came and leaned against him because he could. Rime hovered on the other side, hands folded, posture easy in a way that let his body rest while his attention did not. Gabriel arrived with two mugs of something that steamed and smelled like tea had remembered how to be tea. Mark trailed behind with a toolbox because he didn’t know what else to do with his hands when they weren’t under a panel.

“We’re still here,” Gabriel said, the words soft and a little disbelieving. “That actually happened and we’re still here.”

Thane took a sip. It hurt the cut places in his mouth and was good anyway. “It did,” he said. “We are.”

Holt tipped his head back and watched the clouds drag their bellies across the mountain like tired animals. “More come,” he said, not fearing it, just naming it.

“Maybe,” Thane said. “Maybe they learn. Maybe they don’t.”

“Voss will send another piece,” Rime said. “He thinks numbers make truth.”

“Then we keep teaching math,” Gabriel said, and Mark huffed a laugh into his scarf.

Sable crossed the square without sound, her shadow long in the failing light. She stopped in front of Thane and looked past him at the men and wolves hauling the last of the barriers back into proper shapes, at Marta pinning a new sheet of duties to the town hall door, at Hank arguing with a map as if the map could hear him. Then she looked at Thane again and nodded once. “Your way worked,” she said. “Not soft. Not cruel. Hard enough.”

“It held,” he said. “That’s all I asked of it.”

“Next time,” she said quietly, “they will bring a different shape.”

“Then we will be a different wall,” Thane said.

She took that and turned away, white fur catching the thin, tired light, and his chest loosened in a place he hadn’t known was tight. Holt’s shoulder pressed into his with a weight that said I am here and will be here until you tell me not to be and probably after; Rime’s hand brushed his forearm with the smallest of touches that meant the same thing in a different grammar. Gabriel’s hip bumped his in a way that looked like an accident to anyone who didn’t know better and was a promise to anyone who did.

The wind shifted, smelling of smoke and stew and iron and the sharp, clean top note of snow that hadn’t fallen yet. Somewhere down the block, a door opened and laughter spilled out into the street, the thin, surprised kind that happens when someone makes a joke because they have to prove they can.

Hank’s voice came on the radio, softer now, the parade-ground polish scraped off by the day. “Perimeter steady. No movement east. We’ll keep eyes on the ridge.”

“Good,” Thane said, and for the first time all day he let his shoulders drop a fraction. “Hold until morning. We’ll count and mend and decide.”

He didn’t give a speech. There would be time for words later, when the numbers were on paper and the dead had names and the living had soup. For now, there was the simple fact of a square that still had corners and a town that still had a heartbeat, and that was enough to stand on.

Snow began again, softer this time, in flakes big as coins that settled on fur and stuck. The wolves blinked and wore it like medals. The lamps came up low along Main, a string of small suns in the hush. In the quiet between the flakes, you could hear the steady work of people who had decided to keep a place, and the soft footfalls of wolves who had decided to help them do it.

The storm had come and spent itself on iron and ice. Libby stood.

Snow came before the light. It fell thick and sideways, carried by a wind that pressed against the pines and hissed along the wire at the east gate. The world was quiet the way a held breath is quiet. In that hush, a low diesel idle trembled through the square—generators warm and ready, lights kept low behind canvas and blankets so the town glowed but did not shine.

Thane moved along the inside of the wall with Holt and Rime shadowing him, his breath ribboning pale in the cold. The bandage was gone; the wound beneath had knitted into a hard ache that spoke up when he turned too fast. He kept his movements small and deliberate. He had promised rest. Rest could come when Glendive’s men had learned to hate the snow.

Hank’s voice came soft over the Motorola on Thane’s shoulder. “East ridge. Movement.”

“How many?” Thane said.

A beat of wind across the mic. “At least two trucks. Snowmobiles behind. Can’t see numbers in this soup.”

“Positions,” Thane said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

The town changed shape under the order. Men slipped into the angled shadows of barricades—stacked timbers, old cars with their bellies full of sand, fencing spiked with rebar. Wolves moved to the flanks: Kira to the north run, Rime with Thane at center, Holt pacing at his right like a fired shot in his bones waiting for a target. Up on the water tower, two spotters settled into the lee with binoculars under canvas, rifles laid across their laps. On the ridge behind the generator building, a pair of borrowed hunting rifles rested in human hands; their owners breathed with the patience of people who had learned to wait for the right kind of shot.

Mark’s voice cut through on a private channel Thane shared with him and Gabriel. “Powerhouse sealed. Transfer switch is hot. If they breach the yard, I can kill it in under a second.”

“Copy,” Thane said. “Keep eyes on the substation.”

“Already on it. Gabriel’s with me at the tower. We’ll squawk intel to Hank’s line.”

From the tower’s shadow, Gabriel clicked once to confirm. Thane could almost see him there without turning his head: black fur dusted white, headset cord looped out of the way of claws, jaw set, eyes quick. He would be wanting to be at Thane’s shoulder. He would stay where he was told until the line bent.

The woods east of town took a slow breath. Snow offered its only answer: a thickening curtain that made the treeline feel closer and farther at the same time. Then, under it—a new sound, thin at first, then growing: the high whine of two-stroke engines fighting powder.

Hank: “They’re in the cut. Eighteen… twenty? No, more.”

Another voice—Cal from the rooftop on Main—cut in, tight. “Truck lights. Low beams, covered. They think we can’t count.”

“We can,” Thane said. “Let them keep thinking otherwise.”

Steel teeth of homemade caltrops lay under the new snow thirty yards past the east barricade. Between them and the wall, the street had been watered and salted to make an evil glaze beneath the powder. The first snowmobile hit that glass like a skater missing a step and skidded sideways into a drift with a soft, surprised thump. The second shot past it with a rider’s whoop that died as he found the caltrops and the machine lurched, track flapping, rubber shredded to ribbons. The whoop turned into a string of words that steamed and vanished.

A figure on foot broke from the trees at a run, weapon in both hands, posture cocky. He didn’t see Kira until she was on him, a gray streak that came out of the plow line and folded him into the snow with one smooth, silent motion. His rifle spun away; Kira’s paw planted on his throat and stayed there with the implacable weight of a quiet promise. She looked up, eyes bright, waiting for the next shape to be foolish.

“Hold,” Thane said into the radio. “Do not chase. Make them come to you.”

The trucks nosed out of the trees then—old box bodies with welded plate bolted to grills and doors, hoods strapped down with ratchet webbing, windshields half-blanked in sheet steel. They came slow, tires in chains, pushing a bow wave of snow. Figures flanked them in faded winter camouflage and mismatched coats, one with a scarf across his face patterned like a flag from a world that had forgotten him. The lead truck stopped short at the caltrops, engine grumbling. A man with a crowbar jumped down, cursed, and started to sweep the snow in clumsy arcs.

Thane watched the man’s breath. It feathered in steady puffs like a metronome. Calm. Not a scout, then—hired muscle doing what he’d been told.

“Let them see the wall,” Hank whispered on the net, awe threaded through the anger like a second braid. “Let them count wrong.”

They saw only what they were meant to see: men with rifles behind logs and cars, no muzzle flash yet, no wolves. The first truck edged forward, chains clacking. It found the caltrops despite the crowbar man’s work. One front tire hissed and squatted. The driver forced the wheel, trying to bully physics, and the truck slid sideways into the second lane where a snowmobile slammed its brake and slewed right into the bumper, the rider pinwheeling into the powder with a yell that cut off when he hit.

“Now,” Thane said.

The two rifles on the ridge cracked with the flat authority of men who didn’t intend to shoot twice. Both shots took front tires. The trucks sagged, nose low, chains grinding against the roadbed, sparks hard and brief in the snowy half-light. From the top of the water tower, a third crack—a careful pop from a .223 Marlin—and the crowbar man grabbed his shoulder and went to one knee, astonished at being stopped with so little drama.

The raiders answered with noise. Automatic fire stitched the barricade, chewing splinters off the log face, ricochets hissing in high metallic squeals. The wall held. The men behind it did too. They fired back in deliberate beats, aiming for legs when they could, center mass when they couldn’t. The snow turned to a soft mist where bullets cut through it. Thane smelled cordite and truck exhaust and the metallic, sharp penny of fresh blood.

“Left sled trying to flank,” Cal called. “Fast.”

“Holt,” Thane said without looking away from the cut. He didn’t have to finish the sentence.

The big wolf vaulted the wall like it was a curb. He hit the ice-glazed street in a controlled slide, claws engraving it with four clean lines, then sprinted along the inside of the barricade until the flanking sled came into view between two storefronts. The rider saw him too late. Holt went low at the last instant and lifted, catching the sled’s front with both paws. Momentum did the rest—machine tipped, rider launched, the whole tangle flipping end over end until it sledded to a stop in a fountain of snow two storefronts down. Holt was already on his feet again, scanning for the next threat, breath pulsing in big steady clouds.

“Good,” Thane breathed. “Back in.”

Holt bounded up the plowed ramp and dropped behind the wall again, grinning without meaning to. He looked at Thane like a dog looks at a man who has shown him a job and given him permission to love it.

A round pinged off the steel plate Thane had ordered welded over the gap between two cars. A second struck the plate a handspan to the right. Thane’s hackles stood. Those two hits were not wild. They were the careful tap-tap of someone learning a distance.

“Sniper,” he said.

The word changed the air. People got small behind their cover; heads tucked; rifles settled a fraction lower. On the ridge, one of Hank’s spotters rolled, slow and smooth, to put his glass on the treeline just east of the trucks. “Can’t see the glint,” he whispered. “Too much weather.”

“They’ll try for the tower,” Mark said on the control channel, sudden and certain. “If they take comms, they can fake a panic.”

Gabriel’s voice, low: “I’m on the stairs. Anyone touches that ladder, I make him regret the climb.”

“Keep your head down,” Thane said.

“Define down,” Gabriel said, because he couldn’t help himself. Thane almost smiled and then didn’t when another ping-smack rang off the plate near his shoulder.

“Plate’s saving lives,” Hank muttered. “Good call.”

Noise built and broke and built again. The raiders tried to rush the caltrops, got tangled in their own bad footing, and fell back, dragging bodies by their armpits, swearing in tight, ugly lines that steamed white and vanished. One of the snowmobiles looped wide right through a back lot and made for a narrow side lane that led to the square. Rime was gone before the radio warned it. He reappeared in the lane as a gray refusal and braced his feet, then did a neat small step left at the last instant so the sled scraped the barricade and lost all its speed in a screaming hiss. The rider tumbled, rolled, scrambled for his gun, and saw Rime’s eyes before he found it. He put his hands up without being told. Rime pointed him toward the wall with a tilt of his muzzle that was somehow patient and dangerous at once.

From the trees, a deeper sound—an engine with weight—came on in a lazy, awful push. The third truck. It was wider, plates welded along its flanks in rough shingles, a steel wedge bolted to its front like the prow of a crude ship. It took the caltrops at a crawl, the wedges throwing them aside with a sound like someone flicking bottle caps into a basin, and nosed down the center lane toward the barricade.

“Backline ready,” Hank said, breath scraping in the speaker. “Rope!”

Four men popped up behind the second barricade layer with a coil of thick line across their forearms. They threw it just ahead of the wedge as it came on and ducked as it hit; the rope snapped tight around the bumper and bit into the ice. On an open road, it would have dragged free. Here, with ice underfoot and slope pitched just enough toward the square, the truck’s chains skittered without purchase. The engine bellowed. The bumper bit the rope deeper. The truck stopped moving.

“Left side!” Cal shouted. “Sleds!”

Three sleds broke from the tree line in a shallow V. This time their riders were not cocky; they lay low, guns tight to their chests, tracks tearing sharp black curves in the white field. Holt’s growl built again. Thane’s hand came up without thinking. “Wait… wait…”

The lead sled hit the hidden trench at speed. It wasn’t deep—just enough to change a machine’s mind. The nose dropped; the tail lifted; the rider sawed and swore and went out into the drift in a flurry of limbs and steel. The two behind swerved, one to each side, and found Kira and a volunteer with a hay fork waiting. The volunteer planted his feet and stuck the fork in the snow. The sled rammed the steel and died with a cracking sound like a snapped shin. Kira took the rider’s legs with a sweep and he folded neatly.

The air filled with the ugly music of small war: men yelling to each other over wind, the slap of boots on frozen gravel, the dry shock of rifles, the collective inhale when a shot hit metal inches from a face and rang that face like a bell. The big truck moaned again and shuddered when Hank’s men rolled a fuel barrel down from the second barricade and pinned it against the wedge with gravity and rope, then backed away fast.

“Don’t light it,” Thane said. “We’ll need that fire later if we’re cold and not dead.”

Hank laughed in spite of himself, a harsh jag he didn’t bother to hide.

The sniper found the rhythm again. A shot clipped a bolt head on the plate and ricocheted with a scream, hot metal biting Holt’s cheek. He didn’t flinch, but his eyes flared and pinned on the dark notion of the shooter like a wolf smelling lightning. Thane put his paw on Holt’s forearm without looking. “Not your hunt,” he said. “Not yet.”

On the tower, Gabriel counted silently between the careful pings until he could feel the shooter’s breath in the cadence. When the next pause came, he leaned out just enough to snap off a single burst at a strip of darker trees along the cut. Snow hopped. A man swore in a new place, surprised by a sting along a cheek he hadn’t intended to risk. “Found you,” Gabriel murmured, and the sniper’s rhythm broke.

A horn sounded then—two low, long notes from the north perimeter, answered by a single short blast from the west. Hank turned toward the sound and then toward Thane because that was the shape of things now.

“False probe,” Thane said. “They’re testing the other gates. Keep your men on the east. If we break here, the rest won’t matter.”

“Copy.”

The east gate held. The trucks didn’t get past the rope. The men on foot didn’t get past the caltrops and the ice and the wolves they couldn’t see until the last second. They fell back in clumps, ducking into the cut to huddle and point, to reassess whatever Garrick Voss had told them about the ease of taking a small town in winter. Thane breathed and let the ache in his shoulder be a boundary, a reminder to keep moving but not to lunge.

“Movement behind the third truck,” Cal said from the roof. “Bigger group.”

Thane lifted his muzzle and smelled men and oil and the particular hot stink of fear-sweat. “They’ll push again,” he said. “They think numbers make a road.”

“They might,” Hank said.

“They won’t,” Thane said.

The bigger group came all at once, a clumsy wave forced forward by the idea that momentum is a weapon. They fanned into the street, boots skidding on the glaze, guns up, breath ragged. Holt bristled so hard his fur snapped with static. Rime leaned forward in that odd, weightless way he had, all intent and no wasted motion. Kira rolled her shoulders and licked blood from a knuckle, calm as a metronome.

Thane lifted his radio. “On me,” he said, and went over the wall.

He hit the ice like it was dry August dirt. He cut left, claws biting, and came up under the barrel of a man too surprised to shoot. Thane took the gun out of his hands like a parent takes a stick from a child and put the man down with the economy that comes from never confusing speed with hurry. Holt passed him on the right as a black blur, knocked two men into a snowbank with one shoulder, turned and came back low across the front of another’s legs so the man folded and slid into the barricade face-first. Rime ghosted the far edge, all silent sharpness; the men who saw him didn’t understand why they were on the ground until they noticed their hands were empty and their elbows hurt and that the wolf’s eyes had been very close and very still and then gone again.

Human rifles from the wall coughed rhythm into the noise. Shots were measured, not panicked. Thane heard Hank somewhere behind him telling men to breathe, to wait for the beat, to count their rounds. He heard Mark on the net, calm as a metronome, calling battery levels at the powerhouse like those numbers mattered as much as blood. He heard Gabriel on the tower laugh once because he couldn’t help it when a raider tried the ladder and got a clawed foot in the face for his trouble.

The wave stalled inches from the barricade. The front men did what men do when they meet a thing that won’t move: they tried to be brave. The second line did what second lines do when they see the first line meet teeth: they tried to be in a different job. Boots slipped. A man fell and took two with him. Someone yelled “pull back!” and no one wanted to be the first to obey.

The trees at the far side of the cut swayed once in a wind that wasn’t wind.

Thane, panting now and not caring if anyone heard it, lifted his head at a new scent: clean frost, pine, and wolf in a way that had nothing to do with his own pack. He saw shapes in the snow-line where no shapes should be. He smiled without showing teeth.

A sound rolled across the field that was not a human sound. It wasn’t a scream or a shout. It was a note older than town squares and radios, a long, braided thing that lifted the hairs on the necks of men who had never believed in old stories and made those stories real in one held heartbeat.

The raiders looked right where they should have looked: at the treeline.

Then the forest itself moved — thirty shapes dusted in white bursting through the snow, howling vengeance.

The morning came slow and gray, the kind of cold light that made even strong things look fragile. Libby was already stirring—hammer strikes, shovels scraping, boots in snow—but the cabin remained quiet. Inside, the fire had burned to embers, leaving a soft orange pulse across the walls.

Thane sat at the edge of his bed, still shirtless, bandages showing beneath the fur of his shoulder. The wound had knitted enough to make movement tolerable, but every breath reminded him of how close it had come. The sound of paws pacing outside told him he wasn’t the only one thinking about it.

He pushed himself up, pulled on his gray cargo pants, and stepped out onto the porch.

Rime stood like a sentinel by the railing, silent as ever, eyes tracking the forest beyond. Holt sat beside the steps, claws dug into the frozen dirt, looking like a mountain waiting for orders. When he turned and saw Thane upright, his ears shot up and his tail thumped once, uncertain but hopeful.

Thane smiled faintly. “You can stop guarding the snow, Holt. It hasn’t attacked anyone all morning.”

Rime’s lips twitched, just short of a grin. Holt rumbled a laugh but didn’t move. “Snow quiet now. Holt stay ready.”

Thane stepped down from the porch, clawed feet crunching on the frost, and reached out a hand. “You’ve been ready since the shot. Both of you.”

Rime tilted his head slightly. “You shouldn’t be walking yet.”

“Probably not,” Thane said, “but if Garrick Voss is really coming, I’m not about to spend my last calm day in bed.”

Holt stood, towering a head above him, still hesitant. Thane reached out, gripping his shoulder. “You both did good. Better than good. You kept me alive, kept everyone steady.” His voice dropped, gravel softening. “You represent your pack well. You’re true warriors—and a damn good musician,” he added with a small nod and smile to Holt.

Holt blinked like he hadn’t heard right. “Alpha mean that?”

Thane gave him a firm nod. “With all my heart.”

He turned to Rime. “And you—steady as bedrock. You’ve got the kind of control the young ones need to see.”

Rime dipped his muzzle, ears lowering slightly. “It’s an honor to guard.”

Thane shook his head. “No. It’s an honor to have you both guarding me. If there’s ever anything either of you need, you come to me. You don’t ask permission. You don’t wait. I’ll be there.”

The silence that followed was heavy with meaning. Rime’s eyes softened in something close to awe. Holt’s throat worked as he tried to swallow the lump forming there.

“Alpha…” Holt’s voice cracked. “No Alpha ever say that to us.”

“Maybe they should have,” Thane said simply. Then he surprised both of them by pulling them into a hug. Rime froze, unprepared for it, and Holt’s tail wagged once, tentatively.

When he finally stepped back, the two ferals stood straighter, shoulders squared, as if the weight of his words had turned them into stone and steel both.

From that moment on, wherever Thane went, the two were there—Rime on his left, Holt on his right, silent, alert, and utterly loyal.

---

By midday, Libby was alive with preparation. The clang of metal echoed through the town square as volunteers hammered together barricades and braces. Smoke rose from the blacksmith’s forge, where two of Sable’s wolves were learning to shape metal under human guidance, their claws glinting as they passed tools with surprising delicacy.

Children hauled baskets of sand for filling bags, while Marta coordinated from the steps of town hall, clipboard in hand.

Thane strode into the square with his escorts, drawing looks from every direction. His injury had already become legend, and seeing him walking again—flanked by two massive feral wolves—brought quiet relief to those who saw him.

Hank spotted him first and waved. “Look who’s back among the living!”

“Barely,” Thane replied with a wry grin. “But I hear dying’s bad for morale, so I figured I’d skip it.”

Hank barked a laugh and handed him a mug of steaming coffee. “Welcome back.”

Holt leaned down, sniffing the cup suspiciously. “Coffee.”

Thane smirked. “Yes, but not for you. Last time, your pack nearly tore down the hotel.”

Holt growled softly in protest, and Rime nudged him with an elbow. “He mean you did.”

Gabriel’s voice cut through the noise as he approached from the radio tower, his coat dusted with sawdust. “You sure you’re supposed to be walking around? The doc said a week of rest.”

Thane tilted his head. “You sound like Mark.”

“Good,” Gabriel said flatly. “Because you don’t listen to him either.”

Thane chuckled, then noticed Gabriel’s gaze shift briefly—past him, toward the two ferals glued to his sides. Jealousy flickered across his expression before he looked away, pretending to adjust the strap on his tool belt.

“Easy, pup,” Thane murmured softly enough for only him to hear. “They’re bodyguards, not replacements.”

Gabriel shot him a sideways look, the faintest grin breaking through. “Could’ve fooled me. They follow you like shadows.”

“Big, fuzzy shadows,” Thane said. “And trust me—if I’m ever buried under debris, they’ll be the ones digging me out. You can keep being the pretty one.”

Gabriel laughed, shaking his head. “Fine, old man. But if they start fetching your coffee too, we’re gonna have words.”

“Promise you’ll go easy on them,” Thane said. “They’re still learning sarcasm.”

Holt, picking up the tail end of the exchange, tilted his head. “Sar-casm?”

Rime sighed. “It means Alpha teasing. Dangerous thing. Avoid.”

Gabriel laughed outright now, and even Holt gave a puzzled grin. The tension between them melted like frost under sunlight.

Mark appeared next, grease-streaked and half-smiling, carrying a coil of cable over one shoulder. “Tower’s wired. Backup switch’s ready. You’d better not get shot again before I can test it.”

Thane raised an eyebrow. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”

“Good,” Mark said. “We’re all out of duct tape.”

They shared a short, quiet laugh before Marta called across the square, “Thane! You got a minute?”

He crossed over, Rime and Holt pacing beside him in perfect sync. Marta nodded approvingly. “You’re up and moving. That’s good. Town’s shaping up fast—barricades on all main roads, lookouts on the ridge, power substation fortified. I’ve got two wolves stationed at each gate with human spotters.”

Thane looked over the map she unrolled on the table. “You’ve done damn well, Marta. You’ve got the makings of a general.”

She smiled faintly. “I’d settle for everyone making it through winter.”

“They will,” Thane said, conviction steady as bedrock. “We’ve got food, power, and enough claws and guns to make Voss think twice.”

Hank leaned over the map. “He’ll come from the east. River crossings are shallow there. But we’ll see him coming. I’ll have scouts posted every half mile.”

Thane nodded, scanning the lines. “Good. If he’s smart, he’ll send advance men to test our defenses. We’ll let him think we’re soft, then show him what a mistake that was.”

Holt’s ears perked. “Alpha want Holt on wall?”

“Not yet,” Thane said. “For now, you help the humans reinforce the east barricade. Use that strength of yours for hauling, not breaking.”

Holt grinned proudly. “Holt haul good.”

“You do,” Thane said warmly. “And maybe after, you can play for the workers. Keep spirits up.”

Holt puffed up with pride, tail thumping against the ground. “Yes, Alpha.”

Marta raised an eyebrow. “Play?”

Gabriel, now behind them, smirked. “Oh yeah. Wait till you hear him. He’s the biggest, scariest rhythm guitarist you’ve ever met.”

The humans nearby laughed, tension easing for a moment. Even Rime chuckled low in his throat.

Thane folded the map carefully and handed it back to Marta. “You’ve done good work. Tell everyone to rest when they can. Once this starts, it won’t stop until it’s finished.”

Marta’s expression softened. “And you? You should rest too.”

Thane smiled faintly. “Later.”

He stepped away, eyes lifting toward the mountains where the clouds were thickening, gray and heavy. The air smelled of coming snow.

---

As dusk fell, the town grew quiet. Lanterns glowed in windows. The wolves patrolled the outskirts, shadows moving through the trees.

Thane walked the ridge above the town, Rime and Holt at his sides. From up here, Libby looked small but alive—a spark of light in a dead world.

Gabriel joined them partway up, carrying two mugs of hot tea. He handed one to Thane, keeping his gaze on the valley. “Hard to believe this little place is the last real town left west of Glendive.”

Thane took a sip. “Then it’s up to us to keep it that way.”

Gabriel nodded, his expression softening as he glanced at the two ferals standing close by. “You’ve really gotten through to them, huh?”

“They’re good souls,” Thane said. “Just needed someone to see it.”

Holt’s ears flicked. “Alpha see all.”

Thane chuckled. “Not all, Holt. Just enough.”

The four of them stood in silence for a while, watching the horizon fade into dusk. The wind whispered through the trees, carrying with it the scent of snow and something else—anticipation, sharp and clean.

Thane finally broke the quiet. “Tomorrow, we finish the defenses. The next day… maybe we fight.”

Gabriel smirked faintly. “You sure you’re up for that?”

Thane took another sip of tea, eyes on the distant darkness. “You know me. I’ve been through worse.”

Gabriel smiled. “Yeah, but not with this many people watching.”

“Then I’ll just have to make it a good show.”

Rime huffed softly, amused. Holt tilted his head. “Show?”

Thane grinned, ice blue eyes glinting in the twilight. “You’ll see.”

They stood together as the first flakes began to fall—Alpha, pack, and friends—watching the world turn quiet before the storm.

He came to like a radio warming from static — bandage tight, room soft with lamplight, gravel voice stuck behind dry throat. The cabin smelled like pine and boiled cloth. Rime sat on the floor by the door, still as a stump. Holt was a mountain crouched at Thane’s bedside, ears high, eyes refusing to blink. When Thane moved, Holt leaned forward so fast the chair legs squealed.

“Alpha?”

Thane worked a breath. “Still here.”

Holt sagged, a sound escaping him that was too relieved to be called a sigh. Outside, boots hit the porch. Hank stepped in, hat in his fist, snow in his beard, urgency riding him like a second coat. Mark and Gabriel were on his heels.

“We got the two that ran,” Hank said without preamble. “My boys were—” he glanced down, jaw tightening, “—rougher than needed. They’re in the lockup. We’re starting questions now.”

Holt rose like a storm building. The growl that rolled out of him rattled the panes. “Holt go. Tear apart. Piece. By piece.”

“No.” Thane didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. It hit the room like a stop sign. Holt froze, everything in him pulling against the word.

Thane turned his head, found Rime. “Keep him here. With me.”

Rime dipped his chin. “He stays.”

Holt’s ears flattened. “Alpha—”

“Listen,” Thane said, bandage lifting with the breath. “No harm to them. Not a finger, not a tooth, until we talk.” His gaze slid to Hank, then to Mark and Gabriel. “You can scare them. Mercy first. Mercy defines us — not revenge.”

Gabriel’s eyes flicked to Holt, then back. “I’ll be there.”

“Me too,” Mark said. “We’ll keep it clean.”

Kira, who had come in silent behind them and now leaned on the doorframe like a shadow, lifted her muzzle. “I tell Sable,” she said, and was gone before anyone could say yes or don’t.

Holt stood shaking, caught between the door and the bed. Thane reached a paw out, rested it against Holt’s forearm. “Guard me,” he said. “That’s your job.”

It landed. Holt’s chest stilled. He sank back down onto his haunches at the head of the bed, one paw on the floor, one on the coverlet like he could hold the room together through a sheet. Rime settled beside him, a quiet hand ready to catch a shoulder if it surged.

Hank nodded once, relief and conflict sharing the line of his mouth. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s get this right.” He pulled the door closed behind them.

---

The lockup was a squat stone box behind the old feed store, iron bars gone dull with years and weather. Straw on the floor kept the cold off nothing. Two men sat against the back wall, wrists bound to the rail with rope that left angry marks. One was older, hard-eyed, jaw set like a dare. The other was young enough to still have boy in him, breath fast, a purple welt darkening along his cheekbone.

Marta stood to the side with her arms folded, making herself a calm people could borrow. Hank took the key from a nail and weighed it in his palm. “We’re opening that door,” he told the prisoners. “You will sit. You will talk. You will breathe when I say you can breathe. If you spit, we leave you in the cold.”

The older one grunted something meant to be contempt and came out with his shoulders squared anyway. Fear has posture. The younger stumbled and caught himself, eyes flicking to the window as if air might be safer than walls.

They sat at a scarred table under a single lantern that made everyone look older. Mark took a spot to the left out of habit even though Thane wasn’t there; Gabriel sat opposite, forearms set, hands steepled to keep them from making clawed fists.

The door creaked once more. Sable stepped in without sound, white fur drinking the lamplight, three of her wolves filling the doorway behind her like night crowded into a frame. No one had seen her arrive; no one had to. She leaned a shoulder against the wall and let the silence notice her. The older prisoner’s face changed in that small, unguarded way men’s faces do when a story they’ve told themselves stops working.

Hank hooked a thumb toward the raiders. “Names.”

The older man’s mouth went sideways. “Names don’t matter.”

“They do here,” Gabriel said, voice low and precise. “Everything matters here.”

A beat. “Jase,” the older said. He jerked a chin at the kid. “Cole.”

Hank nodded to Mark, who slid a battered notebook across the table. “Who sent you?”

Jase looked like a man calculating how much pain a lie might buy. He cut his eyes to Sable and looked away fast. “Glendive,” he said. “Garrick Voss.”

Marta’s jaw clenched. “Mayor?”

“Was,” Jase said. “Is something worse now. Calls it ‘Marshal’ these days. He’s got a council, too—men from the yards, one from the old grain co-op, couple of ex-security.” He swallowed. “They’re not rationing. They’re hoarding.”

Gabriel tipped his head. “And we got shot because…?”

“Because you’re a symbol,” Jase said. “Because wolves walking with people means other towns think they can tell Voss no.”

“And because we turned you around the last time you came sniffing,” Hank added, voice cold iron.

Jase didn’t argue.

Hank’s knuckles were still scraped raw. He clasped his hands to keep them quiet. “What’s the plan?”

Jase’s eyes went to the lantern, as if the story lived there. “Two weeks. They call it Black Winter.” He said it like he didn’t like the taste. “They mean to break the region in one sweep—cut power where they can, capture what they can’t. Take radios, take generators, take men with hands that fix things, women who can nurse, kids old enough to carry. Move them to what they call ‘hubs’ along the river. Troy. Glendive. Miles City. Set guards with long guns, control who eats. Rest starve or bend.”

Marta’s fingers curled slow around the edge of the table. “They’re going to kidnap entire towns.”

Jase flinched. “They’ll call it conscription. Say it’s for order. They’ve got code broadcasts to coordinate—like that loop in Plains. They’ll bait the helpers out, then take their trucks and track them back home.” He lifted his bound hands an inch and let them fall. “You can’t outrun radio. Voss figured that out.”

Mark’s eyes flicked, remembering racks of CDs and the transmitter at KLMR humming like a heartbeat. “Targets?”

“Any place with a voice,” Jase said. “KLMR. The Troy stick. Substation at Thompson Falls.” He licked cracked lips. “And Libby—because you’ve got power and wolves and people who’ll fight.”

The room changed shape without moving. Hank took a breath like he’d lifted something heavy. Gabriel’s mouth thinned, gaze unfocused a beat as he worked the math of patrols and perimeters. One of Sable’s wolves—Rime’s sister, Ari—leaned forward just enough to show teeth before going still again.

Sable stepped off the wall and came closer, bringing winter with her. She didn’t sit. She looked at Jase as if deciding which kind of thing he was. “You shot our Alpha,” she said softly. “You ran. You are here because mercy was chosen for you.” She tipped her head. “Do not mistake mercy for weakness.”

Cole stammered, words chasing each other. “We— I— I didn’t shoot. He did. We were told they’d pay double for wolf skulls. I’m sorry, I didn’t— I never—” He bit down on the rest and made a sound like the start of a sob he couldn’t afford.

Sable blinked once, slow. “You will be sorry for longer if you speak when you should be listening.”

Cole’s mouth shut like a hand had closed it. Jase nodded minutely, grateful and ashamed all at once.

“Black Winter,” Gabriel repeated, rolling the phrase in his mouth like a threat he intended to return to sender. “Two weeks.”

“Less,” Jase said. “Weather’s the knife. They want you cold and scared.”

Hank leaned back and stared at the ceiling like it might offer a map. “We’ll need double watches. Roving pairs outside the wall. Men at the substation round-the-clock. I’ll put two on the tower with spotters.”

Mark ticked items off in the air, the way he did when ideas came faster than he could stack them. “We isolate KLMR from the grid with a transfer switch so we can black the stick if needed. Secondary mast at the cabin for emergency bulletins. Powerhouse gets steel and sandbags. Hank, I’ll rig remote trip on the generator fuel so if they breach, we kill it from the square.”

Marta was already writing, letters quick and square. “Food stores split into three caches. Half the med stock moved to the church basement. No more single basket.”

Sable watched, measuring. “We run the tree lines,” she said. “No man crosses without us smelling him first. We take their scouts’ courage before their feet.”

Gabriel nodded. “And we make sure every person in town knows the drill. If the horn sounds, they go where we’ve told them. No heroes.”

Hank slid his eyes to the prisoners. “And them?”

Thane wasn’t in the room, but the rules he’d just laid down were. Gabriel answered in his place. “They live. They eat. They work, if they’ll work. If they won’t, they sit. We make an example of restraint.”

Jase stared at the table. “He won’t stop,” he said, meaning Voss. “He thinks winter makes him king.”

Marta’s voice was very calm. “Winter makes fools of kings.”

---

Back at the cabin, the door opened and closed with the soft courtesy of men who’ve learned how to carry bad news without spilling it. Holt was on his feet before Gabriel made it to the rug. Rime rose too, a palm already out just in case.

Gabriel knelt by the bed so his face would be level with Thane’s. “Glendive,” he said. “Garrick Voss. They’re planning a sweep in under two weeks. Code name Black Winter. Cut power where they can, seize what they can’t. Grab skilled people, force relocations to river hubs. KLMR and the substation are on the list.”

Thane listened the way he did when he was cataloging a fight — not for flourish, but for edges. He worked his jaw once, a shadow of pain crossing and gone. “So they’re coming,” he said. “Good. Let’s make sure they don’t like the welcome.”

Holt shifted closer, so close his shoulder touched the bed. “Holt go,” he said, hope and threat braided together. “Holt tear.”

“You’ll go when it’s time,” Thane said. “Until then, you guard here. You follow Rime. You do not wander. You do not hunt the men in the jail. Mercy first.”

Holt’s eyes squeezed shut like the word hurt. He nodded, a stiff, stubborn dip. “Mercy,” he said, tasting it. “Mercy… then teeth.”

Rime’s mouth twitched. “Good.”

Mark set a hand on the bedpost and gave the shortened version: “We’ll harden KLMR, split the stores, prep silent comms. Hank’s doubling watches. Sable’s running the line.”

“What about Sable?” Thane asked.

Gabriel’s grin was quick and feral. “She showed up at the jail. Said five words, scared a year off those two. She’s in.”

“Of course she is,” Thane murmured, and let his head settle back for a moment.

Marta appeared in the doorway with a clipboard and a blanket, the chaos of the square vibrating under her skin. “I’m posting shifts,” she said. “And a town meeting at sundown. We tell them enough to be ready, not enough to freeze them.”

Thane opened his eyes. “Tell them this,” he said. “We won’t start the killing. But we will not be moved.”

Marta’s mouth softened, the kind of look that remembers the boy in the man and the good in the hard. “I’ll say it better than that,” she said. “But yes.”

She left the blanket on the chair as if the room might need one more thing that kept people alive.

Gabriel squeezed Thane’s wrist, just once, thumb brushing the fur in a motion he could pretend was casual. “Rest,” he said. “We’ve got the day.” He stood and turned to Holt. “Come help me with the tower plans. If you can carry a guitar like it’s an egg, you can carry cables without nicking them.”

Holt blinked. “Holt carry.” He looked back at Thane, waited for the nod, got it, and followed Gabriel out with Rime in their wake, big clawed feet careful on the floorboards.

The cabin door clicked shut. Outside, Libby’s square had turned into a quiet storm of useful motion — sandbags stacking, lists forming, men heading to posts with purpose in their shoulders. Up on the ridge, Sable’s white shape slid into the trees, two ferals flanking her, heads low, moving like snow shadows along the line where forest becomes town.

Black Winter had a clock now, and so did they.

Thane let the hush fold around him. The pain was there, and the pulse of it, and beneath that the steadier beat of a town aligning like teeth in a gear. He closed his eyes because he trusted the hands he’d put on the work. Holt would sit the door like a statue until told otherwise. Rime would keep him on this side of wise. Gabriel and Mark would turn light into warning and wire into safety. Marta would turn fear into lists. Hank would turn anger into patrol.

Mercy first, he’d said. Mercy, then teeth.

He let that be the rule he fell asleep inside, while outside the wolves and the humans of Libby began the exacting work of making sure that when Garrick Voss came for their winter, it would be his that broke.

The road home unspooled under a pale winter sun, tire treads carving two dark lines through the fresh fall. The flatbed creaked and settled with every dip, diesel humming like a low, contented animal. Libby lay west, somewhere beyond the stacked blue ridges of the Cabinets, a promise of warm rooms and familiar laughter. Wind teased the fur along Thane’s forearms as he stood at the rail, one paw hooked over cold metal, eyes on the serrated horizon. Holt leaned against the side at his shoulder, rocking with the truck, tail ticking against the boards.

“Alpha?” Holt said, breath smearing silver in the air.

“Yeah?”

Holt’s grin came easy, softer than anyone would have once believed he owned. “World getting better.”

Thane’s mouth tipped. He reached out, pulled the huge wolf into a one-armed hug. “Yeah, Holt,” he said, gravel warming. “Little by little, it is.”

The truck took the next bend with the lazy confidence of a thing that had made this trip a hundred times. Pines shouldered close. Sun flared on frost. Gabriel leaned out the cab window to squint back at them, grin cocked, about to say something snide—

The world cracked.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a pressure change, air punched inside-out. Snow leapt off the pine boughs; ravens detonated upward from a far tree in a black scatter. The .50 caliber report rolled off the valley walls in a long, slow thunder.

Thane vanished.

One instant he was there, shoulder pressed to Holt’s side; the next he was gone, ripped backward as if an invisible hand had snatched him off the truck. A red mist hung in the air where he had been. His body hit the road’s shoulder once, skidded, and went over the lip, tumbling through brush down twenty feet of slope into the gully below. The flatbed lurched as Mark wrenched the wheel; Gabriel’s shout broke high and wild, a name torn to shreds.

For a heartbeat Holt didn’t move. His face went blank in the way of an animal whose brain cannot hold a thing it has just seen. Then the fact of it slammed into him all at once.

“No.”

It came out small, like the first squeak of a hinge. His chest heaved.

“NO!”

The second shot came as Holt hit the ground. It hissed past Rime’s head with a vicious little kiss, taking a hair and nothing more. Rime dropped, rolled, eyes already tracking the glint. Holt’s head snapped to the treeline. He saw it: a dark silhouette where no branch should be, an old hunting stand bolted to a birch, a flicker of glass as the scope reset.

He ran.

Snow exploded under each stride, each footfall a muffled detonation. The tree came up hard and sudden and he didn’t slow; he went up, claws biting old bark, the trunk flexing under his weight with soft, alarmed pops. The raider inside had half a breath to swing the Barrett back toward the rushing shape below him before Holt burst over the lip of the stand like a storm let loose from a cliff.

There was no warning and no negotiation. Holt’s paw closed on the man’s forearm and pulled. Bone gave; flesh tore; something wet thumped to the plywood floor. The rifle clanged against the stand, then the ground. The man’s scream came out thin and high, strangled by shock. Holt’s other paw shoved him—one straight-armed, implacable push. The raider went out of the stand and down, a flailing shape in brown and red, crashing through the birch’s bare whips before the snow took him. Holt hit the ground a half-heartbeat later, both clawed feet landing on the man’s chest with a sound like a crate being crushed. Silence after, pure and absolute but for Holt’s breathing.

The others had scattered at the first shot, shapes breaking from brush on the far side of the road. Two ran outright, boots slipping on crust as they bolted for the cut where an old logging road vanished into timber. A third lifted his weapon, hands shaking; Kira hit him from the side like a thrown hammer, driving him into the drift and wrenching the rifle free with a snarl. Rime padded three steps, calm as winter, and put the fleeing man facedown with a casual sweep of one leg.

Holt didn’t spare them a look. He spun and slid down the gully on his hip, clawing at the slope to check his speed, snow hissing around him. He found Thane where he had fallen, half-buried in a pillow of powder and broken sage, one arm under him at a wrong angle, steam ghosting off the hole the bullet had made.

“Alpha,” Holt said, and the word broke. He was on his knees, paws to Thane’s chest, as if pressure could make time apologize. “No no no—Alpha, not you, not you, Holt fix—” His hands shook so hard the blood on his pads spattered the snow in freckles. “Holt break bad human, Holt fix you—please—please.”

Gabriel slid down the slope so fast he had to dig his claws to stop. He hit Holt’s shoulder with both paws, shoving aside just enough to press his own hands over Thane’s wound. “You’ll crush him, you’ll crush him,” he snapped, the words a whip he threw to keep from screaming. “Back, Holt, back—he’s breathing, he is, listen—”

Holt froze. Sound tunneled down to one thing: a ragged, stubborn drag of air.

Mark’s face appeared over the lip, white with shock, then hardening into the shape he wore when a problem mattered more than fear. “Rime!” he shouted. “Rope! Board!” Hank’s voice answered from the road above, sharp and steady. Men were moving; someone threw a coil that blurred against the sky. The convoy had bunched in a defensive huddle; two of Hank’s people had posted up behind fenders, rifles sweeping the tree line with professional calm.

“On three,” Gabriel said, voice hoarse. “We roll him to his side to check the exit—one, two—”

The exit wound hadn’t behaved like any human wound. The .50 had hit high, just inside the right shoulder; it should have torn a tunnel through meat and wrecked whatever it touched. Instead, the flesh at Thane’s back looked like clay that had been forced apart and then begun to remember itself. The edges bled, then slowed, the red brightening as if some line inside had closed a valve.

“Holy—” Mark started, and cut himself off to be useful. He slid the backboard under with practiced hands while Gabriel kept pressure steady at the front. “On three—one, two—up.”

Thane made a sound, not a word. Holt’s eyes flooded again. He bent so low his forehead brushed the board as they lifted. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Holt sorry, Holt not fast enough—”

“Move,” Rime said softly, and they went. The climb back up felt like a dream of interminable stairs. Hands reached. The world narrowed to rails, boots, the bed of the flatbed, blankets thrown down, Hank swearing under his breath in a way that meant prayer.

The engine rose to a howl. The valley peeled backward. Holt planted himself at the head of the board and refused to be moved, one paw braced over Thane’s shoulder like he could keep the chest rising by willing it. Gabriel stood opposite, fingers slick, face set in a mask he wore when the only way to not cry was to fight instead. Mark drove like the road owed him favors; the rear slid and caught and slid again, but the truck never faltered.

Libby came up like a harbor you’d dreamt of and never expected to see again. The gate flew open; people poured into the square at the sight of blood on the bed. Marta led them, coat flung over her shoulders, jaw a blade. “Inside!” she called, pointing to the cabin. “Clear the great room. Boil water. Get Donovan.”

Donovan came at a run, the town’s one doctor, hair shoved under a knit cap, mouth pressed thin because his hands needed calm. He took the wound in at a glance and then looked again, eyebrows climbing. “That’s closing,” he said, not to anyone, just to the stunned world. “On its own.”

Gabriel didn’t stop moving to answer. “It’s what we do,” he said, voice flat with shock. “Just not always this fast.” He stepped aside just enough to let them lift Thane to the bed in the great room, and then stepped back to where he could touch and see and not be in the way.

Holt barred the doorway without meaning to, body filling it. When Donovan tried to slip past, Holt’s lips peeled back on a sound that wasn’t quite a growl. Rime appeared at his shoulder like an idea and touched two fingers to Holt’s forearm.

“Let help,” Rime said, gentle as snow. “We watch with you.”

Holt’s chest hitched. He moved enough to let the man pass. He did not take his eyes off Thane.

The room filled and stilled. Sable arrived like a ghost pulled in by grief; no one could have said who sent for her, only that the door opened and she was there with three of her wolves behind her, all of them looking at Thane’s face like it was a star that had been shot out of the sky and might, by sheer defiance, light again. Marta hovered at the edge of the rug, knuckles white around a folded towel she’d forgotten to hand to anyone. Hank took up a spot at the window and pretended he needed to see the street.

Donovan cleaned what he could, working around the fact that flesh seemed to be arguing with him by healing while he was still thinking about it. He set a bandage anyway because that was what you did when a body was hurt, whether it needed help or not. He looked up at last, breath fogging in the cold draft that curled under the door. “The worst of it is over,” he said softly. “Now we wait.”

Holt waited like a storm in a box. He paced three steps, turned, paced back. Anyone who shifted too quickly got a look like gravity had just turned in their direction. Rime stationed himself at the hinge of Holt’s anger and the fragile quiet, an easy presence angled to catch a shoulder if it surged. Kira sat against the far wall with her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees, watching Thane’s chest through the small movements of the bandage like a sailor watches the horizon for weather.

Twilight came early. The window darkened from gray to a flat pane of ink. Someone lit lamps. The little room looked like a painting of winter and worry: the set of the doctor’s jaw; Marta’s hands finally moving, pressing the towel into Gabriel’s; the slow rise and fall beneath the bandage; Holt’s shadow on the wall, big enough to be a separate animal.

Time stretched, thinned, and held. Air moved. A log settled in the hearth with a soft sigh.

Thane’s fingers twitched.

It wasn’t much—a flex and release—but it broke the static in the room like lightning breaking a storm. Gabriel leaned forward, breath held. Holt’s ears went up so fast they made a tiny sound. A hush rolled outward like wind.

Thane’s eyes fought their way open. The world came into focus in fragments: the ceiling’s knotty pine; lamp glow; Gabriel’s face washed out and wet around the eyes; Holt behind him, enormous and trembling.

His voice came raw and low. “What’s everybody looking at?” he rasped, trying a smile with it because that was the part of him that had never learned when to quit. “Someone die or something?”

A sound tore out of Holt that wasn’t meant for rooms. It was joy and disbelief and grief shaking itself loose all at once. He shouldered past Rime like a flood breaking a dam and fell to his knees at the bedside, paws framing Thane’s face without touching it. Tears striped his muzzle and fell, hot, on Thane’s fur.

“Alpha live,” Holt said, and then louder, like he needed the room to know it and the trees outside and the stars if they were listening: “Alpha live!”

Gabriel laughed and choked on it and laughed again, knuckling his eyes like he could smear the water back in. Donovan stepped away and pretended he had to wash his hands for longer than he did. Marta pressed her palm to her mouth and let herself breathe for the first time since the road. Sable closed her eyes as if thanking some god she’d never admit loyalty to, then opened them and nodded once, very small.

Thane lifted a paw with the grace of a man who’d been thrown from a truck and stabbed by a bullet the size of a thumb and still found the strength to be himself. He reached for Holt and rubbed behind his ear, scratching down through the thick fur to the base in a way that had soothed wolves long before anyone could write such a thing down.

“You should know I wouldn’t die that easy,” he said, a rough chuckle riding the words.

Holt made a noise like laughter found halfway through a sob. He turned his head into Thane’s paw with embarrassing relief and let himself be a giant dog for three seconds, eyes closed, tail thumping the bedframe hard enough that Rime reached out and steadied a lamp.

People remembered how to talk after that. The room loosened. The doctor rechecked what he didn’t need to recheck because he had to do something with his hands. Hank announced, to no one in particular, that the east perimeter was boring as sin and if any raider wanted to try his luck now, he’d personally welcome the opportunity. Kira got up and slipped out and came back with tea because tea was one of the things that said a crisis had a back end to it.

Gabriel leaned in until his forehead touched Thane’s, light and brief. He didn’t say anything out loud that the room needed to hear. Later there would be words. Now there was the fact of breath on breath and the warm pinch of almost losing something you couldn’t bear to lose and almost didn’t.

Holt stayed where he was, something like worship in the set of his shoulders, and then, remembering, he looked at Donovan with a defensive flash like a dog caught with a stolen roast. Donovan lifted both palms. “He’s fine,” he said. “He’s better than fine. He’s going to be making my job seem useless again by morning.”

“Good,” Holt said with thick gravity, like he’d just negotiated the sun to rise. He sat back a little and swiped his forearm across his face in a way that got some of the tears and most of the blood and none of the trembling.

Outside, word moved through Libby with the quick, soft efficiency of a pack. Lanterns winked on along Main. Someone started a fire in the square because standing around looking at a light together is a way humans have always told each other we’re okay. The Northern Ferals who’d come down took up places under the eaves and on the stairs and at the gate, watching with eyes that had seen worse nights and would see better mornings.

Later, after the town had exhaled and drifted back to their rooms, Sable stood in the cabin doorway and looked at Thane the way a soldier looks at another who has come back over the hill. “You scared them all,” she said simply.

Thane’s mouth rasped into what might have been a smile. “Scared myself,” he admitted, voice low.

“Good,” Sable said. “That means you still know where the edges are.” She held his gaze a heartbeat more, then looked at Holt and tipped her head. “You were a storm.”

Holt’s ears flattened, embarrassed and proud and not sure which he was allowed. “Storm fixed,” he said. “Storm stay by door now.”

“You’ll stand watch,” Sable said. “For all.” She didn’t wait for the answer; she already had it. She slipped back into the hall and was gone, white fur lost to the lamplight and then to the night.

Holt settled himself at the head of the bed and folded his long body down with absurd care, one paw on the floor, one on the coverlet near where Thane’s hand could find it if he reached in the dark. Gabriel pulled a chair close enough that his knee touched the mattress and let his eyes close not to sleep but to rest in the unsteady grace of not having to be afraid for a while. Mark sat on the hearth and claimed that he was only there because the fire made his bones happy, which fooled no one.

Wind shouldered the cabin, then softened, as if something in the woods had decided to keep quiet out of respect. The lamps hissed a little. The bandage hid what there was to hide. Beneath it, the closed place would make a scar that would be another story to tell by lanterns.

Thane drifted and woke and drifted again, measuring time by the small sounds of the people he loved refusing to leave. Once, in the deep middle, when the world had that particular stillness that belongs to three in the morning, he reached a paw sideways and found the thick back of Holt’s wrist where it rested near his shoulder.

Holt’s fingers closed, bigger than the paw they held, careful around strength like it might break. “Alpha,” he whispered, half asleep, the word a promise this time, not a plea.

Thane didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His breath moved in and out, rough and sure, a metronome for a room that had been holding itself still too long.

Morning would arrive the way it always did here, on quiet feet and with more work in its hands. There would be questions for the two raiders who had run—Hank would see to that. There would be the messy business of deciding what to do with the one who lay under the birch and the one who had crawled as far as the ditch before he decided not to be anything anymore. There would be rope to coil and decisions to make and a sheet to change and the joke Gabriel had saved for when Thane could laugh without pulling a stitch that wasn’t there.

For now there was this: a cabin full of wolves and humans who had learned, by repetition and grace and stubbornness, how to circle and hold; a big, ridiculous feral who had learned that his strength was best spent to keep, not to break; a leader who had been thrown off a truck by a bullet and refused to do the easier thing; and a town outside that would wake up and discover, with relief, that the heartbeat they relied on was still beating where it belonged.

The snow fell light and slow that evening, a whisper against the window of the KLMR control room. Mark leaned back in his chair, soldering iron cooling beside him, when Cal Tanner’s voice came through the door—nervous, breathless.
“Uh, Mark… you might wanna hear this.”

Mark frowned, pushed up his glasses, and followed him to the little ham receiver at the far end of the room. A faint voice hissed through the static on 98.3 FM, the frequency just below their own.

“If you can hear this… please, we need help. We’re trapped. They won’t let us leave.”

The message looped. Same cadence, same pause, same soft crackle. Over and over.

Thane, standing in the doorway with his arms folded, listened silently. “How long’s it been broadcasting?”
Cal rubbed the back of his neck. “Hard to say. I only caught it by accident. Could’ve been hours, could’ve been days.”
Marta appeared a moment later, coat half-buttoned, the snow melting in her hair. “Location?”
Mark zoomed the receiver’s frequency map. “Signal origin points to Plains, Montana—south-east. Maybe seventy miles.”

The room fell quiet except for the static. Then Thane’s gravel voice cut through it.
“Get Holt. And tell Gabriel to bring the truck.”

---

By dawn, the convoy was ready. The flatbed truck idled outside Libby’s gate, exhaust rising in curls through the morning mist. Mark was at the wheel, Gabriel rode shotgun, and Thane stood in the bed beside three ferals—Holt, Rime, and a younger female named Kira. All three wolves had volunteered eagerly when the call went out. Sable, though she stayed behind, had ordered them to obey Thane’s word as Alpha.

The tires crunched over the snow-packed road as they headed out. The silence of the wilderness was broken only by the rumble of the diesel engine and the occasional low laugh. Gabriel leaned out the window, wind in his fur, yelling back, “You sure this heap’s gonna make it through the pass, Mark?”

Mark smirked without looking away from the road. “It’s fine. She’s got more life in her than you think. Like me.”

Thane half-grinned and turned his eyes to the horizon, where the white peaks of the Cabinets cut against a pale blue sky. The drive stretched long—miles of snow-laden pines, frozen rivers, and abandoned farmhouses. The wolves in the bed sniffed the air constantly, ears twitching. Holt, massive even among his kind, clutched his thermos of coffee protectively.

Gabriel turned back to him. “You really can’t go an hour without that stuff, can you?”
Holt bared his teeth in a grin. “Coffee make world bright. Holt need bright.”
Rime snorted. “Bright make Holt talk too much.”

The laughter carried briefly across the flatbed until Thane lifted a paw. The mood changed. Ahead, the road descended into a valley thick with fog. The scent of smoke lingered faint but distinct.

---

They entered Plains by midafternoon. The town looked half-eaten by winter—snow piled high against dark storefronts, the main street scattered with drifted trash. And yet somewhere nearby, a generator hummed.

Thane motioned for the truck to stop. He dropped soundlessly into the snow, claws slicing the crust.
“Stay sharp. No chatter,” he murmured.

The ferals fanned out instinctively, Gabriel unslung his rifle, though he knew it was mostly for show—Thane’s claws were weapon enough. They moved through the silence, ears tuned for movement, until the low drone of a radio reached them. The voice again:

“If you can hear this… please, we need help. We’re trapped. They won’t let us leave.”

Inside an old hardware store, a radio transmitter sat on a counter—looping the same message, powered by a sputtering generator.

Mark crouched beside it. “It’s pre-recorded. Someone set this to repeat.”
Thane’s hackles rose. “Then where are they?”

The answer came in the click of rifle bolts behind them.

A dozen figures emerged from the shadows—dirty, thin, wrapped in scavenged coats. The lead man wore a cracked motorcycle helmet and carried an old M4.
“Well,” he drawled, “look what wandered in. Wolves and all.”

Gabriel stepped slightly in front of Mark. Holt’s fur bristled like a thundercloud.

The raider leader smiled. “You’re gonna take us to that shiny little town of yours. Heard you folks got power. Food. Warm beds.” He waved the rifle toward the door. “Truck’s outside, ain’t it? Good. You’ll drive.”

Thane didn’t move. His gaze stayed locked on the man’s visor.
“And if we don’t?”

The leader shrugged. “Then I start shooting, and we see how long it takes a wolf to bleed out.”

A long, cold moment passed. Then Thane smiled—a slow, dangerous curl of the lips.
“You really don’t want to find out.”

In one blur of motion, he lunged. The rifle snapped in half with a single twist. Holt moved next, plowing into the raider line like a snowplow of fur and fury. Kira tackled one through a window, Rime yanked another’s weapon free. Gabriel’s claws raked through the wooden counter as he vaulted it, knocking a raider into a shelf.

The fight was over in less than thirty seconds. Silence fell heavy and absolute except for the sound of a few men groaning in the snow.

Thane hauled the leader up by his collar and growled low, voice like gravel dragged through fire.
“You lured people here to rob them?”
The man’s visor had cracked; one terrified human eye blinked up at him.
“W-we didn’t—no choice—food’s gone—”
Thane cut him off. “You always have a choice.”

He dropped the man into the snow and turned to the others. “Find the townsfolk. Now.”

---

They found them in the school basement—cold, thin, and terrified. Twenty people huddled around a barrel fire. A young woman stepped forward, trembling.
“You’re… you’re not with them?”

Gabriel shook his head softly. “Not even close.”
Holt loomed behind him, voice deep but gentle. “We fix. You safe now.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she led them deeper inside. There was little left—burned food stores, broken generators, shattered faith. Thane sent the raiders marching out of town on foot under the ferals’ watchful eyes, unarmed and humiliated. “Let them walk home,” he said. “Fear travels farther than blood.”

For two days, Libby’s team and the remaining ferals worked tirelessly to repair what they could. Mark and Gabriel restored the generator and the water pump. Holt and Rime hauled entire timbers and barrels of fuel singlehandedly, impressing even the most skeptical humans.

One evening, as the last cable was connected, the lights of Plains flickered back on for the first time in months. The townspeople cheered. Holt, panting, wiped snow from his fur and looked at Thane expectantly.
“Alpha, Holt do good?”
Thane clapped him on the shoulder. “You did damn good, Holt.”

The young woman from before approached, her voice timid but warm. “We can’t ever repay this.”
Gabriel smiled faintly. “Just… live. Keep the lights on. That’s enough.”

---

That night, the townspeople insisted on hosting a meal in the old church hall. Rough bread, hot stew, and laughter filled the air for the first time since before the Fall. Wolves and humans sat side by side beneath flickering lanterns. Children pointed at Holt’s massive paws; he grinned sheepishly, showing off his claws like trophies.

A little boy climbed into his lap uninvited, staring up at Holt’s massive frame and golden eyes.
“You’re really big,” the child said softly, half afraid, half amazed.
Holt tilted his head, pretending to ponder. “Big, yes,” he rumbled at last, “but soft touch too.”

The boy’s eyes widened as Holt carefully offered one giant paw. When the small human hand touched it, the boy gasped and grinned. “You don’t even hurt!”
That got a round of laughter from everyone nearby—wolves and humans alike.

Gabriel chuckled from across the table. “Told you, Holt. You’re terrifying until you smile.”
Holt’s tail thumped once against the floor. “Smile is new weapon,” he said proudly, which drew even louder laughter.

The room softened into warmth and chatter. Someone passed Holt a piece of bread the size of his paw; he stared at it curiously before taking the smallest possible bite, earning another wave of laughter. For a long while, there was only joy—real, human joy—echoing in the old church hall.

---

When morning came, the convoy rolled out as the townsfolk waved from the main street. The repaired radio tower stood proud behind them, a new broadcast humming through the airwaves:

“Plains is free. Thank you, Libby.”

Thane stood in the flatbed, the wind catching his fur as he looked toward the rising sun. Holt leaned against the rail beside him, tail flicking.

“Alpha?”

“Yeah?”

Holt smiled, breath fogging in the morning air. “World getting better.”

Thane was quiet for a moment, watching the light spill over the snowy hills. Then, in a rare show of affection, he reached out and pulled the massive wolf into a one-armed hug.

“Yeah, Holt,” he said softly, voice like gravel and warmth all at once. “Little by little, it is.”

Holt froze in pure surprise for half a heartbeat—then his tail wagged hard enough to shake the truck.

Snow lay in soft sheets over Libby, mounded along fence rails and sleeping rooftops, the town moving quieter now that winter had its say. Smoke rose straight from chimneys. You could hear things better in the cold—the clack of a latch, the squeak of packed snow, the way voices carried without haste.

Holt was on the porch again before sun-up, breath fogging, guitar in his lap. He played the little pattern Gabriel had taught him until the notes stopped buzzing and started sounding like something you could lean on. When Gabriel stepped out with a yawn and a mug, Holt’s ears shot up.

“Good?” he said.

“Good,” Gabriel said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Again.”

By noon, the quiet broke. A battered snow-sled rattled at Libby’s east gate, metal treads chattering over ice. The driver—a man blown red by wind and worry—half-stumbled, half-fell off and thrust a folded paper at Hank with shaking hands.

“Eureka,” he said, jaw clamped against the cold. “We need help. Generator failed. Water lines froze. We’ve got seventy, maybe more. The old and the little ones are—” He didn’t finish.

Hank took the paper, jaw setting. “Marta!” he called, voice carrying down Main. “Council hall. Now.”

They met in minutes—Marta, Hank, Thane, Mark, Gabriel, and a handful of people who could solve problems without raising their voices. The snow-sled driver sat on a bench clutching hot tea like it was a living thing.

“What do you have working?” Mark asked him.

“Small gas gen for the clinic,” the man said, teeth ticking. “But fuel’s low. Main diesel’s dead. We lost heat in half the homes. Water standpipes froze. We’ve been melting snow.”

“How far?” Thane said.

“North-east,” Hank answered for him. “Eureka. Roads aren’t great. Plowed some, iced over in drifts.”

Marta looked around the room like she was counting something she could see. “Alright. We go. We take space heaters, two portable gensets, pipe heaters, blankets, fuel, and food. Mark, you run power. Thane, you run security. Hank, you choose six who shoot straight and lift heavy. Gabriel, you… keep people from panicking.”

Gabriel saluted with two fingers. “I can play and talk at the same time.”

Marta’s eyes flicked to Thane. “Bring a few of Sable’s wolves if she’ll lend them. We’ll need haul power.”

Thane nodded once. “I’ll ask.”

Rime arrived with three ferals before the meeting ended, as if the trees had already passed the message. “Sable say go,” he reported, touching a paw to his chest, then to Thane. “Treat him as Alpha.”

Holt appeared behind him, already wearing his pack, eyes fixed on Thane and Gabriel as if someone might try to steal them. “Holt go,” he added.

“Of course you do,” Gabriel said, grinning despite the worry in the room. “Bring your muscles. Leave the caffeine.”

Holt looked genuinely wounded. “Why?”

“So you don’t run to Canada and back while we’re fixing pipes,” Mark said.

They rolled out inside an hour. The convoy looked like winter deciding to help itself: two trucks piled with equipment and blankets, a flatbed with fuel drums chained down, and a handful of wolves loping alongside, paws silent, breath streaming white. Holt refused the bed entirely and paced next to Thane’s door like a shadow that had opinions.

The road north was a lesson in patience. Drifts shifted where wind had its way, ice shone in the blue shade, and the trucks climbed steady through country that didn’t have to try to be beautiful. No one talked much. When they did, it was practical.

“Watch the black ice,” Mark warned over the radio. “You can’t see it until you’re on it.”

“Copy,” Hank came back. “Keep speed steady.”

At a narrow cut where rock walls leaned in close, the lead truck hit a patch that wasn’t there a second before. The back slid out, corrected, slid again. Holt put both paws against the fender without thinking and braced, claws scraping. The truck straightened like someone had grabbed its tail.

The driver looked out the window in disbelief. “Thank you!”

Holt shrugged a shoulder, as if stopping two tons with his hands were just a thing you do on Tuesdays.

By early afternoon, the roofs of Eureka showed through the falling snow—low houses capped in white, a single smokestack coughing little puffs into a sky the color of steel. They rolled through town slow, past faces peering from doorways and cracked-open curtains. The faces had the same look—tight around the eyes, the cold pinched into worry.

A woman with a wool cap and cracked knuckles met them at the community hall, breath puffing. “I’m Mayor Lillian Ames,” she said. “I appreciate you coming. We… we didn’t know who else to ask.”

“You asked the right people,” Marta said, stepping forward with a blanket already in her hands. She wrapped it around a boy at the mayor’s hip without asking. “Show us the generator. Mark?” She didn’t need to check; he was already sprawled over a folded schematic, pencil behind his ear, eyes bright.

“Diesel or gas?” he asked.

“Diesel,” Ames said. “Old co-op unit. We’ve kept it going with duct tape and prayer. Prayer ran out.”

“I’ve got tape,” Mark said. “And better than prayer.”

They moved. It was a choreography born from too many bad days and the habit of fixing things anyway. Hank put his crew where trouble might try to be. Thane posted wolves where movement mattered—corners, alleys, the supply trucks. Holt parked himself one step behind Gabriel and one step to the right of Thane, as if math could out-argue fate.

At the generator shed, Mark whistled through his teeth. “You weren’t kidding. This thing is older than my sense of humor.” He popped a panel, leaned in, and grunted. “Fuel gelled. Intake clogged. Heater coil’s toast.”

“Can you get it running?” Ames asked, the question made of hope she didn’t want to hear breaking.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Just don’t ask me to be nice to it.” He looked over his shoulder. “Holt, Rime—those fuel drums.”

Holt and Rime carried two at a time, moving through snow like it had changed its mind about being deep. Two young men from Eureka started to grab a third drum, stopped, and stared. One whispered, “Holy hell.”

“Wolves are friends who make lights,” one of the Libby volunteers said with a grin, and kept working.

Pipe heaters went out with Hank’s crew in paired teams—one human, one feral, each with a map of the water system and a list of standpipes that had gone silent. They worked house to house, a knock, a smile, a heater strapped to a line, a promise that hot water would find its way back if it knew someone was looking.

At the shed, Mark rigged a replacement coil from parts he had no business having but did anyway, wrapped lines with heat tape, and cursed the inhumanity of people who let filters go that long. “Try it,” he called.

Thane thumbed the manual prime, waited, then hit the starter. The generator coughed like an old smoker, caught, sputtered, then roared into a sound that made people within earshot laugh out loud without meaning to.

Lights winked on in the closest buildings, one by one, each a tiny victory. In the clinic window, a nurse pressed both palms to the glass. Holt pointed with delight. “House eyes wake,” he said.

“House eyes wake,” Gabriel repeated, smiling.

They were halfway through slinging heat tape at the school’s standpipes when the accident almost happened. A drift above the alley had been undercut by earlier footsteps; when Holt and Gabriel passed beneath, the whole slab let go. Snow and crust and a chunk of old gutter came down in one sudden white rush.

Holt didn’t think. He stepped into Gabriel, braced, and took the hit across his back, the weight sloughing off as if the world had tried to test something and found it wouldn’t break. The clatter echoed. Gabriel blinked through dusting flakes, then looked at the bent gutter.

“You good?” Thane called from ten feet away, already moving.

Gabriel patted Holt’s shoulder. “Saved the guitar hand.”

Holt puffed up with open pride. “Protect Teacher.”

Thane clapped him once between the shoulders, approval with weight behind it. “Good.”

People were watching now—heads out of doorways, shapes gathered at corners. It wasn’t fear, not anymore. It was hunger for a different kind of story.

By late afternoon, the generator was humming steady, the clinic heaters were pushing back winter, and three water lines clanked and gurgled their way back to life. The sound made a woman laugh and cry at the same time, hands over her mouth. A little boy standing with her pointed at Holt’s hands and whispered, “He’s bigger than the fridge.”

Holt heard, looked at his paws, then at the boy. He crouched to make himself less of a mountain. “Strong,” he said gently. “But soft.” He turned his palm up and let the kid lay his mittened hand against it. The boy’s eyes went huge.

Mayor Ames insisted they come to the hall for stew. “You’ll freeze in the street if I don’t bribe you,” she said, voice brisk with gratitude. “Besides, you make my people braver just by being in a room.”

The hall smelled like onion and bay leaf, the sort of food that remembers how to hold you. Long tables ran the length, mismatched bowls stacked at the end, spoons clinking. People scooted to make space. Holt sat at the edge nearest the door out of habit, then thought about Sable’s words echoing through other rooms on other days—“not two only”—and shifted in, shoulder to shoulder with the Libby crew.

A child across from him stared at the line of his arm, the way the fur shifted when he lifted his spoon. “You’re… not scary,” she said, as if she had to test the thought out loud.

“Sometimes scary,” Holt admitted, managing a sheepish smile. “Not to friends.”

“Are we friends?” she asked.

Holt didn’t answer. He looked at Thane. Thane gave a small nod.

“Yes,” Holt said. “Friends.”

Gabriel came back from the far end of the hall with a grin and something in his hands. “You are not going to believe this,” he said, laying a dusty guitar case on the table. “Community center closet. Two broken chairs, a crate of old holiday banners, and this. It’s rough, but it stays in tune.”

The boy across from Holt scooted forward so fast his chair squealed. “Can you… do you… will you…?”

Holt glanced at Thane again, and then at Sable’s absence he carried in memory. He took the guitar from Gabriel like it might try to jump. It was older than the one in Libby, the finish rubbed off where other hands had learned too, but it sat into his lap like something that had met him before in a story.

He set his paw. He breathed the way Gabriel had shown him. He played the small melody that had become his name.

The hall quieted like a flock turning in air. The notes weren’t fancy, and Holt’s claws bumped once over a fret, but the sound was simple and good, and when he reached the end, he didn’t look up for approval. He let the last note hang. The boy clapped before anyone else, the small hands starting the big sound.

“You’re the strong music wolf,” someone said, not unkindly, and the room laughed with the sort of laughter that makes space, not noise.

After, stories flowed. Hank told a short one about the time a moose tried to order breakfast at the diner before the Fall. A teacher from Eureka countered with a tale about sledding on cafeteria trays, and how it had gone both very well and very wrong. Marta talked about the bridge they’d mended east of Libby and how a feral had grabbed a human by the back of the jacket and set him right on the beam when a gust came—no drama, just a fact. People leaned closer while they ate, the warmth of stew and company doing the small daily work of saving them.

When it was time to leave, Mayor Ames stood on a chair so she didn’t have to shout. “We’ll be alright now,” she said, voice thick but steady. “Because you came. Because you didn’t have to.” She hesitated. “We didn’t… I mean—” She looked at Holt and Rime and the rest. “We didn’t know wolves… worked with people. I’m sorry it took a crisis to teach us we were wrong.”

Holt shifted, uncomfortable with being looked at like weather. Rime dipped his head once, accepting without taking anything he hadn’t earned. Marta stepped up beside Ames, put a hand on her forearm, and said, “We’re all learning the same lesson.”

They loaded back into the cold with full bellies and the particular tired you get when you’ve done good and can feel it. As they filed out, the boy who had called Holt “strong music wolf” scurried up, hovering at knee height. “Mister Wolf?” he said, polite in the way you are when you’re talking to a story.

Holt crouched again. “Yes.”

The boy touched two fingers to his own chest, then to Holt’s paw. “Thank you,” he said, very seriously.

Holt blinked, then mimicked the gesture back. “Thank you.”

The generator shed hummed steady as a heartbeat as they left. Lights burned in windows, turning the snow outside golden. On the road, the convoy moved with the confidence of night work done right. Holt walked where he’d walked before—one step behind Gabriel, one step to Thane’s right—and then, remembering the lesson he’d been given, eased out to range the line, eyes forward for all of them.

“Good day,” Mark said into the wind.

“Good day,” Marta echoed, pulling her hat down.

“Good day,” Hank agreed. “Let’s make it home.”

“Play on the radio when we get back?” one of the younger ferals asked, trotting beside Gabriel.

“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “We’ll send a song north. And east.”

“House eyes wake,” Holt said, glancing back at the glow of Eureka behind them.

“House eyes wake,” Gabriel said, and smiled into the dark.

They reached the ridge above Libby as the sky thought about stars. Down in the valley, their own windows looked back at them, warm and ordinary. The kind of ordinary you work hard for. The kind you defend with trucks and tools and music and the right kind of strength.

At the cabin, snow sifted under the porch light in slow silver. Holt set his paw briefly on the doorframe, then lifted it and knocked as if he were learning new rules and liked how they felt. Gabriel opened with a grin. Thane shook snow off his jacket and listened to the quiet, heavy and good.

“Tomorrow,” Gabriel said, nodding at Holt’s guitar hanging on the wall.

“Tomorrow,” Holt agreed, and then added, as if testing a word that could fit everyone, “Together.”

The week slid by on soft paws. Gabriel’s guitar lived on the coffee table now, and so did Holt. If the sun was up, Holt was on the porch with the instrument in his lap, claws tracing chords, tongue peeking out in concentration. If the sun wasn’t up, he waited for it like a kid at a locked candy store. Whenever Gabriel stepped outside, Holt brightened so fast it looked like daylight had arrived twice.

“You realize you’ve become a full-time guitar school,” Mark said one morning, passing Gabriel a steaming mug. “Congratulations. Your pay is praise and blistered fingers.”

Gabriel flexed his right paw, feigning tragedy. “I suffer for art.”

“Your students suffer more,” Mark said, nodding toward the yard where Holt carefully played through the melody Gabriel had written for him. The big wolf missed a note, growled at himself, then did it again correctly and looked at the porch to make sure someone saw.

Thane glanced up from the step he was repairing. “He’s getting better.”

Holt finished the phrase and lifted the guitar, wide-eyed. “Good?”

Gabriel grinned. “Good. Keep going.”

Holt settled into the rhythm again, the notes slow and honest. From the edge of the clearing, two younger ferals watched, their usual smirks softened by something closer to admiration. When Holt saw them, his ears shot up. He didn’t wave. He played cleaner.

That afternoon brought more clouds than sun. The air held the metallic smell that comes before snow. In town, people closed shutters gently and tied down tarps with extra knots. At the square, Marta oversaw the tarps stretched over the last of the market stalls. “We’re ready for a dusting,” she told Hank. “We’re not ready for a decade.”

Hank scanned the sky. “One day at a time.”

On the walk back to the cabin, the first tiny flakes drifted past Thane’s muzzle and melted instantly. Gabriel lifted his face to catch them and laughed. Holt stood very still on the path, watching the white specks land on his forearms.

“Good?” he asked, suspicious.

“Good,” Thane said.

“Cold sky feathers,” Holt declared, satisfied.

The forest took the snow quietly. Needles collected sugar. The ground kept its color but the air changed—dense, listening. Sable arrived in that hush, a pale shape gliding between trunks, three of her pack behind her. She stopped at the edge of the clearing as if she’d never once been a visitor.

“Your den smells like tea and music,” she said.

“Blame him,” Thane replied, tilting his head toward Gabriel.

“Proudly,” Gabriel said.

Holt looked from Sable to Thane to Gabriel and back to Sable again, guitar held with a possessiveness usually reserved for prey. Sable took that in with one glance. “He clings,” she observed.

“Like ivy,” Mark said, coming out with an armful of firewood. “We’re training him to cling to chores too.”

Holt puffed. “Holt does chores.”

“Today,” Mark said, deadpan.

Sable’s gaze returned to Thane, the corner of her mouth shifting. “You started a thing.”

“Music started it,” Thane said. “We just opened the door.”

The snow thickened to a slow sift, and the cabin warmed around the kettle. Gabriel tuned while Holt hovered at exactly one pace away, tail thumping the wall until Mark nudged a chair two inches to save the lamp. The younger ferals sat near the hearth, pretending not to be watching every move.

“Play,” Holt said to Gabriel, already lifting his own guitar.

“Breathe,” Gabriel answered, then nodded. They began together, Holt’s chords a touch late, then on time. It wasn’t pretty yet, but it was steady, and his body settled into it as if the instrument had taught him how to sit.

A soft tap sounded at the door; Marta stepped in, hair dusted with snow. “I brought you a loaf,” she said, lifting a wrapped bundle. “And a request for whoever is in charge of soothing the town’s nerves.”

Gabriel raised a hand. “I accept payment in bread.”

“Consider it a retainer,” Marta said. “First snow always makes folks jumpy. If the radio boys want to send some music over dinner, I won’t stop them.”

“We can swing up to KLMR at dusk,” Mark said. “Run a couple hours. Keep it warm.”

“Bless you,” Marta said. She turned to Sable. “And bless your wolves for not chasing my chickens last week.”

Sable’s eyes cooled to pleasant. “They learned. Chickens are friends who make eggs.”

Marta beamed. “We’ll embroider that on a banner.”

They left the door open a moment longer—the sound of falling snow seemed to lean in to listen, then the door clicked shut and the world outside receded to a gray whisper. Gabriel started another pattern; Holt followed. At a tricky change, Holt stumbled, growled, and dragged the note back into place by force of will.

“Easy,” Gabriel said quietly. “Strength is good. Soft is better here.”

Holt looked at his own claws. “Strong, soft,” he repeated. “Both.”

Sable watched all of this with the kind of attention that ends in decisions. When the lesson paused, she walked to Holt and placed two fingers under his chin so he met her eyes. “You protect,” she said. “It is good. But not two only.” She flicked her gaze toward Thane and Gabriel, then spread her hand to the room. “All.”

Holt nodded immediately. “Pack first.”

“Always,” Thane said. “The best way to protect us is to protect all of them.”

Holt took that in visibly, shoulders squaring. One of the younger ferals near the fire smirked and opened his mouth; a look from Sable shut it before sound escaped. The smirk softened into something else. Respect had a smell; it hovered now—thin and honest.

Snow muted the afternoon down into blue. They walked to the town together as the light faded, the four from the cabin and the four from the north, footprints already softening behind them. The square glowed with lanterns as people hurried between buildings and laughter puffed white in the air. KLMR’s tower was a dark wedge against the brighter sky beyond the trees.

“Two hours,” Mark said at the station door. “We keep it simple. Weather, a few tracks, a voice to keep the rooms company.”

“Play Holt,” one of the young ferals said, startling himself at speaking up.

“We will,” Gabriel promised, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “Soon.”

Inside, the console lights blinked awake like old friends called by name. The generator sent its steady thrum through the floorboards. Mark moved between meters with practiced ease. Thane sat behind the mic, cable wrapped neatly under his palm but not tight. Gabriel stood by the CD racks, plucking discs with the care of a librarian. Sable remained at the studio window with her wolves, listening to the room gather itself.

Thane’s voice went out into the snow. It didn’t fill the air so much as warm it. “Good evening, Libby,” he said. “First flakes of the season. Don’t panic. The roads are clear enough, the soup is hot, and Hank’s boys are doing circles around your worries as we speak.” The faint sound of laughter carried from someone in the hallway. “We’re here for a bit tonight to keep you company. Consider it a fire you can hear.”

He nodded to Mark; the first song rolled. Old world rock, something familiar enough to make people breathe, something with drums like a heartbeat slowed for calm. In the lobby, two children appeared with their mother, pushing noses to the window glass as if the sound lived there and they could see it. One of Sable’s wolves leaned down and showed them how to cup a paw to the glass to make a circle. The children copied, delighted to have made their own portals.

Between songs, Thane gave the forecast and told a short story about the first time he’d seen Montana snow, which was really just a list of things he’d learned quickly, delivered like instructions you’d rather give as a joke: don’t lick metal, don’t trust clear ice, don’t assume the truck knows better than you do. People listening nodded in kitchens and smiled at nothing in particular. Gabriel slipped on air long enough to tell the story of a feral declaring snow to be “cold sky feathers.” In the cabin later, three separate households would call it that without meaning to.

Sable stood beside Thane for the last break. She didn’t take the mic. She didn’t have to. Being present sent its own signal. Thane watched the light, waited for the next downbeat in the room’s unspoken tempo, and said, “We’re not alone tonight. The north is here. We’re here.” He tapped the console softly once. “We’re here.”

On the walk home, Holt ranged steps ahead of Thane without realizing it, scanning the trees with a silent vigilance that made Gabriel hide a grin. When a branch cracked in the woods—some small thing settling under snow—Holt’s head came up, body tall, then he glanced back at Thane and relaxed.

“You know he’s going to start sleeping on the porch,” Gabriel said.

“He already did,” Mark said. “Twice.”

Holt looked mortified and proud at the same time. “Warm near door,” he muttered.

“You have a bed,” Thane said.

“Cloud den too soft,” Holt said, serious.

At the cabin, the snow had finally started to stick. The porch steps wore a thin white edge. Holt opened the door for Sable without thinking; she gave him a glance that said she’d noticed and sat on the rug near the fire, shaking snow from her fur the way a swan would shake off rain. Her wolves settled nearby. Gabriel put the kettle on again. Mark poked the fire, which caught on the first try because Mark had decided it would.

Holt stood near Thane in a posture most wolves only used in battle: left shoulder slightly ahead, attention forward, weight balanced, ready. Thane said nothing about it. He walked to the bookshelf, reached behind a stack of maps, and pulled out a narrow varnished strip with four small hooks.

“What’s that?” Gabriel asked, pouring water.

“Wall hanger,” Thane said. “For a guitar.”

Holt looked at the strip like it might be made of lightning. Thane found two screws and set them under his tongue, took a driver from the shelf, and fixed the hanger to the log wall next to the door where the evening light hit. He stepped back. “Go ahead,” he said.

Holt moved slowly, lifted his guitar with both paws like a ceremony, and set the neck into the cradle. The instrument hung there, gleaming dully in the firelight, a quiet, waiting thing that belonged now.

Holt watched it for a long beat, then turned to Sable without words. She saw everything. “Good,” she said simply. “Now you learn two songs. Next you teach two songs.”

Holt considered that directive as if it were an oath. “Teach,” he said. “Holt teach.”

“Start with the pups,” Thane said. “And the ones who teased you. Show them what you learned.”

Holt’s grin came slow and enormous, not sharp, not dangerous—just light. “Yes,” he said.

The kettle clicked off. Cups made soft sounds. Snow whispered against the windows. The guitars stayed on their hooks and their laps. Sable and Thane shared a rare, unhurried quiet on opposite sides of the hearth, each aware of the other, neither wanting to break the symmetry. Holt drifted to the threshold, sat with his back against the doorframe, and kept watch because he wanted to.

When they finally settled for the night, the cabin had a new shape to its silence. It held more and asked less. Out in the clearing, the snow gathered in patient white layers and made room for whatever would come next. Inside, Holt slept sitting up against the wall beneath his guitar, head tilted, one paw resting over his ribs as if cradling a drum.

In town, a child asked her mother if the radio would sing them to sleep again tomorrow. At the northern camp, a young wolf tried clumsy chords and didn’t quit when they buzzed. In the studio at KLMR, a meter still glowed from leftover heat, a needle resting on zero like a heartbeat that had learned how to wait.

Morning would come. And with it, the next lesson.