Category: New World Life Page 1 of 11

Sunday arrived like the valley had finally remembered how to breathe.

Not in silence — Libby was too alive for that now — but in the easy, ordinary way that only came when a town didn’t wake up braced for bad news. The sun climbed cleanly over the mountains, warming the roofs and the storefronts on Mineral Avenue. Somewhere down the street a pickup started with a familiar cough and steadied into a purr. A screen door slapped shut. A dog barked twice and then stopped, as if even it had decided the morning wasn’t worth fussing over.

Power was simply there. No humming generators. No careful rationing. No lanterns hung on hooks out of habit. Streetlamps still glowed faintly under the shade of trees that had begun to leaf out again, and the lines of electricity ran exactly where they had run before the Fall, carrying that invisible certainty from the dam like it had never stopped.

Thane crossed the square with a paper cup of coffee in one clawed hand and a folded note in the other — a list Marta had handed him the day before, half joking and half serious.

If you have time, could you have the pack help move the produce tables again? Also, someone needs to fix the second speaker because it crackles.

He could hear the crackle already. A speaker mounted high on the courthouse wall was playing music into the open air — not loud, just enough to fill the space between conversations. It was one of Gabriel’s recordings, mellow guitar and a steady beat under it. The kind of tune that made you want to linger.

A different sound cut through the music: a phone ringing from somewhere down the block, sharp and bright. Someone answered it with a laugh that carried out of an open window.

“Libby City Hall, yeah, we’re open—no, you don’t need an appointment, you just walk in—”

Thane smiled into his coffee and kept walking.

The square was already waking into market day. Tables were being unfolded with practiced hands. Awnings went up, their canvas snapping once in the breeze like sails. Someone had strung the white bulb lights again — long lines from building to pole, pole to building, crossing the open space overhead in lazy arcs. They weren’t needed in the morning sun, but they were on anyway, glowing softly just because they could.

Normal had turned into a habit again.

“Alpha!”

Two small bodies hit his legs like happy missiles.

Mason grabbed his left thigh. Ellie latched onto the right, cheek pressed against his jeans as if he were a favorite piece of furniture.

Thane paused and looked down, feigning sternness. “You two are going to knock me over.”

Mason looked up with a grin too big for his face. “Dad says you can’t fall.”

“That’s a lie,” Thane said. “I fall all the time. I just don’t do it in public.”

Ellie giggled. “We saw the dragon again!” she blurted, as if the movie had somehow continued in her dreams. “And the song—”

Mason cut in, loud and excited. “And the part where it dove into the waves and the water turned orange like fire!”

Thane’s ears tipped forward. “So you’re telling me,” he said slowly, “that the movie was good.”

They both nodded so hard their hair bounced.

“Good,” Thane said, and let his expression soften. “That means we did something right.”

Ellie hugged harder and then, as if remembering manners, released him and skipped backward with a little bow. “Okay. We’re going to climb Rime now.”

“Of course you are,” Thane muttered.

He turned, coffee still in hand, and found Rime already seated at the fountain like he’d been appointed as an official attraction. Three kids were climbing over him, one perched on his broad shoulder, another braiding a ribbon into the fur at the end of his tail with intense concentration. Rime’s eyes were half-lidded in patient resignation, but his tail flicked in slow, content swishes.

“Rime,” Thane called. “You ok?”

“Yes,” Rime answered without looking up. “I have become… mountain.”

One of the kids leaned over his shoulder and whispered conspiratorially, “He’s warm.”

“Yes, I am,” Rime said.

The kid smiled wide and hugged his neck.

Thane shook his head, laughing under his breath, and moved on.

The smell of the market hit him next — bread, coffee, smoked meat, spring herbs crushed under boots and paws. And popcorn, faint but unmistakable, like the Dome had imprinted itself on the town overnight.

Mrs. Carley stood at a table near the bakery with a basket of muffins, passing them out to anyone who walked by. She spotted Thane and lifted one in salute.

“Movie staff deserves pastries,” she called.

“We weren’t the only staff,” Thane called back. “Half the town volunteered by showing up and smiling.”

“That’s not work,” Mrs. Carley said. “That’s living. Take a muffin.”

Thane took one with a nod and continued toward the bank steps, where Mark was leaning with his own coffee, watching the square the way a man watched a machine he’d finally gotten to run without grinding.

Glacier Bank’s doors were open behind him, and the marble lobby inside looked absurdly clean now, as if the building had been waiting its whole life to be useful again. A temporary market desk had been set outside beneath a canopy, with a sign propped on the edge:

CASH ACCEPTED HERE
CHANGE AVAILABLE

A woman from Marta’s staff was stationed there with a tin cash box and a stack of small bills. She was laughing with a teenager who kept trying to pay with a hundred.

“You do not have to use the biggest bill you own,” she told him, still smiling. “It’s not a contest.”

“It kind of is,” the teen said, grinning. “I found it in my dad’s safe. I wanna see if it’s still magic.”

“It’s still paper,” she said. “Give me a ten.”

Thane stepped up beside Mark. “Feels strange seeing money again.”

Mark nodded slowly, eyes on the exchange. “It does,” he said. “But it also feels… like the world clicked back into place. Like putting a book back on the right shelf.”

A man approached the canopy with a jar of honey and a small bag of dried apples. He pulled bills from his pocket with care, smoothing them flat before handing them over.

“Feels like I’m doing something illegal,” he joked.

The woman behind the tin box snorted. “It’s only illegal if you try to eat it.”

Thane watched the man take his change and tuck it into his pocket with a quiet kind of gratitude. Not because the money mattered, but because what it represented did — order. Trust. A shared agreement that the world could be predictable.

A landline rang somewhere nearby — two rings, then cut off as someone picked up. Another voice floated out from the bank doorway.

“Glacier Bank, yes, we’re open—no, you don’t need to be a resident of Libby—yes, Thompson Falls can open accounts too—”

Mark’s mouth quirked. “Remember when phones ringing was annoying?”

Thane huffed. “I’d take annoying.”

“Same.”

Gabriel appeared like he belonged wherever there was sound. He had his guitar slung over his back and a short length of cable in his hand. He nodded toward the crackling speaker overhead.

“That one’s annoyed,” he said. “I’m gonna fix it before it starts sounding like a dying goose.”

“Do you need help?” Mark asked automatically.

Gabriel grinned. “Nope. I’m doing a normal job. Let me have this.”

Mark laughed and held up his hands in surrender. Gabriel headed toward the courthouse wall, climbing a ladder with practiced confidence and the casual grace of someone who’d climbed towers and rooftops for far more serious reasons.

Thane’s gaze drifted across the square.

Marta was moving from table to table with her clipboard, but she wasn’t tense today. She stopped to talk to people, to laugh. Hank stood near the sheriff’s office doors with a cup of coffee, arms crossed, watching the crowd like a man who’d spent too long guarding an empty world and was still getting used to this one being full again.

When Marta reached the center of the square and saw Thane, she lifted her hand and waved him over.

“Morning,” she said. “You sleep at all?”

“Some,” Thane said. “Holt tried to tell everyone the entire plot of the movie at breakfast.”

Holt, as if summoned by his name, was at the smoked meat table with two men from Spokane, speaking with grand, sweeping gestures.

“And then,” Holt was saying, voice full of wonder, “dragon chooses mercy. Not fire. Mercy. Big lesson.”

One of the Spokane men chuckled. “You’re a movie critic now?”

Holt looked offended. “No. I am wolf. But movie… makes heart feel bigger.”

The other man wiped at his eyes with a knuckle, pretending it was nothing. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Same.”

Marta followed Thane’s gaze and smiled faintly. “I’ve seen Holt hug three people this morning.”

Thane’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that a record?”

“By lunchtime he’ll be running for mayor.”

Hank wandered closer, snorting. “Don’t joke like that.”

“Why?” Marta asked, amused. “Afraid he’ll win?”

Hank looked out over the square at Holt’s towering presence, his apron still on from last night because he’d refused to take it off, the word POPCORN stamped across his chest like a badge of honor.

Hank’s lips twitched. “I’m afraid he’ll enforce the rules.”

“Fear travels farther than paperwork,” Thane said dryly.

Marta laughed, then her expression softened. “Last night,” she said quietly, “I stood in that lobby and I swear I forgot the Fall happened for five straight minutes.”

Thane nodded once. “I felt it too.”

Hank’s gaze went distant for a second. “My wife loved that theater,” he said, voice rougher than usual. “We used to sit in the back row and talk through the whole movie. Drove everyone else crazy.”

Marta’s smile turned warmer. “What would she say about werewolves running concessions?”

Hank’s mouth curved. “She’d tell me to stop being grumpy and buy them candy.”

Thane glanced across the square again, letting his eyes rest on the small details: string lights glowing in daylight, kids running with paper dragon masks, a couple arguing gently about whether to show an action movie next week or a comedy.

And then he noticed Varro.

Varro stood near the fountain, not far from Rime’s “I am mountain” post. A little boy had collided with him at full speed — the kind of accident that would have ended in tears a year ago. Instead, the boy bounced off Varro’s leg, laughed, and immediately wrapped his arms around Varro’s thigh like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Varro froze.

His hands hovered, uncertain.

Then, slowly, carefully, he placed one hand on the child’s back. His touch was gentler than anyone would have expected from a wolf who had lived under Tarrik’s old rule.

“It is… okay,” Varro said quietly.

The boy looked up. “You’re big.”

“Yes,” Varro agreed, and there was something like a smile in his eyes. “You are… fast.”

Kade stood a step behind Varro, watching, his posture easy. When another child ran up and hugged him without warning, Kade didn’t even flinch. He simply rested a hand on the kid’s head, steady and calm.

“Your fur is like a blanket,” the child declared.

Kade’s voice was perfectly even. “I am not a blanket.”

The child hugged harder.

Thane’s mouth twitched. Some truths didn’t matter when kids were involved.

Gabriel climbed down from the ladder and jogged across the square, wiping his hands on his jeans. The music overhead smoothed out immediately — no more crackle, just warm sound drifting on the air like it belonged there.

Gabriel nodded once, satisfied. “Better.”

Marta pointed at him. “You’re broadcasting later today.”

Gabriel groaned theatrically. “Can’t I just be a normal guy for one day?”

“You have a tail,” Hank said.

Gabriel pointed at his own black fur, deadpan. “Rude.”

They all laughed.

The market swelled toward midday, the square filling until it felt like the whole town was here — and maybe it was. Libby wasn’t big. Three hundred seats at the Dome was basically a town-wide invitation, and it had turned into a town-wide habit in the span of a week.

People talked about the movie like it was something they’d survived together.

“That ocean scene,” a woman said near the bread stand, voice full of wonder. “I forgot water could look like that.”

“My kid tried to sing the Ember Song all night,” her husband replied. “I threatened to lock him in the barn.”

A teenager piped up from behind them. “You can’t. It’s stuck in our heads too.”

A man with a Spokane accent laughed and held up his hands. “I’m not ashamed. I cried. Right there in the theater. In public.”

Mrs. Carley patted his arm. “Good. It means your heart still works.”

Dr. Donovan Wade emerged from the clinic down the street and stepped into the square like a man stepping into sunlight after too long indoors. He wore his usual practical clothes, sleeves rolled, vest pockets full. His expression was calm, but his eyes softened as he watched the crowd.

Thane waved him over. “Morning, Doc.”

Wade’s gaze flicked to Thane, then to the kids climbing on Rime, then to Holt still wearing his POPCORN apron in public like a proud idiot.

He cleared his throat. “I have seen stranger medical phenomena,” he said. “But not many.”

Marta grinned. “You come to the movie last night?”

Wade’s mouth quirked. “I sat in the back. So I could leave if the crowd became… too much.”

“And?” Thane asked.

Wade looked away, pretending to study a vendor’s apples. “The dragon song was… tolerable,” he said dryly.

Gabriel laughed. “That’s the highest praise you’ve ever given anything.”

Wade’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t push it.”

Hank angled his head toward the bank canopy. “Doc, you ever think you’d see people paying for honey with cash again?”

Wade followed his gaze. “I thought we might see a lot of things again,” he said, voice quieter. “but I did not know if I’d be alive for them.”

That landed softly but firmly between them.

Thane didn’t answer with words. He simply nodded once, a silent agreement that the weight of that statement deserved.

Then a small voice cut in, bright and impatient. “Doctor Wade!”

Wade turned just in time to be nearly bowled over by Darren, moving faster than he should have with his brace. The man looked healthier already, cheeks less hollow, eyes brighter.

“I’m walking,” Darren announced, triumphant.

“You are limping,” Wade corrected immediately.

Darren grinned. “But I’m limping to the market. That counts.”

Wade’s lips twitched. “It counts as progress,” he allowed. “And as you disobeying me.”

Darren looked guilty for exactly half a second and then shrugged. “The movie warmed my soul. I had to come out.”

Wade sighed like a man who had lost this battle before it began. “Fine. But if you fall, I’m charging you double.”

Darren blinked. “With cash?”

Wade looked him dead in the eye. “With labor.”

Darren laughed and moved off, still limping but stubbornly joyful.

Thane watched him go, then looked back at the square. The string lights swayed gently overhead. The music drifted. The phones rang and rang and rang, answered by voices that sounded like they had plans.

Kade stepped close enough for Thane to hear him over the crowd. “This is good,” he said simply.

Thane nodded. “Yeah.”

Varro’s gaze swept the square, scanning out of habit, then settled on a small child who had climbed onto Holt’s knee like Holt was a living chair. Holt held the child steady with enormous careful hands, looking mildly terrified that he might accidentally crush joy itself.

Varro’s voice was low, thoughtful. “Hard to believe,” he said, “that we live in same world as before.”

“We don’t,” Thane said. “But we’re building one worth living in.”

Varro looked at him, amber eyes steady. “Yes,” he said. “We are.”

As afternoon settled in, the market eased into a slower rhythm — people lingering, talking longer, sitting on benches beneath the string lights even though the sun was still high. The Dome poster fluttered on the notice board, bright paint catching light.

Saturday at the Dome had become more than a movie night.

It had become proof.

Proof that the world could come back in pieces. That joy could be rebuilt like a bridge. That normal wasn’t gone — it was waiting, like the theater had been waiting, dark and silent until someone remembered how to turn the lights on.

Thane stood near the center of the square, coffee gone cold in his hand, and watched children run through sunlight with paper dragons on their faces.

He couldn’t hear the Ember Song anymore, but he could feel it in the town — in the hum of power, in the ring of phones, in the laughter.

And for once, he let himself believe that this might last.

By Wednesday afternoon the poster was everywhere.

Jana had outdone herself — a tall, bold painting in rich blues and golds: a stylized dragon curling around a glowing screen, silhouettes of humans and wolves sitting together in rows, all washed in warm, lantern-colored light even though nobody actually used lanterns anymore. At the bottom, in neat block letters:

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE DOME
7:00 PM
FIRST SHOWING: SONG OF THE EMBER SEA
“ALL WELCOME — SEATS UNTIL WE RUN OUT!”

Kids stared at it wide-eyed. Adults paused in front of it a little longer than strictly necessary, their expressions softening in ways they didn’t always let people see. It spread the way good news did in spring — quietly, warmly, like fresh grass creeping through cracks in the pavement.

Thane noticed it every time he crossed the square. It wasn’t the art itself — though it was beautiful — but the sound that came with it. Laughter. Wonder. People making plans again. Entire conversations built around “What if we sit all the way in the back like we used to?” and “Do you think the seat cushions still squeak?” and “My kids have never seen a movie before the Fall — is it scary? How loud is it? Does the screen move?”

Thane always answered gently, reassuringly: “It will be loud, but not hurting-loud. The screen doesn’t move. And there are seats for everyone.”
(He didn’t mention the wolf row. They’d see that soon enough.)

By Friday evening the whole town felt charged in a way Thane hadn’t felt since the Fall — that subtle, humming anticipation of something shared, something joyful.

Mark found him outside KTNY as Gabriel finished a late afternoon broadcast.

“So,” Mark said, hands in his pockets. “We ready for tomorrow?”

Thane snorted lightly. “Ready as we’re going to be.”

Gabriel emerged from the station, slinging his headphones around his neck. “I swear, I’ve had at least twenty people call in just to ask what the movie is about.”

“You told them?”

“Of course not. Spoilers, Alpha.” Gabriel clapped Thane on the arm. “Let ’em discover the dragon song on their own.”

---

Saturday dawned bright and warm, the kind of spring day that felt like a promise. The smell of pine drifted on the breeze from the mountains, mixing with the clean scent of running water from the Kootenai River. The moment breakfast was finished at the cabin, Thane clapped his hands together once, sharply.

“All right,” he said. “Everyone up. Today’s training: theater operations.”

Rime straightened like he was being enlisted. Holt perked up instantly. Kade set down the towel he’d been using to dry the dishes and stepped forward with soldierly calm. Varro looked intrigued, ears angled with quiet attention. Even Mark and Gabriel tried not to laugh.

Inside the Dome, Thane led them through the lobby like a commander addressing new recruits.

“Okay,” he said, pointing at the concession stand. “Popcorn first. Kade, you’re on kernels and oil. Holt — you stir.”

Holt blinked. “Stir… what?”

Thane flicked the machine’s starter. The kettle snapped on with a cheerful metallic pop.

“This,” Thane said. “Do not put your face in it.”

Holt’s ears wilted at being pre-emptively corrected. “I was not going to,” he muttered.

“Yes you were,” Rime said, grinning.

The machine warmed quickly. Kade measured precisely as Thane instructed, pouring in the kernels with scientific accuracy. Holt took up the long metal stirrer and swiveled it gently — carefully, earnestly — like the device was a newborn animal.

“Oh God…” Thane murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose as Holt whispered, “Good kernels. Stay safe.”

Popcorn erupted in an enthusiastic burst a moment later, rattling inside the kettle. Everyone flinched except Holt, who gasped in awe as if witnessing fireworks.

“Alpha!” he shouted. “It multiplying!”

“That’s the idea,” Thane said patiently.

“I love this place,” Holt declared.

Meanwhile Varro had stepped over to the soda fountain, examining the valves and tubing like a battlefield diagram. “These levers regulate flow,” he said. “These buttons choose flavor.”

“Correct,” Thane said. “Just don’t press all the buttons at once.”

Varro paused, mildly offended. “I am not Holt.”

Across the lobby Holt yelled, “Hey!”

Tickets came next.

Gabriel pulled out an old roll they’d found in the back room — long, perforated, faded red. “All right,” he said, settling behind the booth like he’d been born for it. “You hand people these through the window. Then you smile.”

Rime frowned. “Show teeth?”

“NO,” Mark and Gabriel said in perfect chorus.

Rime nodded solemnly. “I smile… gently.”

“Perfect,” Gabriel said, patting him on the shoulder.

Thane moved them through the workflow briskly:
— Rime at the ticket booth
— Varro at the auditorium door, tearing tickets cleanly with claws held carefully back
— Holt and Kade managing concessions
— Mark helping wherever things broke or jammed
— Gabriel handling lobby music and welcoming announcements
— Thane running the projector upstairs

At one point Holt tried to hand a pretend soda to Kade and crushed the paper cup just by holding it. He stared at the flattened thing in horror.

“I murdered it.”

Kade sighed, took the next cup, and handed Holt a plastic one instead. “Use these.”

Later, Varro misjudged the gentleness needed to tear a ticket and accidentally ripped three at once clean down the middle.

“I killed it too,” he said, ears dipping.

“That’s why we practice,” Thane called from the lobby, suppressing a smile. “Try again.”

By noon the wolves were running full dress rehearsals, each one smoother and funnier than the last. They even developed a little system for the candy jars — Holt’s hands were too big to scoop the smaller pieces, so Kade did that part while Holt carried the containers with reverent precision.

By late afternoon, the energy in town felt electric.

People were already walking past the Dome just to peer inside:
A mother holding a toddler who pointed excitedly at the “OPEN TONIGHT” sign.
A teen couple whispering about which seats were the best for the sound.
Mrs. Carley bringing a basket of huckleberry muffins “for the staff.”
Hank stopping by to check on things, giving Thane a subtle nod of approval.

The marquee glowed with brand-new bulbs, every letter shining:

NOW PLAYING — SONG OF THE EMBER SEA — 7 PM

It looked like a piece of the old world pulled forward into the new one.

---

Half an hour before showtime, the crowd began to gather.

Thane stood in the lobby for a moment watching it happen — families walking hand in hand, neighbors greeting each other with laughter, older couples leaning into one another as if the memory of theaters was something sacred they were finally getting back.

He felt something warm tighten under his ribs. Pride, maybe. Or hope. They didn’t feel that different.

“All right,” he murmured. “Pack — positions.”

The wolves straightened instantly.

Rime slid into the ticket booth and opened the little window. “Next!” he called in a cheerful tone that startled everyone nearby.

Varro took his place by the auditorium doors. Gabriel started playing soft guitar through a speaker near concessions — warm, welcoming chords that made the room feel alive.

Holt and Kade stood behind the counter with matching aprons someone had found in the storage closet. Holt’s said POPCORN in giant letters. He was thrilled.

The first guests stepped up to Rime’s booth — a father and his two daughters.
He smiled at them, a tight but friendly curl of his muzzle.

“Welcome to movie night,” he said. “Three tickets?”

The girls giggled and nodded vigorously.

Rime handled the roll delicately, tore the tickets neatly, and slid them through the window with obvious pride.

“Enjoy story,” he said.

They scampered in.

Varro handled the next part, taking each ticket with careful precision, tearing the stub cleanly, and gesturing toward the seats. “Row six good sound,” he said. “Not too loud. Not too soft.”

People listened. They trusted him. They walked inside smiling.

Holt and Kade were… a sensation.

“Popcorn?” Holt boomed, then immediately shrank his voice to a whisper when a child jumped. “Sorry. Popcorn?”

Kade handled the scooping and measuring with calm efficiency, passing each bag to Holt, who held it like it was a priceless artifact.

“Please do not spill,” Holt said solemnly, handing them off. “Was born forty seconds ago.”

Children adored him.

By 6:55 the house was nearly full — humans and wolves mixed in the aisles, chatting, laughing, settling in. The designated wolf row at the back was already half-occupied; Holt sat on the floor instead because the seats “felt small and scared” under him. Rime took a seat beside him, tail neatly tucked.

The lights dimmed exactly at 7:00.

A soft hush flowed through the room.

Thane stood in the projection booth, finger resting on the start control. He looked out through the small window at the sea of faces — lit by soft house lights, hopeful, eager, alive.

He pressed the button.

The projector fired up with a low rising hum, the beam slicing through the dark, flooding the screen with brilliant color. The opening notes of the score swelled from the surround speakers — warm, orchestral, absolutely enveloping.

A dragon lifted its head on the screen, scales shimmering in gold and ember light.

The audience gasped.

Gabriel whispered from his aisle seat, “Oh hell yes.”

The movie swept them away.

Laughter rolled through the room at the silly parts. Gasps hit like waves during the first flight scene. Children whispered “whoa” loud enough for the whole audience to hear. Grown men wiped their eyes discreetly during the emotional bits.

At one point, Holt whispered to Rime, “If dragons real, I ride one.”

Rime whispered back, “You fall off.”

Holt flicked his ear with one claw.

As the film reached its finale — the dragon soaring against a sunset sky while the protagonist sang the last lines of the ember song — the room felt like it was breathing together.

When the end credits rolled, no one moved at first.
Then someone clapped.
Then everyone clapped.

Thane leaned against the booth window, letting it wash over him — the applause, the voices, the joy. After everything they’d been through — RKV-23, the Fall, raiders, winter — this felt like a small miracle.

A loud voice from the front row shouted, “WHEN’S THE NEXT ONE?!”

Mark laughed. “Next Saturday! Same time!”

People cheered.

As the crowd filtered out, chatting in excited bundles, Marta and Hank stood in the lobby watching everyone pass.

Marta’s eyes shimmered with the kind of pride that didn’t need words.

Hank’s arms were crossed, but he looked softened — like a man remembering what normal felt like. “Damn good night,” he murmured.

“Damn good decision,” Marta said.

Thane joined them in the lobby as the last of the crowd drifted into the mild spring night. The air smelled faintly of buttered popcorn and the river breeze.

“You did this,” Marta said.

“We all did,” Thane replied. “All I did was flip a switch.”

“You flipped more than that,” she said. “You brought back something we thought we’d lost.”

Mark and Gabriel joined them, both dusted in popcorn flakes and smelling faintly of soda syrup. The wolves gathered too — Rime calm and pleased, Kade quietly proud, Varro thoughtful and observant, Holt buzzing like he’d swallowed a lightbulb.

“Next week bigger?” Holt asked hopefully.

“Probably,” Thane said.

“What movie?” Kade asked.

“Something with less singing,” Varro murmured.

“Something with more dragons,” Holt countered.

Gabriel held up the movie list like a treasure map. “We’ll vote tomorrow. But I’m putting in a strong case for Neon Frontier. Lasers. Horses. It’s perfect.”

Thane looked around at all of them — humans, wolves, friends, family, the whole valley humming with the afterglow of a joy they’d earned the hard way.

Saturday nights were back.
The world felt bigger again.
And Libby felt like home.

Outside, under the bright marquee, kids skipped down the sidewalk humming the Ember Song, their voices echoing against the buildings in warm, bright notes that seemed to promise the valley a thousand good nights still to come.

The truck idled at the edge of the square, rattling quietly in the soft spring morning.

Tarrik stood beside it, hands hooked in the strap of his pack, looking more like someone about to leave for work than a wolf who had once led a pack that terrified half this valley. The air smelled of damp earth, coffee, and the faint sweetness of fresh bread from the diner. A breeze pushed at the loose flyers on the notice board, rattling them like nervous fingers.

Mia, Lucas, and Darren were the first to reach him.

Mia stepped in without hesitation and wrapped her arms around him as far as they would go. For a heartbeat he froze, then his hands came up, careful and gentle on her back.

“Thank you,” she said into his chest. “For pulling that sled. For coming at all.”

He huffed a soft breath that might have been a laugh. “Wasn’t heavy sled,” he said. “But you three… worth weight.”

Lucas grinned. “Next time we’ll bring wheels.”

“No next time,” Darren said. “You already got us once. That’s enough heroism for one world.”

Tarrik pulled back, looking at each of them. There were lines in his face that hadn’t been there when he ruled Iron Ridge, new grooves carved by different kinds of work. Watching gates in Eureka. Walking fields. Standing on walls with Tom and planning patrols instead of raids.

“Eureka good town,” he told them. “If you come someday, ask for me. I show you around. Make sure nobody… remember wrong stories first.”

“We will,” Mia said.

Thane and the rest of the Libby pack waited a short distance away—Kade easy and still, Varro with his hands hooked in his belt, Rime shifting his weight from paw to paw, tail swaying. Marta stood with them, coat open in the mild air, Hank at her side, thumbs hooked in his vest.

Thane stepped forward when the kids moved aside. For a moment he and Tarrik simply looked at each other, two wolves measuring something that no longer needed to be measured.

“Tom’s expecting you?” Thane asked.

“Yes,” Tarrik said. “Truck meet me halfway. We trade driver. Tom say I should not walk whole way again unless I bring back three people on door.”

Mark chuckled. “He would say that.”

Thane’s expression softened at the corners. “You did good work, Tarrik,” he said. “Not just on the sled. Here. In town. Being seen.”

Warmth flared behind Tarrik’s ribs. Compliments still sat strange on him, like a cloak he hadn’t quite learned to wear, but coming from Thane they carried weight. He dipped his head slightly.

“Feels… good,” he admitted. “People here. They look at me and do not see only old Alpha. They see…” He searched for the word, then found it. “Neighbor.”

Marta stepped up, extending her hand. He took it carefully.

“You made a lot of friends this week,” she said. “You’re welcome in Libby any time.”

“Try to come back when we’re not dragging death out of the forest,” Hank added. “We do have calm days now and then.”

Tarrik’s mouth curved. “I will try,” he said.

Rime padded forward at the last second and bumped his forehead lightly against Tarrik’s. “You run good,” he said simply. “Come hunt sometime. I show you new deer trails.”

“Would like that,” Tarrik said. “Maybe next snow.”

The driver called softly from the cab. Tarrik slung his pack properly, moved toward the passenger door, then stopped and looked back one last time.

People waved. The newcomers. The pack. Marta. Hank. A couple of townsfolk standing in the doorway of the diner, one woman lifting her mug in salute.

For the first time in his life, the sight of a crowd looking at him didn’t feel like judgement or fear. It felt like warmth.

He climbed in, shut the door carefully so his claws wouldn’t catch the handle, and a moment later the truck rolled away down the street, engine fading into the spring hum of the town.

Thane watched until it turned a corner and disappeared.

“Feels strange,” Varro murmured. “Seeing him go and not… worry.”

“Good strange,” Kade said.

“Come on,” Marta said, clapping her hands lightly once. “We’ve got a market to set up, and children to keep from climbing the lampposts. Again.”

The group started to thin as people drifted back toward their morning tasks. Mia and Lucas headed toward the schoolhouse with Rime padding at their heels. Darren limped toward the clinic, determined to convince Dr. Wade to let him help with inventory.

Thane had just started toward the cabin when a bit of conversation floated across the square — casual, unhurried, the kind of talk people slipped into now that life wasn’t all fear and fire.

“…Saturdays used to mean something,” a woman said with a wistful smile in her voice. “Remember that?”

“Oh, yeah,” another answered. “We’d get dinner, then head to the Dome. Didn’t matter what was playing. Half the fun was just sitting in those big comfortable seats and pretending the world made sense.”

A soft laugh. “God, the sound in that place. You could feel it in your teeth.”

“Mm-hmm. And the popcorn? I still swear they used some secret butter the rest of us never figured out.”

“Wouldn’t mind tasting that again,” the first woman said. “Wouldn’t mind feeling those speakers shake the floorboards either.”

They kept walking as they talked, weaving through the little knots of people setting up tables for the market, their voices drifting behind them in gentle scraps of nostalgia.

Thane slowed.

Not because they were speaking to him — they weren’t.
Not because they were hinting — they weren’t.

Just because the name rang a bell he hadn’t realized he’d been ignoring.

He stepped a little closer. “Sorry,” he said, keeping his voice easy. “Did you say the Dome Theater?”

Three women turned toward him with mild surprise, the kind people wore when a stranger caught a bit of their conversation.

One nodded. “Sure did. Mineral Avenue. Can’t miss it. Big curved front, old marquee.” She gave a fond sigh. “Pretty thing. Been dark since the family passed from the virus.”

“They renovated it right before the Fall,” another added. “Brand-new everything. Sound, seats, digital projector… the works.”

“No one left who knows how to run it,” the third said, shaking her head. “Place has just been sitting there. Shame, really.”

They moved on, the conversation sliding naturally back to recipes, weather, errands — the hundred tiny threads of normal life made possible again.

But Thane stood there for a moment longer, something warm and bright blooming under his ribs.

A theater.
A projector.
A building full of stories waiting in the dark.

He didn’t smile often just for himself.
But he did then.

His claws flexed against the pavement.

“Mark,” he called.

Mark looked up from where he’d been talking with a trader about batteries. “Yeah?”

“Gabriel,” Thane added.

Gabriel poked his head out of City Hall’s doorway, headphones around his neck. “What’d I do this time?”

“Come on,” Thane said. “We’re going to see a building.”

They found Hank in his office, wrestling with a filing cabinet that had decided to resist reopening after a decade of loyal service. He grunted, yanked, and finally coaxed the drawer out with a screech of protest.

“You look like a man about to make my morning more complicated,” Hank said without turning around.

“I’m about to make everyone’s Saturday nights less boring,” Thane said. “You have the keys to the Dome?”

Hank stopped, hand hovering over a stack of papers. “Huh,” he said. “Haven’t heard anyone ask that in a while.”

“You do have them, right?” Mark asked.

“Of course I have them,” Hank said. “When the owners died, their nephew handed everything to the town. Figured we’d either find another projectionist or turn it into a feed store.” He rummaged in a drawer, emerged with a key ring large enough to anchor a boat. “Pretty sure it’s on here somewhere.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened. “You have this many doors in town?”

“Some of these don’t belong to anything that exists anymore,” Hank said. “Makes me sentimental.” He sifted through the keys, then plucked one out—a worn brass tag stamped DOME. “There. Break anything and you’re rebuilding it yourself.”

“Fair,” Thane said, taking the ring.

They walked down Mineral Avenue together, claws clicking on sun-warmed pavement. Spring had stripped winter’s harshness from the town; flower boxes someone had cobbled together from old crates hung under a few windows, stubborn green shoots poking up through soil. The Dome’s facade rose ahead—curving, dignified, the old marquee letters long gone but the bones of the sign still reaching out over the sidewalk like an empty hand.

The doors were latched but not boarded. Dust filmed the glass. A faded poster for some pre-Fall action spectacle clung to one display case, edges curled.

Gabriel pressed his face to the glass for a second. “This feels like breaking into holy ground,” he murmured.

“Then we’re going to do it respectfully,” Thane said. He slid the key into the lock, turned. The mechanism resisted, then yielded with a click that sounded too loud.

The lobby smelled like dust, stale syrup, and a ghost of popcorn that had soaked into the carpet years ago and never quite left. Sunlight speared in through the front windows in soft beams, catching dust motes that swirled as they stepped inside.

For a moment, no one spoke.

The concession stand sat ready, plexiglass clean but dulled, popcorn machine standing like a quiet red shrine behind the counter. Menu boards still listed prices in dry erase marker. A paper cup towered silently next to a row of syrup-stained soda taps. A framed photo of the family who had run the place sat near the register—smiling, unaware of what was coming.

“Looks like they could open in an hour,” Mark said softly.

“Feels wrong that they never did,” Gabriel said.

“Feels like they waited for us,” Thane murmured.

He moved behind the counter, fingers brushing the popcorn machine’s controls. “We’ll need to check if anything spoiled,” he said, slipping into a practical cadence that steadied his chest. “Oil goes rancid. Syrup can separate. But if the storeroom’s cool enough…”

“Let’s see the real heart,” Mark said. “Projector.”

“Upstairs,” Thane said immediately, without needing to think.

The stairs to the booth were in the same place every theater put them—tucked near one side, narrow enough that two people had to turn sideways to pass. His body remembered the shape of them before his mind did. Years ago—another life, another small town, long before he was an Alpha—he’d climbed stairs just like this to thread film through projectors, timing cues to light a screen in the dark.

He let his claws drift along the rail, careful not to gouge the wood.

The projection booth door opened with another reluctant creak. Inside, the air was cooler, tinged with the smell of electronics and metal. A digital projector sat on its pedestal, sleek and slightly dusty but clearly expensive—a black, angular animal waiting for a handler. A server rack hummed faintly below it, still plugged in, little status lights dark but ready.

“Look at you,” Thane said under his breath, affection in it.

Mark let out a low whistle. “That’s not cheap,” he said. “Or wasn’t.”

“Digital cinema package setup,” Thane said, moving closer without touching anything yet. “Server pulls encrypted films from the drive. Projector just listens. They probably got a big upgrade loan to do this. Small houses like this don’t pull one of these out of thin air.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Gabriel said.

“Long time ago,” Thane said. “Different name on the ticket booth. But once you learn how to talk to a projector, they all speak about the same.”

He found the power switch by feel, hand sliding under the lip of the rack. The toggle clicked. For a heartbeat nothing happened, and then the server woke up with a rising whine, fans spinning. Status lights winked to life—red, then amber, then a steady, promising green.

Gabriel grinned like a kid. “That is a good sound.”

The projector followed a moment later, internal ballast cycling, a soft thump and then a low, steady hum. Thane watched the indicators, waiting for any error codes. None came.

“God, I missed that,” he said quietly.

Mark peered at the small touchpanel mounted on an arm. “Can you get into the library?” he asked.

Thane tapped through menus with a familiarity that surprised even him. There it was: a list of titles scrolling up, each with a little icon and runtime.

“Looks like the last year’s worth of bookings,” he said. “They must’ve pulled everything in and held it on the drive. No one ever wiped it when the world went sideways.”

Gabriel leaned over his shoulder, reading.

“Starfall: Ascendant,” he read aloud. “That’s the big space thing that everyone in Spokane kept going on about.”

“Skyline Drift Nine,” Mark said. “Cars on buildings. Completely ridiculous. I saw the trailer once, felt my brain get dumber.”

“Neon Frontier,” Gabriel added. “Sci-fi western. I wanted to see that.”

Thane scrolled. “Iron Vow: Legacy. Eclipse Protocol. Ghost Harbor. Deep Blue Silence. That one’s a submarine thriller, I think. Kingdoms of Glass… fantasy epic. Last Light Rising. Rogue Circuit. Broken Crown. Song of the Ember Sea.”

He stopped at the last one, mouth quirking. “That’s the animated one. Dragons and singing. Probably safe for kids.”

“More safe than cars driving up skyscrapers, yeah,” Mark said.

“There’s a Blu-Ray player too,” Gabriel said, pointing to a component under the monitor. “If we find discs, we can spin anything with a logo on it.”

“Libby Video still has most of its shelves intact,” Mark said. “They locked the place up and never went back. We get the lights on in there and… yeah. We could go wild.”

Thane straightened, letting it all settle in. The hum of the equipment. The list of stories on the screen. The booth’s small window looking out over the empty seats below.

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking, right?” Gabriel said.

“Probably,” Thane said. “You say it first.”

“Saturday Night Movie,” Gabriel said. “Every week. Like church, but with better snacks.”

Mark laughed. “You’re going to make Mrs. Renner cry happy tears.”

“Whole valley will tune in to hear about it,” Thane said. “Spokane, Thompson Falls, Eureka… half of them have theaters that’ll never turn on again. If they know Libby’s running a screen…”

“It’ll make the world feel… bigger,” Mark said softly. “Not just our valley. Something reachable.”

Thane nodded. “We start small,” he said. “One showing. See if the sound still thumps, if the picture holds. Make sure nobody gets sick from the snacks. But if it works…”

Gabriel’s eyes shone. “If it works, we bring back Saturday night.”

They spent the next hour testing. Mark traced the power line back to the panel, confirmed it was connected properly. Thane ran a short test pattern, watching the beam cut through the dark and splash against the ivory curve of the screen. The image snapped into focus with only a few minor adjustments. Gabriel walked the aisles, listening for dead spots in the surround speakers; the sound seemed to embrace every seat evenly.

In the storeroom behind the concession stand, they found boxes of popcorn kernels in sealed bags, syrup in unopened metal canisters, stacks of paper cups and napkins. The huckleberry candies sat in plastic tubs, sugar still crisp and hard when Thane bit one experimentally.

“Still good?” Mark asked.

He let it dissolve on his tongue, tasting memory and artificial berry. “Dangerously so,” he said.

By the time they stepped back out into the spring light, they were all a little dustier, a little more wired, as if the theater’s slumbering energy had jumped into their blood.

“Lock it up,” Thane said, turning the key in the door. “Last thing we need is Holt breaking in tonight and eating half the popcorn stock before we even start.”

“You’re going to have to explain ‘movie theater etiquette’ to the wolves,” Mark said. “Rime’s going to want to pace the aisles just because he can.”

“We’ll make a wolf row,” Gabriel said. “Back seats, left side. Claw-friendly.”

They headed back toward the square. The town was busier now, afternoon settling in. Children chased each other around the fountain. Rime and Kade stood near the schoolhouse, going over a map with Varro between calls from Mrs. Renner about who needed to go straight home and who could be trusted to stop by the market first.

Marta spotted them as they stepped onto the square. “You three look like you just found the last box of chocolate on earth,” she said. “What’d you break?”

“Nothing,” Thane said. “Yet.”

Mark nudged him. “Just tell her. You’ll explode if you stretch it out.”

Thane looked at Marta, then at the cluster of people within earshot—Hank, Dr. Wade, a couple of traders, Mrs. Carley again. He lifted his voice just enough to carry.

“We turned on the Dome,” he said. “Projector. Sound. Everything. It all still works.”

For a heartbeat there was silence, as if the words bounced off everyone’s ears and needed a second to sink in.

Then Marta’s mouth fell open. “You’re serious?” she asked.

“Yes,” Thane said. “Digital setup. Full library from the year before the Fall still on the server. Popcorn machine, candy, seats. All of it. Looks like time just… stopped in there.”

Mrs. Carley clapped a hand over her mouth. Hank let out a low whistle. Dr. Wade actually smiled, the small, tired expression of a man who’d just been told a patient was doing better than expected.

Gabriel stepped in. “We were thinking,” he said. “Saturday Night Movie. Every week. One show, early evening. Something family-friendly to start. Get everyone in without giving them nightmares.”

“Song of the Ember Sea,” Mark said. “Animated. Dragons. No one gets disemboweled in the trailer, at least.”

“Kids would lose their minds,” Mrs. Carley said. “Adults too.”

Marta’s eyes shone, and for a moment she had to look away, blinking hard. When she turned back, her jaw was set in the particular way that meant an idea had wrapped itself around her and was not letting go.

“We do it,” she said. “Weekly. I’ll put it to the council for formal approval, but I’m not waiting to start getting people excited.”

She pivoted, scanning the square. “Where’s Jana?”

Jana—the same woman who led painting lessons at the schoolhouse and covered more than one boarded-up window with flowers and wolves and suns—looked up from a conversation near the library.

“Yes, Mayor?” she called.

“Feel like painting a movie poster?” Marta called back. “Big one. For the square. And one for the Dome. ‘Saturday Night at the Dome Theater.’ First show this coming weekend, if Thane can get his wolf army in line.”

Jana’s grin answered that question before her words did. “I’ve been waiting for something like this since the world ended,” she said.

Kids, already keyed up from a morning of running, began buzzing louder.

“Movies?” one said. “Real ones? Not just Gabriel telling stories on the radio?”

“Popcorn?” another demanded.

“Huckleberry candy?” Mrs. Carley added.

“We need to pace this,” Dr. Wade murmured. “If we give everyone that much sugar and excitement at once, I’ll be stitching up sprained ankles all week.”

Hank chuckled. “Good problem to have, Doc.”

Rime trotted over, ears pricked. “What happen?” he asked. “Everyone smell like happy.”

“Big pictures on wall,” Kade said. “Stories that move. Lots of sound. Many people in same room watching together.”

Rime blinked. “Like radio, but eyes too?”

“Exactly,” Gabriel said. “We’ll bring you. The back row, so you don’t pace a hole in the floor.”

“Floor strong,” Rime said, offended. “But okay. Back row fine.”

“What about claws on seats?” Varro asked, practical as ever. “Fabric will not like us.”

“We’ll pick a section and put boards over the arms,” Mark said. “Wolf section. Make it official. If anyone without claws sits there, that’s on them.”

Marta looked at Thane. “Think your pack can handle sitting still for two hours in the dark?” she asked.

Thane considered his wolves—the restless energy, the long memories of running under open sky, the way Holt always needed something in his hands or mouth.

“We’ll make it part of training,” he said. “Endurance. Focus. No chewing the armrests.”

“That last part was aimed at Holt,” Gabriel said.

“Mostly,” Thane admitted.

They spent the rest of the afternoon planning in gentle spirals. Jana sketched poster designs on a scrap of cardboard—bold letters, a rough dome shape, little silhouettes of wolves and humans sitting side by side in rows. Mark made a list of what the projection system would need to stay healthy: filters, occasional cleaning, someone to check the server logs. Gabriel started jotting down on-air announcements in his notebook.

That night, back at the cabin, the wolves sprawled in their usual chaos—Rime near the hearth, Holt on his back with all four paws in the air, Kade and Varro at the table with maps, Gabriel tuning his guitar on the couch. The smell of stew mingled with woodsmoke and the last hints of the day’s rain drying off fur and clothes.

Thane stirred the pot one more time, then leaned against the counter, feeling the simple weight of a good day.

“So,” Gabriel said, plucking a few notes. “You going to tell them, or should I?”

“Tell us what?” Holt asked, rolling awkwardly onto his side, ears perked.

“Saturday,” Kade said. “We’re going to the Dome Theater. Movies are back.”

Holt’s eyes went comically wide. “Big pictures place?” he said. “With smell of corn and sugar?”

“You remember it?” Thane asked.

“Smell only,” Holt said. “We hunted near town once. Before Fall. Could smell butter and candy from trees. Was torture.”

Rime’s tail thumped. “We go in?” he said. “Sit with humans? Watch big story?”

“Yes,” Thane said. “We sit. We watch. We do not break anything.”

Holt glanced at his hands, flexed his claws. “I be careful,” he said. “Maybe sit on floor.”

“We’ll make space,” Thane said. “Wolf row.”

Varro looked thoughtful. “Many people in one room,” he said. “Lights off. Loud sound. Some panic, maybe.”

“We’ll station a couple of us near the exits,” Thane said. “Quiet, not looming. Make sure anyone who gets overwhelmed can leave without feeling trapped. This is supposed to help people, not scare them.”

“Humans used to do this every week?” Kade asked.

“Every day,” Thane said. “But Saturday nights were special. You worked through a week, you got to sit in the dark with people you didn’t know and feel them react to the same story. It made you feel less alone.”

Gabriel strummed a chord that hung warm in the air. “Feels like the valley’s ready for that,” he said. “Being less alone.”

Thane thought of Tarrik in the truck that morning, looking back at a town that no longer feared him. Of Mia’s face lighting up in the schoolyard. Of Mark’s eyes shining in the dim projection booth as the projector hummed to life. Of Marta’s barely-contained joy in the square.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

Outside, the wind moved gently through the trees on the slope above town, carrying the sounds of Libby at night—the soft thrum of power, distant voices, the faint hum of KTNY’s transmitter. Somewhere in the square, Jana was probably still painting, working on big letters that would mean more than the words themselves.

The First Picture Show.

For the first time since the Fall, Saturday night in Libby had plans.

The first morning in Libby hit different.

Mia woke to warmth.

For a long, drifting second, she didn’t know where she was. There was weight on top of her—blankets, thick and soft and heavier than anything she’d had since the world fell apart. The air smelled faintly of soap and old wood instead of mold and rust. Her back didn’t hurt.

She opened her eyes to a dim, golden light spilling through a curtain. The room was small but clean: two beds, a solid wooden dresser, a small table with a glass of water on it, and a radiator ticking quietly under the window like a friendly heartbeat.

Beside her, in the other bed, Lucas snored lightly, one arm sprawled over his face.

For a moment, Mia just lay there and listened. The silence was different than the bunker silence. That had been heavy, suffocating, as if the world outside were holding its breath before swallowing them.

Here, she could hear things.

Faint footsteps in the hallway. Someone laughing downstairs. A door closing somewhere far off. A low, constant hum in the walls.

Power, she realized. That quiet thrum they’d heard on the road in, now all around them.

The world didn’t end here.

She sat up slowly. No vertigo. Her hands weren’t shaking as badly. The hollowness in her chest remained, but there was something softer around its edges now. A cushion of warmth, of possibility.

There was a gentle knock at the door.

“Mia? Lucas?” a woman’s voice called. “You two awake in there?”

Mia hesitated, then cleared her throat. “Yeah,” she said. “One of us is, anyway.”

The door opened, and Mrs. Renner stepped in with a smile that looked like it had been practiced over many tired years and never quite worn out. She carried a folded pile of clothes over one arm.

“Good morning,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Renner. We met last night, very briefly. I’m the schoolteacher. Also part-time grandmother to every stray child who wanders through town.”

Lucas groaned from the other bed. “I’m not a child,” he mumbled into his arm.

“Good,” Mrs. Renner said mildly. “Then I expect you to help me with the little ones later.”

He peeked at her from beneath his elbow. She handed him a small smile and turned to Mia, setting the clothes on the end of her bed.

“We raided the donation closet,” she said. “Should be close to your sizes. We’ll find you better once you’re fully settled.”

Mia reached out and ran her fingers over the fabric. Soft, clean, smelling faintly of detergent. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“Breakfast is in the lobby,” Mrs. Renner went on. “Stew, bread, real coffee if your stomach can handle it. After that, Marta wants to see you at Town Hall. Just a quick orientation. Then we’ll talk school.”

“School,” Lucas echoed, incredulous.

“Yes,” Mrs. Renner said. “School. Pencils, paper, books, the whole dangerous package.”

Mia blinked. “You really have school?”

Mrs. Renner’s eyes softened. “We do. We started again not long ago. It’s not like it was before, but… it’s here. And if you want it, it’s for you too.”

Mia swallowed. “I don’t know if we remember how to be normal.”

“Nobody here does,” Mrs. Renner said. “We just practice at it together.”

She reached into her pocket and placed two small objects on the table between the beds—short yellow pencils, freshly sharpened.

“Keep those,” she said. “They’re your tickets in.”

When she left them to dress, Mia stood for a long moment at the window. Outside, the street glistened with last night’s rain, but the sky was clearing, patches of blue breaking through the gray. A couple of people walked by—one carrying a crate, another pushing a wheelbarrow. A child skipped between them, hopping over puddles.

A shadow moved at the edge of her vision. She looked down.

A gray-and-tan wolf leaned casually against a lamppost across the street, arms folded, watching the hotel entrance. Varro. He glanced up, met her gaze, and nodded once in acknowledgment before returning his eyes to the door below, on guard even while standing still.

We’re safe, she realized. Or as close to it as the world allows now.

She nudged Lucas with her foot. “Come on,” she said softly. “We’ve got stew and pencils waiting.”

Downstairs, the hotel lobby buzzed with quiet morning energy. A pot of stew steamed on a table with bread laid out beside it. A woman from the diner poured coffee into mismatched mugs. A few other guests—traders passing through, a family from Kalispell—ate at scattered tables.

Darren sat near the window, leg stretched out on a chair, his bandages freshly changed. Hank stood beside him, broad-shouldered and gruff in a way that somehow still managed to look fatherly. They were in a low conversation that stopped as Mia and Lucas approached.

“You two sleep?” Darren asked.

“Like dead people,” Lucas said, then winced. “Uh. Sorry.”

Darren’s mouth quirked. “I get it.”

Hank inclined his head. “Doctor’s ready to see you when you’re done eating,” he said. “Clinic’s just next door. We’ll keep it quick.”

Lucas frowned. “We’re not sick.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Hank said. “You’ve been through hell. We’re not sending you into town life without making sure you won’t fall over halfway there.”

Mia studied him. “You’re the sheriff, right?”

“Something like that,” Hank said. “I keep the peace so the wolves don’t have to do all the scary work.”

“Sometimes we help,” a familiar voice said from behind them.

Mia turned to see Rime sliding through the open door, fur still damp from the rain but eyes bright. He shook himself once, carefully away from the food, then trotted over.

“You woke,” he said, pleased. “Good. Today we show you town.”

“We?” Lucas echoed.

“Me,” Rime said. “Maybe others. But I best guide.” He sat back on his haunches with a proud flick of his tail. “Know every street. Every smell.”

Hank snorted. “He’s not wrong.”

They ate. Stew so thick it nearly held the spoon upright, bread that was a little too dense but tasted like heaven after months of ration crackers. Mia caught Rime watching them, eyes soft, as if the simple act of eating well brought him as much satisfaction as their actual rescue.

When they finished, Hank escorted Darren out toward the clinic. Rime waited by the door for Mia and Lucas, then walked with them out into the street.

The town looked different in daylight.

Mia had only seen it through exhaustion and rain the day before, shapes and smells and sounds blurring. Now, with a full stomach and a clearer mind, she took it all in.

Buildings patched and repurposed. Power lines humming quietly overhead. People moving with purpose but without the frantic edge she’d grown used to. Smoke curled from chimneys. Somewhere close by, a hammer struck metal in steady rhythm.

Rime matched his pace to theirs, close enough that his fur brushed their shoulders now and then.

“What do you do here?” Mia asked. “I mean—the wolves. What’s your… job?”

Rime tilted his head. “Many things,” he said. “Patrol. Carry. Guard. Hunt. Help build. Make sure humans do not walk off cliffs while staring at sky.”

Lucas snorted. “That’s… fair.”

“Today,” Rime continued, “I show you school. Maybe radio. Maybe cabin if Thane say yes.” He glanced sideways at them. “But we start with school. Marta say is important.”

“Marta’s the mayor?” Mia asked.

“Yes,” Rime said. “She boss of town. Thane boss of pack. They talk. A lot.”

They passed by KTNY’s modest building, the painted sign out front still bearing its pre-Fall logo. Through the window, Mia glimpsed Gabriel and Mark inside, both bent over what looked like a tangle of cables and knobs. Gabriel noticed them, lifted a hand, and flashed a quick grin.

“Is that the radio station?” Lucas asked.

“Yes,” Rime said. “Music, news, Thane talking too serious sometimes.”

“It kept us alive,” Mia murmured. “We thought it was recordings. Old stuff.”

“Sometimes is,” Rime admitted. “AudioVault.” He said the word carefully, like something he’d bitten his tongue on once. “Sometimes is live. Friday nights we talk to valley.”

“We?” Lucas asked.

“Whole pack,” Rime said. “Humans too. ‘House Party.’ Loud. Good. You will hear.”

“Will we… ever get to be on it?” Mia asked, half joking, half not.

“Maybe,” Rime said. “Gabriel like interviews. Mark say ‘human stories matter.’” He mimicked Mark’s calmer cadence surprisingly well. “You have story.”

They continued on to the schoolhouse—a sturdy, repainted building that looked small from the outside but radiated energy from within. Children’s voices floated out, laughing and arguing and reciting something in unison.

Rime’s posture shifted as they approached—taller, more formal, almost proud.

“Here,” he said. “Place of learning.”

Mia looked up at the sign over the door. Someone had carved it by hand: LIBBY SCHOOLHOUSE. Beneath it hung a banner painted with a wolf’s paw and a human hand under a rising sun.

“The valley’s new flag,” Rime said. “Varro made design. Town kids painted.”

“You designed that?” Mia asked, surprised.

Varro appeared at the side of the building as if summoned by his name, a map tube slung over one shoulder. “Was group idea,” he said. “I just draw good.”

He nodded to Mia and Lucas. “First day,” he said. “Big one. Scary. Good scary.”

“Are you… in school?” Lucas asked.

Varro smiled faintly. “No. I teach sometimes. Patrol routes. Reading maps. Not much letters.” His gaze softened. “You two get more letters. World need that.”

Inside, the schoolhouse buzzed. Desks mismatched, chairs slightly wobbly, walls lined with old posters scavenged from somewhere and hand-drawn charts made recently. Mrs. Renner stood at the front, writing the date on the chalkboard:

Day 14 – Year 3 After the Fall

She turned as they entered, wiping chalk dust from her fingers. The chatter dipped, curiosity leaning forward on thirty small faces.

“Everyone,” she said, voice steady and warm, “we have new students joining us today.”

Mia tensed. Lucas shifted closer to Rime instinctively. The wolf gave a small, reassuring huff.

“This is Mia,” Mrs. Renner said. “And this is Lucas. They came from very far north with the help of the pack.”

A murmur rippled through the room—awed, whispering.

“Were there raiders?” one boy blurted.

“Did you see the dam?” a girl asked right after.

“Did you meet Tarrik?” another voice added, wide-eyed.

“Yes,” Mia said, overwhelmed but honest. “We met Tarrik. And the others.”

Rime’s tail flicked. “We pulled sled,” he said. “I carried Lucas. He not heavy.”

Several kids snickered. Lucas flushed but smiled.

Mrs. Renner clapped her hands once, and the room quieted. “You’ll hear their story in pieces,” she said. “And they’ll hear yours. For now, Mia and Lucas are going to sit, breathe, and remember what it’s like to be students.”

She gestured to two empty desks near the middle. As they moved to take their seats, Mia noticed a girl at the next desk over slide a folded paper onto Mia’s tabletop.

Welcome, it read, in uneven pencil letters. There was a crude drawing of a wolf and a human holding hands, both smiling.

Mia’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

The morning lessons were basic but felt monumental: math on the board, reading from salvaged books, history recounted in Mrs. Renner’s quiet, steady voice. The pre-Fall years were spoken of like stories from another age; the Fall itself in simple, unsparing terms; the After as something they were still writing together.

At one point, a hand went up in the back row.

“Yes, Daniel?” Mrs. Renner said.

“Why did some people die from RKV-23 and some didn’t?” he asked. “My mom says it was just luck. But that doesn’t sound like science.”

Mrs. Renner paused, chalk held between her fingers. The room waited.

“We don’t know yet,” she said. “A lot of researchers died. A lot of data was lost. There are theories, but not enough proof.” She set the chalk down. “What we know now is this: some survived. You. Me. These wolves outside. And we’re responsible for using the time we were given.”

Another hand went up. “Did the virus make the wolves?” a little girl asked. “Like… did it turn people into them?”

Mia felt her stomach clench. She glanced out the window automatically.

Thane stood near the fence, talking quietly with Hank and Marta. His fur caught the light, brown-gray and steady. Beside him, Kade listened, arms folded. Varro leaned against the wall inside the play yard. Rime sat near the steps, nose on his knees, eyes half-lidded but alert.

Mrs. Renner followed her glance, then looked back at the class. “No,” she said. “The wolves were here before the virus.”

“How long before?” the girl pressed.

“Long enough that there are stories,” Mrs. Renner said. “Old tales that sound like myths. We just never listened to them as history.” She let that sit. “We’ll learn more when we can. For now, it’s enough to know they aren’t a side effect. They’re neighbors.”

Mia felt something in her chest ease.

At recess, the yard exploded into motion. Children ran, shouted, invented games with a ball so patched it barely held together. Rime took up his self-appointed post near the entrance, tail wagging slowly as kids approached to show him drawings, questions, or just to lean against his side.

Lucas was halfway through a game of tag he hadn’t meant to join when a voice spoke beside Mia.

“Busy?”

She turned to see Thane, one shoulder braced lightly against the fence, watching the chaos. His presence settled the space without dimming it.

“A little,” Mia said. “In a good way.”

“Good,” Thane said. “You holding up?”

She nodded, then hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

She looked down at his feet, at the way his claws idly scored faint lines in the dirt, then up at his face. “Did the virus… did it have anything to do with what you are?” she asked. “With you being…”

“Wolves,” he supplied.

“Yeah.”

He was quiet for a moment, eyes on the yard. A kid tripped; Rime caught them gently with one paw and set them back on their feet. Varro intervened in a minor argument over whose turn it was with a few short, firm words that settled it faster than shouting ever could.

“No,” Thane said at last. “We were here before RKV-23. Long before. Just… quieter. Rarer. The world was full back then. People, cities, noise. Easier to stay hidden.”

Mia frowned. “So why now?”

“Because the world changed,” Thane said. “Too many people died. Too many spaces opened. The old ways came back whether anyone wanted them or not.” He glanced at her. “We didn’t choose RKV-23. But we chose what to do afterward.”

“So all those scientists,” Mia said slowly, “trying to figure out what went wrong… they never even knew about you?”

“Some did,” Thane said. “In whispers. Rumors. Files. That’s what Mark thinks, anyway.” His gaze shifted toward town, where the faint outline of Glacier Bank and the government buildings rose against the sky. “Now that we have power again, he wants to find any data we can. Old servers. Research. Might be answers in there.”

“Do you want answers?” Mia asked.

Thane considered that. “I want the valley safe. If answers help, yes.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “If they just make everything more complicated, I’ll let Mark enjoy them.”

She smiled despite herself. “Feels weird that the world had all this science and still lost.”

“It did a lot before it fell,” Thane said. “It’ll do more if we let it. Doesn’t erase what we are.” He tapped his chest lightly. “Or what you are.”

A whistle blew—Mrs. Renner’s call to line up. Kids groaned and shuffled back toward the door. Lucas jogged past, cheeks flushed, eyes bright in a way Mia hadn’t seen since before everything went wrong.

“You’re staying for the House Party on Friday,” Thane said, half statement, half question.

“What’s that, exactly?” Mia asked.

“Radio show,” Thane said. “Music, talking, stories from around the valley. First one since bringing you down. Feels right to have you hear it in town instead of on a broken receiver in a bunker.”

Mia nodded. “We’ll be there.”

“Good,” Thane said. “Town needs to see who they’re sharing this place with.”

As the week unfolded, life in Libby wove the new arrivals into its pattern.

Darren spent time at the clinic, his leg properly examined and braced. Libby’s doctor — an older man with a calm, methodical way about him and hands that looked like they’d reset a thousand joints before the Fall — explained the healing process with crisp efficiency.

“You’ll walk without the brace eventually,” he said, tightening one final strap. “But you’re not climbing anything steeper than the town stairs for a while. Clear?”

“Very,” Darren said. “I’ve had enough slopes for a lifetime.”

Hank checked in daily, not hovering but never far. When Darren confessed, haltingly, that he’d worked in a small hospital before the Fall, Hank nodded slowly.

“So you know what it looked like when it started,” Hank said.

Darren’s gaze drifted somewhere far away. “Yeah,” he said softly. “We saw the first waves. No pattern we could follow. Young, old, strong, sick. Didn’t matter. Some got a fever and never woke up. Some never got sick at all. Some carried it and never knew until someone next to them dropped.”

“Someone like you,” Hank said.

“Maybe,” Darren said. “Or maybe I got lucky. Hard to call it luck with what came after.”

Hank shifted his weight. “Doc’s been collecting stories like that,” he said. “Trying to piece together what we can. If you’re willing, he’d like to write down what you remember.”

Darren’s fingers tightened on the edge of the bed. “If it helps someone, yeah,” he said. “I’ll talk.”

Mia and Lucas spent their days at the schoolhouse, learning and relearning the rhythms of sitting still, of listening, of arguing with other kids about things that didn’t involve survival.

In the afternoons, Rime often waited outside the doors to walk them back to the hotel or to the square. Sometimes Varro joined, carrying updated patrol maps that he’d spread out on a bench while the kids asked questions about the lines and circles.

“This ring?” Lucas asked one day, pointing. “What’s that?”

“Quiet Circle,” Varro said. “Route we walk around town. Keeps valley safe. You were on edge of it when we found your smoke.”

“So you watch all this every day?” Mia asked.

“Not all at once,” Varro said. “We share. But yes. Many eyes. Many claws. Hard for trouble to sneak in.”

“Did the wolves ever think about just… staying hidden?” Mia asked. “Not getting involved?”

Rime snorted. “Try tell Thane to stay hidden,” he said. “See what happen.”

Varro smiled faintly. “World changed,” he said. “We could hide. Let humans fight and fall. Or we could stand next to them and try something new.” He looked at them steadily. “We chose stand.”

On the third evening, Tarrik knocked on the hotel door.

Mia opened it to find him standing awkwardly in the hall, too big for the narrow space, shoulders almost brushing the walls. His fur had dried hard in places from an earlier patrol in the rain. He held something in one hand.

“Can come in?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Mia said, stepping back. “Sure.”

He ducked inside, careful not to gouge the doorframe with his horns—that was what Lucas called them the first time; Mia had to explain they were just ears and head fur.

Lucas sat up on his bed, surprised. “Thought you went back to Eureka,” he said.

“Soon,” Tarrik said. He glanced around, then held out the object he carried.

It was the sled.

Or what was left of it—Varro had cut it down to a smaller section, sanded the edges, and smoothed the warped metal. The ropes were gone, but the surface was familiar.

“I thought we left that outside town,” Darren said from his chair, crutch leaning nearby.

“Varro keep piece,” Tarrik said. “He say… was important story. I agree.” He set it gently against the wall. “You can keep. Or burn. Your choice. Just… wanted you to see not all bad things from north were left behind.”

Mia ran her hand over the metal. It still carried faint scratches from rocks, grooves where Tarrik’s claws had dug in.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

“Yes,” Tarrik said. “I did.” His gaze met hers, then Lucas’s, then Darren’s. “You saw me in old place,” he said. “Pulling sled. Not as monster. As… pack.” He took a breath. “I want you remember that more than stories you heard before.”

Lucas tilted his head. “We heard both now,” he said. “Makes you… complicated.”

Tarrik’s mouth quirked in the tiniest hint of a smile. “That fair,” he said.

Mia stepped closer. “Thank you,” she said. “For pulling it. For coming back north at all.”

“Was duty,” Tarrik said. “But also… choice.” He glanced toward the window, where the first stars were starting to appear. “I go home tomorrow. Eureka my den now. But valley one thing. You see me there someday, do not be afraid.”

“We won’t,” Mia said.

Friday came.

By then, Mia and Lucas had fallen into a rhythm that felt dangerously close to a life. Breakfast downstairs. School. Afternoons at the square, watching people barter, laughing at Holt’s attempts to sell bread without eating half of it himself. Evenings with Darren, sharing memories in pieces they could stand.

That night, as dusk settled and lights flickered on across town, KTNY’s windows glowed brighter than usual. The door stood open to let in the evening air. People drifted in and out—pack members, townsfolk, even a couple of visitors from Spokane who’d timed their trip to catch the House Party live.

Mia and Lucas stood just inside the station, pressed against the back wall, as Thane leaned toward the microphone.

His voice, when it came, rolled smooth and calm through the room—and out through the valley.

“Evening, Libby,” he said. “And Eureka, Thompson Falls, Kalispell, Spokane… everyone listening out there in the dark. This is Thane on KTNY, and tonight’s House Party is… a little different.”

He glanced through the glass at Mia and Lucas, then at Darren sitting in the corner, leg stretched out.

“Some of you have heard the news,” he continued. “Some of you saw us come through the gate a few days back. The first rescue since the Accord. We went north because we saw smoke on the horizon and decided not to ignore it.” He paused. “We found three people who thought they were alone in the world.”

The board lights flickered. Gabriel adjusted a level. Mark leaned against the doorway, listening.

“Turns out,” Thane said, “they were wrong. And that’s the first kind of mistake we’re happy to see in the valley.”

Soft laughter rippled through the studio.

He went on. “You’re going to meet them in the days ahead. At the school. At the diner. In the square. Give them time. They’re learning how to live again the same way we all did. With help.”

Mia felt a strange warmth creep up her face. Lucas nudged her with his elbow, grinning.

Thane’s tone shifted, just slightly. “We’re still figuring out why the world fell,” he said. “Why some of us caught that virus and never got back up, and why others are still here to ask the question. Why there are wolves walking in our streets now instead of hiding in the trees.” He tapped the mic gently; the sound carried soft and sure. “But tonight isn’t about answers. It’s about something simpler: proof.”

He looked through the glass again. At the wolves. At the humans. At the town that had refused to die.

“Proof that the valley is one thing,” he said. “That if you’re out there, scared and alone, and you think no one’s left… you’re wrong. We’re here. And we’re looking.”

He nodded to Gabriel, who queued up the first song—a bright, hopeful rock track that spilled warmth into the air as if someone had opened a door to summer.

Mia closed her eyes and listened.

The music washed over her, layered with the murmur of voices, the low rumble of wolves laughing at some quiet joke, the gentle scrape of Mark’s pen as he made notes on a pad about transmitter levels and battery life.

Somewhere in that mix, in the hum of wires and the beat of drums, she felt something settle inside her.

No answers yet.

But enough.

Enough for one week.

Enough to believe that the long road south had been worth every frozen, terrifying step.

Morning came gray and thin over the ruined trees, light seeping slowly into the clearing outside the old outpost. Frost clung to the concrete, and the breath from wolves and humans alike hung in the cold air.

Inside, the generator still hummed at a low idle, the warmth it gave off turning the bunker from a tomb into something closer to a den. The three survivors woke slowly—stiff, blinking in the dim light as their bodies remembered hunger and cold at the same time.

Darren tried to push himself upright too fast. Pain flashed across his face, and his wrapped leg trembled.

Thane was already there, one clawed hand against the man’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said. “We’re going to move, but we’re not going to rush you into the ground.”

Darren swallowed and nodded. “I’m… ready,” he said, voice rough. “Just tell me what you need.”

“We need you alive at the end of this,” Thane said. “That’s all.”

The girl sat up, blanket slipping from her shoulders. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Her brother—a little younger, thinner—blinked beside her, eyes darting quickly to each wolf as if counting them again, reassuring himself they were still the same ones as last night.

Varro knelt near a pile of scavenged metal and old plastic, hands already moving in calm, precise motions as he checked knots and joints. He had built a sled during the late hours of the night—low, wide, lashed together from pipe, broken shelving, and a door ripped from one of the interior rooms. A layer of folded blankets and old insulation sat on top.

He tugged at the lashings, testing them. “Will hold,” he said. “Not pretty. Strong enough.”

Tarrik came to his side and gripped the front struts. He pulled once, feeling the weight, the drag across the rough floor. “I pull,” he said. “Terrain bad. Better I take it.”

“You sure?” Thane asked.

Tarrik’s answer was simple. “I strong. He not.” He nodded to Darren. “This my work.”

Rime trotted over to the girl and boy, tail swaying gently. “You walk some,” he said. “But if legs say no… I help.”

The boy blinked. “You’ll… carry us?”

Rime tilted his head. “You light,” he said. “Not hard.” A small, proud flash of teeth. “Strong wolf.”

The girl huffed a quiet, disbelieving laugh. “You’re all insane,” she murmured.

Kade appeared from the doorway, pack already on, ears flicked toward the forest beyond. “Trail south is clear for now,” he said. “No fresh prints. Storm front’s sitting on the ridge behind us; we’ll beat it if we move.”

Thane looked over the small group—five wolves, three humans, one improvised sled, a whole valley’s worth of future waiting to see if this rescue worked.

“Pack it up,” he said. “We’re heading home.”

They doused the fire, checked the bunker one last time for anything useful—extra blankets, two more intact cans of food, a length of rope, a battered metal thermos Rime claimed with quiet satisfaction. When they stepped out into the cold clearing, the sky was still flat and colorless, the world reduced to grays and browns and the pale outlines of distant mountains.

Darren eased himself onto the sled with Thane and Varro bracing him. He grunted once as his injured leg settled.

“Tell me if anything feels wrong,” Varro said. “Pain… pinch… we stop.”

“Feels like sitting on junk and blankets,” Darren said. “Better than the floor in there.”

Tarrik took up the harness—just rope knotted around the front struts and over his shoulders. He pulled once to set his grip, claws fanning lightly against the ground for balance.

“Say when,” he rumbled.

“Now,” Thane said.

They moved out of the clearing and back into the trees, Kade in front, light on his paws, reading terrain without needing to think. Thane walked just ahead of the sled, Varro alongside, Rime ranging near the humans, occasionally brushing his shoulder against the girl’s arm when she stumbled.

For the first while, they walked in silence. The forest had that particular hush old snowfields carried—every sound damped, every breath sounding too loud. Branches creaked now and then under hidden frost. Somewhere far off, a bird called once and went quiet again.

The girl watched the wolves for several long minutes before finally speaking. “My name is Mia,” she said quietly. “He’s Lucas. Our mom…” She faltered, then swallowed. “She didn’t make it.”

“I am sorry,” Varro said. The words were simple, but his tone gave them weight. “You kept living. She would want that.”

Lucas glanced down, then up again. “You said there’s a town. Towns. With lights.”

“Many,” Rime said. “Libby, Eureka, Thompson Falls, Kalispell, Spo—” He stumbled over the name, nose wrinkling. “Spoke-ann.”

Kade snorted softly. “Spokane,” he corrected. “But that was close.”

Rime flicked an ear. “Say weird. Humans words bend.”

“Yeah, they do,” Mia said. “But you’re doing better than I would in… whatever language you spoke first.”

“Was mostly teeth and growl,” Rime said. “Less grammar.”

Mia’s laugh came a little easier that time.

Thane kept his gaze forward, ears tuned to the conversation behind him, making sure they were still talking. Still trying. Fear quieted people. Hope made them loud.

He liked the sound of them getting louder.

At a small rise, Tarrik dug his claws in and leaned his weight forward, sled tracking behind him like it had been built for this. Darren gripped the sides.

“You all right?” Thane asked.

“Honestly?” Darren said. “I should be terrified. I’m being dragged through the woods on a door by a werewolf I used to have nightmares about. But this is the safest I’ve felt in months.”

Tarrik didn’t look back, but his ears tipped slightly toward Darren’s voice.

“Good,” Thane said. “We’ll keep it that way.”

By midday, the bleak stiffness of morning had given way to the slow ache of fatigue. The air warmed just enough that their breaths no longer steamed constantly. The snowpack thinned in patches, revealing dark soil and old, flattened grass beneath.

Lucas began to limp.

Kade saw it first—an almost-imperceptible hitch in the boy’s step, the way his boot dragged a fraction of an inch more with each pass. He slowed his pace just enough for the rest of the group to close in.

“Lucas,” Thane said, not unkindly. “Talk to me.”

“My feet are just… tired,” Lucas said. “I can keep going.”

“Not the question I asked,” Thane said. “Is it pain or just tired?”

Lucas hesitated. “Both.”

Rime moved in close, lowering his head to catch the boy’s scent. “Blisters,” he said. “Too much rub.”

Thane nodded once. “All right. Rime?”

Rime’s tail lifted. “I carry,” he said. He knelt slightly, bracing himself. “Climb up. Hold fur, not neck.”

Lucas looked at him like the wolf had just offered to sprout wings.

“I’m heavy,” he protested weakly.

Rime snorted. “No,” he said. “You not. Get on.”

Mia put a hand on her brother’s back. “You heard the wolf,” she said. “Take the ride. You’ve earned it.”

Lucas slid an arm around Rime’s shoulders, awkward at first, then more securely. Rime rose, settling the boy’s weight as if he were nothing more than a pack.

“Comfortable?” Rime asked.

“Yeah,” Lucas breathed. “You’re… warm.”

Rime’s tail wagged once, pleased. “Good. I warm. You rest.”

They moved on.

In the early afternoon, clouds thickened over the distant peaks, darkening the sky in slow degrees. Kade lifted his nose, inhaling.

“Storm’s changing its mind,” he said. “It’s cutting east instead of dropping straight on us, but we’re still going to get the edge. We should find some cover for a break while we’re ahead.”

“There is cut in earth,” Tarrik said from behind. “Low place with rock. Half-hour from here. Used to den there, long ago.”

“Then we go there,” Thane said. “Short rest. Food, water, then keep moving.”

The low place turned out to be a shallow ravine chiseled into the hillside, its sides curtained with roots and moss. A fallen tree trunk spanned part of it, making a rough shelter. The ground beneath was surprisingly dry.

Tarrik eased the sled down the slope with help from Varro. Thane guided Mia to sit on a flat stone. Rime knelt so Lucas could slide off carefully, then shook his fur out in a full-body shiver that sent loose snow scattering.

“Okay, that was… amazing,” Lucas said, dizzy and smiling. “Ten out of ten. Would ride again.”

Rime’s chest puffed subtly. “Maybe later,” he said. “You walk more first.”

Kade passed out strips of dried meat and a few bites of the salvaged canned beans. They ate slowly, letting their bodies catch up with what they’d already done.

Mia watched Tarrik from the corner of her eye as he checked the sled harness, making small adjustments. The big wolf’s movements were efficient, quiet, controlled in a way that didn’t quite match the monster she’d been told about by frightened travelers months ago.

“You really used to run things up here?” she asked him, finally.

Tarrik didn’t look away from the knot he was tightening. “Yes,” he said. “I was… bad Alpha. Hard. Cruel.”

Mia shifted, pulling her blanket tighter. “And now you’re hauling people on a door.”

“Yes,” Tarrik said. He straightened, met her gaze. “I owe valley more than I can pay. So I pull door.”

There was something like humor at the edges of his voice when he said it. Very faint. Like a muscle he’d only just begun to test.

Varro watched the interaction, eyes thoughtful. “He learn,” Varro said quietly to Mia. “Every day. We all do.”

She looked between the two wolves. “You were one of his, weren’t you?” she asked Varro.

Varro nodded once. “Iron Ridge made me. Libby saved me.”

“Now you’re saving us,” Darren said. “All of you.”

For a moment, the ravine was quiet except for the small sounds of eating and the soft hiss of wind sliding over the lip above.

Thane shifted, stretching one shoulder, clawed toes kneading the earth under him. “You should know what you’re walking into,” he said to Darren, Mia, and Lucas. “The valley isn’t perfect. People are scared. Some still don’t trust wolves. Some still don’t trust other towns. We’re working on it. But you’ll be safe. And you’ll have a say in how things go once you’re steady.”

Darren nodded slowly. “After this winter… I can handle ‘not perfect.’”

Mia’s mouth quirked up. “If there’s a bed that isn’t concrete, I might cry.”

“Soft dens,” Rime said. “We call them that. Hotel in Libby. Many rooms. Good blankets.”

“Soft dens,” Mia repeated, rolling the words. “I like that.”

They rested for less than an hour. Long enough to let muscles unknot and lungs stop burning, but not long enough for stiffness to set in. When they moved again, the clouds had shifted, grayer now but holding back their full weight.

The afternoon carried them through thicker stands of trees where snow lingered in the shadows, stubborn against the season. Once, Kade raised a hand and halted them, crouching to inspect a faint set of tracks crossing their path—boot prints, older, the edges slumped.

“Three days,” Varro said, kneeling beside him. “Maybe four. Not these three,” he added, nodding to the survivors. “Stride different. Lighter.”

“Direction?” Thane asked.

“North to south, then east,” Kade said, tracing the route with one finger. “They passed near the outpost and kept moving.”

“Raiders?” Darren asked, tension tightening his shoulders on the sled.

“Not sure,” Kade said. “They weren’t dragging packs or gear. No scuff marks. Pace was consistent.”

“Could be more survivors,” Varro said. “We find later, maybe.”

Thane watched the faded prints for a moment longer. Another thread for another day.

“We keep moving,” he said. “Storm’s still out there, and these three need real beds.”

They pushed on.

As the light began to soften toward evening, the trees gradually changed—denser, more familiar, the specific pattern of branches and stones that said they were leaving the old brutal heartland of Iron Ridge and entering the outskirts of the valley proper.

The air smelled different here, too. Less rust, more earth. Fainter traces of smoke from distant chimneys. Rime’s ears perked, and his tail began an unconscious swaying.

“Home smell,” he said. “Close now.”

Tarrik’s strides never faltered, but his eyes shifted, too, taking in the change. He could feel it as much as smell it—the way dominance and fear did not cling to this land the way it used to under his old rule. The quiet here was not the silence of terror.

It was just… quiet.

At one point, the slope steepened and the sled’s weight pulled back hard. Tarrik dug in, claws scraping rock. The harness rope creaked.

Thane stepped in close and set his claws on the side of the sled, helping push. Varro added his strength at the back, steadying Darren so he didn’t slide.

“We can walk,” Darren protested, breathless.

“Not on that leg,” Thane said. “You ride. We get one chance to do this right.”

Darren’s eyes shone again. He said nothing more.

They crested the rise just as the clouds finally released the edge of the storm. Not a blizzard, not this time. Just a fine, cold drizzle that darkened fur and clothes and turned the path slick under their feet.

Kade frowned at the sky. “It’ll get worse later,” he said. “But we should be inside town limits before it matters.”

“Good,” Rime said. “I want stew.”

“Of course you do,” Varro muttered, but there was warmth in it.

The first real sign they were close to home was not sight, but sound—a faint, distant hum of something not quite natural. The soft, steady thrum of power.

Lucas sat straighter on Rime’s back. “What’s that?”

“Lines,” Varro said. “Power. Wires hum when alive.”

Darren blinked. “You got the grid up?”

“Mostly,” Thane said. “Libby, valley towns, dam. Took time.”

Mia looked around, eyes suddenly wet. “I never thought I’d hear that again,” she whispered.

Trees thinned. The path became a beaten track, then the edge of a road where weeds pushed between cracked asphalt. Ahead, in the deepening gray, the shapes of buildings emerged—patched roofs, reinforced walls, windows glowing faintly with warm light.

Libby.

As they approached the outskirts, someone on watch spotted them. A bell rang once, then twice—not alarm, but signal. Shapes moved along the street. People emerged from doorways, jackets pulled tight against the drizzle, faces curious.

“Welcome committee,” Kade said quietly.

“Good,” Thane said. “They should see this.”

They passed through the gate, guards stepping aside with nods of recognition and brief, startled looks at the sled and its cargo. Mia and Lucas stared openly at everything—the repaired trucks, the lit windows, the faint sound of voices from inside the diner, the distant glint of the KTNY antenna against the gray sky.

“Oh my God,” Mia said. “It’s… it’s like the world didn’t end here.”

“It did,” Thane said. “We just refused to stay in the end.”

Marta was waiting halfway down the street, coat already damp, hair pulled back. She took in the scene in one sweep—the sled, the blankets, the exhaustion in the survivors’ faces, the way the wolves moved around them like a living shield.

“You made good time,” she said.

“Storm gave us a long leash,” Thane replied. “We took it.”

Darren tried to sit straighter. “Ma’am,” he said. “I—”

She stepped closer and put a hand lightly on his arm. “You don’t owe me anything,” she said. “You’re here. That’s enough.”

Her gaze moved to Mia and Lucas. “You two hungry?”

“Yes,” they said in unison, then glanced at each other and laughed, shaky and amazed at the sound.

Rime’s tail wagged. “We have stew,” he promised. “Soft dens. Radio. Many good things.”

Marta met Tarrik’s eyes over the sled. There was a moment there—a quiet exchange of acknowledgment. Gratitude and understanding.

“Thank you,” she said to him, and meant it.

He dipped his head. “My work,” he said simply.

People began to gather now, not swarming, but drawing close in careful arcs—townsfolk who had lived through their own winters and knew better than to crowd the newly rescued. Mrs. Renner appeared, shawl over her shoulders, eyes soft as she took in Mia and Lucas.

“We’ll get them to the hotel,” Marta said. “Hot food, dry clothes, beds. Then we’ll talk.”

Thane stepped back, letting the town move in. Rime stayed close to Lucas until the boy slid off, reluctant to let go of his fur. Mia put a hand briefly on Varro’s arm, a silent thank you. Darren reached for Thane’s hand; their grip was brief but firm.

“You pulled us back from the dark,” Darren said. “All of you.”

“The valley did,” Thane answered. “We just ran the miles.”

The survivors were guided away toward the hotel, flanked by humans and wolves both. Voices rose in welcome; doors opened; light spilled onto wet stone.

For the first time all day, Thane let his shoulders drop a fraction. Rain beaded on his fur and the medallion at his throat.

Kade stood beside him, watching the trio disappear into warmth. “First rescue since the Accord,” he said.

“First of many,” Varro added quietly. “Think so, anyway.”

Rime’s stomach growled audibly. “First stew now,” he said. “Many rescues later.”

Tarrik remained a little apart, gaze on the hotel entrance. He watched until the door closed behind the survivors, then glanced at Thane.

“They live,” he said.

“They do,” Thane said. “Because we went north.”

“Because valley one thing now,” Tarrik said. “Not many pieces.”

Thane nodded once. “This is what unity is for,” he said. “Not meetings. Not paper. This.”

The rain picked up, pattering more insistently on roofs and stone. From somewhere close by, a faint thread of music drifted out—KTNY bleeding softly through a doorway left ajar. It wrapped around the street like a memory of the old world and a promise of the new one.

Thane turned toward the cabin. “Come on,” he said. “We debrief after hot food. Then we talk about those other tracks.”

Kade’s ears pricked. Varro’s eyes sharpened. Rime groaned softly but followed.

Tarrik took one last look back at the hotel, then fell into step with the others, the rhythm of the pack steady and sure against the soft drum of rain.

The long road south was over.

But the work of a united valley had only just begun.

Morning settled over Libby with the soft blue light of a spring day still deciding whether it wanted to stay cold. Thane stood outside the cabin, clawed feet sunk quietly into the cool earth as Kade, Varro, and Rime returned from the northern stretch of the Quiet Circle. All three wolves moved with that particular tension that meant something had gone wrong.

Kade approached first, calm but alert. “We saw smoke,” he said. “Far north. Past the old Iron Ridge line. And not the kind from a cooking fire—too straight, too steady.”

Rime wrinkled his nose. “Wrong smell. Sick fire.”

Varro flipped open his notebook and showed Thane a tight, clean sketch of the ridgeline. A thin column of gray rose above the highest peak, steady and tired. “Not accident,” he said. “Someone hold on. Someone send sign.”

Thane studied the sketch, jaw tightening slightly. “How far?”

“At least a day,” Kade said. “Maybe more if the weather shifts.”

Thane exhaled slowly, gaze drifting north. “We need Tarrik.”

“I call Tom,” Varro said. His words were simple, but confident.

He stepped inside the cabin. Through the open door, Thane heard the soft clatter of the phone being lifted, Varro’s voice low and concise as he briefed the mayor of Eureka. There was a pause, then Varro’s steady tone again. “Thank you. We ready soon.”

He stepped back outside. “They come fast,” he said. “Tom bring Tarrik.”

Rime huffed. “Good. He big. Scare trouble.”

Kade crossed his arms loosely. “You want the old Iron Ridge reputation working for us.”

“Sometimes fear buys time,” Thane said. “But he’s not going back to who he was. Not for a second.”

It didn’t take long. A familiar truck eased up the gravel road from Eureka, tires crunching softly. Tom Anderson stepped out first, waving toward Thane. Tarrik climbed out after him—tall, steady, carrying only a field pack and a quiet readiness that said he already understood the situation.

He approached Thane with respectful calm. “Varro said you need me.”

“We do,” Thane said. “Smoke signals north. Survivors maybe. Trouble maybe. And no one knows that ground better than you.”

Tarrik hesitated. “If they know my name… fear.”

“That fear might keep someone from doing something stupid,” Thane said. “And if we hit hostility, a little edge helps. But it’s a mask. Nothing more.”

Tarrik nodded. “Mask only. I not fall.”

Varro moved to his side, offering a small, firm nod. “We keep you steady,” he said. “All of us.”

Tom stepped closer. “He’s yours for as long as needed,” he told Thane. “Bring back whoever’s still up there.”

Tarrik dipped his head once. “I help. Promise.”

Rime dropped blankets and water into a travel pack. Kade double-checked straps and closures with efficient precision. Varro gathered tools and a coil of wire. Thane secured his own gear, feeling the familiar weight settle across his shoulders.

Five wolves gathered at the edge of the clearing—Rime alert and restless, Varro focused and calm, Kade sharp and steady, Tarrik strong and watchful, and Thane standing at their center. Frost clung to the shaded grass. The wind carried the faint scent of distance and cold iron.

Thane lifted two fingers in quiet signal.

They moved north.

Cold spring wind drifted through the pines north of Libby as Thane moved up the ridge, clawed feet crunching softly in last winter’s needles. The air carried a faint metallic sharpness—a scent that Kade noticed first, ears pricking forward.

Tarrik stepped up behind them, his bulk casting a long shadow on the ridge. His ears tilted forward, expression sharpening with memories he didn’t voice. This land had once answered to him. Every echo of wind, every shift of branch and scent had once carried his authority.

Through all of them.

Through Kade’s family.

Through every feral who had run under his rule.

Thane’s eyes stayed on the smoke column. No fear in them. Just calculation, the quiet kind that settled into a leader’s bones.

“Could be a camp,” Thane said. “Could be something worse. Let’s check it out.”

He turned slightly, catching Tarrik’s attention. The former Iron Ridge Alpha straightened, sensing the cue.

“You’ll lead once we cross your old border,” Thane said. “No one knows this ground better than you.”

Tarrik nodded slowly. “I can guide. Keep us safe. But…” He hesitated, then met Thane’s gaze. “If we meet survivors who know my name, they will fear.”

Thane’s tone didn’t soften. It simply steadied. “Good. We may need fear today. If something goes sideways, you show teeth. But only if I say.”

Tarrik blinked once, then again, the weight of trust landing with visible force. “I play old self,” he said. “Only mask. Not truth.”

“That’s the point,” Thane said. “We use any advantage that keeps us alive.”

Rime nodded approvingly. “Scare helps sometimes,” he said. “Only sometimes.”

Varro glanced toward Tarrik, voice low. “Your presence may give us leverage. Just do not slip backward. That path is steep.”

Tarrik exhaled through his nose, a steadying breath. “I not fall.”

Thane motioned them forward, and they moved in formation—Kade scouting ahead, Varro reading terrain, Rime sweeping flanks, Tarrik watching the rear trail for shadows, Thane at center to coordinate.

Hours passed beneath shifting sunlight. The northern border of Iron Ridge territory revealed itself in broken wire fencing, rusted signposts leaning at awkward angles, and the scattered bones of an era when survival had meant domination.

Tarrik moved differently when they crossed it—slower, more thoughtful. Not afraid. Subdued. As if walking through old ghosts.

“This place feels heavier,” Kade murmured.

Varro studied the landscape with quiet intensity. “Every pack leaves memory behind,” he said. “Good or bad.”

Tarrik didn’t answer. He only pressed on.

The smoke rose thicker now, easier to see between the trees. Not a raging burn. Not wildfire. Controlled, but barely. Rime lifted his nose, sniffing again.

“Sick smell,” he said. “Old sickness. Maybe people hurt.”

Thane’s jaw tightened. “Then we move faster.”

They pressed forward. The forest thinned into rocky ground, then opened into a wide clearing scarred by tire tracks, collapsed fencing, and concrete slabs half-swallowed by moss. At the far edge stood a squat structure—reinforced walls, faded military insignia, antennas snapped in half.

A forgotten outpost.

Two figures huddled beside a makeshift fire near the entrance, wrapped in patched blankets, thin enough the wind might blow them over. A third leaned against the wall—older, gaunt, one leg wrapped from ankle to knee.

They saw the wolves before voices could be raised.

The man by the wall reached for a rifle leaning beside him, hands shaking from cold or hunger. He didn’t aim it—not truly—but he held it like it had once been enough.

Thane stepped forward slowly, not raising his hands, not baring teeth—just solid, visible, unbroken.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” he said. “We saw smoke from the ridge. We came to check.”

The older man’s eyes flicked across the wolves—Rime alert at Thane’s flank, Varro reading the angles, Kade poised for movement. Then his gaze hit Tarrik.

And froze.

His fingers whitened around the rifle.

“You,” he whispered. “No. No—no, you died. They said you died.”

Tarrik stilled. His posture shifted subtly—shoulders square, expression hardening into the cold, iron-edged authority of his past. But his eyes flicked toward Thane, waiting.

“Don’t shoot,” Thane said to the man. “He’s with us. Not the wolf you remember.”

The man didn’t lower the weapon. His voice cracked. “Iron Ridge… you—you ruled up here. You hung those who stole food. You ran off families who slowed you.”

Tarrik’s answer came like gravel sliding into place. “I was wrong then. I different now.”

The man swallowed, confusion and exhaustion twisting his features. Two younger survivors peeked from behind the wall—barely more than teenagers, starved, eyes sunken but alert.

“We sheltered here all winter,” the older man rasped. “The radio died in January. Fuel ran out last week. We ran the generator three hours a day for heat… then one hour…” He looked down at his hands. “Now none.”

Kade approached the fire pit, glancing at the thin smoke. “Your wood is almost gone. The fire won’t last two nights. You have been cold long time.”

The older man’s voice steadied only enough to break. “We lost three already. We buried them behind the bunker. No power. No medicine. No word from anyone. We thought we were the last ones left in Montana.”

Thane felt the weight settle in the clearing—quiet, cold, the kind of ache he recognized from early winter nights in Libby when silence stretched too long.

“You’re not alone,” he said. “Not anymore.”

The man’s eyes met his—broken, hopeful, terrified to trust.

Tarrik stepped forward a pace, deliberate. Thane didn’t stop him.

“You know old me,” Tarrik said to the man. “But I not hunt you now. I not lead by fear now. I protect.” He gestured to Thane. “I follow better Alpha.”

The man blinked, disbelief cracking something in his expression. Tarrik waited—not looming, not threatening—just letting the man see the truth for what it was.

Rime approached the younger survivors with gentle movements, offering a strip of dried meat from his pouch. They hesitated, then took it with trembling hands.

Varro scanned the bunker entrance. “We need walk inside,” he said quietly to Thane. “Check for hazards. Structural damage. Supplies.”

Thane nodded. “Tarrik, with me. Varro and Kade check perimeter. Rime stays with the survivors.”

Rime straightened proudly. “I guard,” he said. “No harm.”

They moved into the bunker. The interior smelled of rust, mold, and desperate improvisation—duct tape over cracked pipes, blankets hung over doors to trap heat, crude wiring tapping into a generator that lay silent and dry.

Tarrik walked the corridor like approaching the bones of something he’d once recognized. “Iron Ridge scavenged here,” he murmured. “Long ago. Before fall of our pack. We take tools… leaving bones of building behind.”

Thane opened a panel. Dust billowed. Inside lay a tangled array of old radios, wires corroded with time. He wiped a bit of soot from one. “They tried to broadcast,” he said. “Tried to call out.”

Tarrik’s ears sank. “No one answer.”

“They will now,” Thane said.

Varro’s voice echoed from outside. “Thane! Found something.”

He and Kade stood near the west wall, where snowmelt had carved away dirt to reveal metal. Varro brushed soil from the corner of a sign.

Kade stepped back. “Fuel storage,” he said. “Old. Maybe some left.”

The survivors perked up at that, hope flickering like fragile flame.

Thane crouched and tugged at the hatch. It groaned but opened. Inside, a row of rusted drums reflected faint light.

He tapped one with a claw. It sloshed.

“Kerosene,” he announced. “Enough for heat. Maybe power if the generator’s not dead.”

The younger of the two survivors, the girl, exhaled in a tiny sob of relief. The boy beside her—maybe her brother—leaned heavily against the wall.

Rime hurried forward, offering water. “Drink slow,” he said gently. “Not too fast.”

As the group gathered near the entrance again, Thane addressed the older man directly. “We’ll stay long enough to stabilize the outpost. Get heat running. Get you water and food. Then we’ll bring you south to the valley. You don’t have to stay here another winter.”

The man’s eyes shone wet. “There’s… a valley? People? Towns?”

“Many,” Tarrik said. “All live together now. Human. Wolf. No fear.”

Varro stepped beside him. “We help you walk that path.”

Thane added, “If you choose to come.”

The man’s voice cracked. “We choose.”

The wind kicked up, bringing scents of thawing earth and distant forest. Kade glanced at the sky. “Weather shift coming. We work fast.”

“Tarrik,” Thane said, “help me with the drums. Varro—start checking the generator. Kade—mark any weak structures so no one falls through.” He glanced at Rime. “Keep guarding the survivors.”

Rime puffed up with purpose. “I strong guard,” he said, positioning himself like a statue with bright amber eyes trained on horizon and humans both.

Tarrik lifted the first drum with ease, strength rippling through him. The older man stared.

“You are different,” the man said quietly.

Tarrik paused just a moment. “I choose different Alpha,” he said. “He teach strength without cruelty.”

Thane’s face didn’t shift, but Kade’s tail flicked once in quiet appreciation.

They worked for more than an hour. Varro coaxed life back into the generator, hands moving with methodical certainty. He murmured to the machine as if it could understand encouragement. The survivors watched, expressions shifting from fear to disbelief as lights flickered once… twice… then held.

The girl gasped softly.

Tarrik carried a second drum like it weighed nothing. “We bring you south soon,” he said. “To warmth. To voices. Many voices.”

As evening crept across the clearing, Thane stood at the entrance of the outpost, watching smoke curl upward from the newly strengthened fire pit. The survivors huddled closer to the warmth, color slowly returning to their faces.

Tarrik approached quietly, posture no longer rigid with old burdens. “They survive because they stubborn,” he said. “But if we came a week later…”

“I know,” Thane said.

“They trust me. Even knowing old me.”

“That’s because they see who you are now.”

Tarrik breathed deep. Snowmelt scent, kerosene, smoke, life. “We bring them to valley. Show them home.”

“We will.”

Kade approached, wiping dirt from his hands. “Old paths northward are still dangerous,” he said. “But today? We show that the valley works.”

Varro stood beside him, eyes on the horizon. “Smoke drew us,” he said. “Maybe others still out there.”

Thane let the silence settle, comforting and heavy at once.

“We’ll find them too,” he said.

The generator hummed low, its revived heartbeat echoing down the concrete hallway and warming air that had felt dead for months. The survivors sat near the entrance beneath blankets the wolves had brought in from their packs—rough wool for now, to be replaced with proper bedding once they reached Libby. Their eyes followed every movement with the uneasy mix of disbelief and relief that came when hope arrived too abruptly.

Thane moved through the outpost with steady purpose, checking rooms for structural hazards while listening to the rhythm of the group—footsteps, breaths, voices. Behind him, Kade quietly marked cracked flooring with strips of cloth and chalk. Rime padded in slow circles near the survivors, offering what comfort he could simply by being a calm, warm presence.

Tarrik approached the young woman who had first accepted Rime’s dried meat. She sat close to the fire, rubbing her hands together for warmth. When she noticed Tarrik’s shadow beside her, she stiffened slightly, fear flickering in her eyes before she caught herself.

Tarrik lowered himself to a crouch—slowly, deliberately—keeping his claws visible but relaxed. “You safe,” he said. “We stay until you warm. Until you strong.”

“You…” She swallowed. “You’re him.”

“I am,” Tarrik said simply. “But not same.”

The girl hesitated. “We heard stories. About Iron Ridge. About how you ruled.”

“Stories true,” Tarrik said. “But stories not whole. Old me… broken. Hurt many.” He looked at Thane across the room. “New me learn better way.”

The girl watched him for a moment—really watched—and then nodded, fear softening into wary acceptance. Tarrik stood again, moving to help Varro adjust the fuel line.

Varro knelt by the generator, examining connections with meticulous focus. He glanced up as Tarrik approached. “Fuel steady,” Varro said. “Heat stable. We run it one hour, rest two, run again. Enough conserve.”

Tarrik dipped his head. “Good plan.”

Varro gave a small, almost private smile. “I learned from best.”

Tarrik blinked. “Who?”

“You,” Varro said, wiping his hands. “Long ago. Bad lessons, sometimes. But they helped shape good ones later.”

Tarrik stared at him, speechless. Varro rose to full height and gave his shoulder the smallest, firmest nudge—a silent acknowledgment of shared past and reshaped futures.

Thane returned from exploring a side room, holding up a dusty crate triumphantly. “Food,” he announced. “Or what used to be food. Some cans are still intact.”

Kade inspected one. “Beans. Edible,” he said. “if they smell okay.”

Rime sniffed one and tilted his head. “Smell fine. Maybe fine.””

The survivors perked up. The older man tried to stand, but his wrapped leg trembled beneath him. Thane crossed the room in two strides.

“Sit,” Thane said. “Don’t push it. We’ve got you.”

The man sank back gratefully. “My name…” He paused, rubbing his forehead as if memory stung. “My name is Darren. Darren Cole.”

Thane nodded. “I’m Thane. This is Kade, Varro, Rime. And you know Tarrik.”

Darren’s eyes flicked to each wolf in turn, recognition settling where fear had been. “You’re… real,” he whispered. “We thought the stories were lies. Wolves that help. Wolves that talk. Wolves that fix things.”

Rime offered Darren a cup of water. “Drink. Slow.”

“Thank you,” Darren said, taking it with both hands.

Thane squatted beside him. “How many were you originally?”

“Twelve,” Darren answered. “We came from a place east of here. Flood took out our shelter. We wandered north. Someone told us there was an outpost here. There was… but nothing worked.”

Varro’s expression tightened. “And no towns answered?”

“There are towns?” Darren asked, stunned. “We kept scanning on the radio. All we heard was static.”

“The antenna must’ve been damaged,” Kade said. “We saw wires broken. Metal bent.”

Thane’s jaw set. “Then we’ll fix it.”

“Thane…” Darren’s voice cracked. “Is it true? Are there really towns working together again?”

Thane didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Libby, Spokane, Thompson Falls, Eureka, Kalispell. People rebuilding. Power. Phones. Schools.”

Darren’s eyes filled. “I thought we were the last.”

“You’re not,” Thane said. “And you’re not going to die in this bunker.”

The girl beside Darren leaned forward. “What do you want us to do?”

“Eat. Rest,” Thane said. “We’ll take you back once you have strength.”

Darren shook his head. “It’s dangerous out there.”

Tarrik stepped forward, voice steady. “Not today. You walk with wolves.”

The younger boy stared at him with wide eyes. “Are you… are you going to protect us?”

Tarrik studied him for a moment, something softening behind his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I protect. Not hurt.”

The boy nodded slowly, unsure but hopeful.

As twilight settled outside, faint snowflakes began drifting through the pines. The wolves worked quickly, reinforcing the outpost entrance with debris and moving blankets closer to the generator’s warmth. Rime kept a watchful eye on the survivors, occasionally offering a quiet hum of reassurance—a feral cadence turned gentle.

Kade stepped outside, surveying the northern ridge with narrowed eyes. “Tracks,” he murmured to Thane when he returned. “Old. Three days. Human.”

Varro joined them, scanning the prints. “Scouts,” he said. “Not these survivors.”

“Raiders?” Gabriel asked.

Kade shook his head. “Steps light. No dragging. No heavy gear.”

“Maybe more survivors,” Varro said. “But not near.”

Thane exhaled. “Another problem for another day. We get these people home first.”

Inside, Darren watched them with a mixture of awe and exhaustion. “You all just… work together,” he said softly. “Like you’ve done it for years.”

Thane glanced around the room—wolves moving with purpose, Rime sorting through cans, Varro adjusting controls, Kade securing windows.

“We’ve had practice,” Thane said.

Darren’s daughter spoke again, quieter. “Will the valley… accept us?”

“Yes,” Thane said without hesitation. “We have a process. Screening. Orienting. But you’ll be welcomed. You’ll be safe.”

Darren’s lip trembled. “Safe.” He swallowed. “I haven’t heard that word in two years.”

“Get used to it,” Gabriel said lightly. “We’re bringing it back.”

Tarrik stood beside Thane now, watching the survivors settle. “Old Iron Ridge never look like this,” he said quietly. “People warm. Safe. Not because they fear. Because valley protect them.”

Thane looked at him. “This is what protection is supposed to look like.”

Tarrik nodded slowly, accepting the truth like a stone he’d finally stopped fighting.

Varro approached. “Generator stable for night,” he said. “We rotate watch. Keep fire low but steady.”

“Kade, you take first watch outside,” Thane said. “Varro, second. Rime, third. I’ll take fourth.”

Tarrik straightened. “I take last,” he said.

Thane nodded once. “Good.”

Thane watched the scene—wolves and humans sharing space without tension—and felt something settle deep in his chest. A quiet certainty that this rescue wasn’t just about saving three people.

It was proof that the valley’s unity meant something beyond signatures on a page.

As night deepened, snow fell quietly outside. Kade kept watch from a tree stump, scanning the shadowed treeline with eyes that missed little. Varro slept light, half-alert even when lost in dreams. Rime lay beside the survivors, forming a protective barrier of heat and muscle. Tarrik dozed against the wall like a sentinel carved from fur and stone.

Thane took his shift while the stars still burned cold over the ridge.

He walked the perimeter alone, breath clouding in the dark. The silence of the north wrapped around him—vast, stark, familiar. A place that once belonged to fear. To cruelty.

Not anymore.

Behind him, the outpost glowed warm against the snow, a fragile lantern holding the night at bay.

A lone figure stepped beside him.

Tarrik.

He didn’t speak at first. Just stood, watching the horizon.

“They fear me less now,” Tarrik said quietly.

“They fear you enough,” Thane said. “Just not the wrong way.”

“I try not be old shadow.”

“You’re not.”

Tarrik absorbed that in a long breath. “We bring them south tomorrow?”

“We do,” Thane said. “And then we come back. There are more out here. I can feel it.”

Tarrik looked north, past the ridges, past the dark valleys beyond. “Then valley grows.”

“It will,” Thane said. “If we guide it right.”

Light flickered behind them as the generator hiccuped, then steadied. Someone laughed inside—soft, tired, relieved. Rime murmured something gentle. Varro shifted in sleep.

The world felt possible.

Tarrik straightened, drawing himself up to full height—not the tyrant he once was, but the guardian he had become.

“We find them,” he said. “All of them.”

Thane nodded. “Together.”

The wind rose softly, carrying smoke and hope and distant echoes across the ruined forest.

The valley was united.

Now it was time to extend its reach.

Night held steady around them as they kept watch, two silhouettes against a world that was slowly, painfully, beautifully learning how to live again.

The sun came up over Libby like it meant it, washing City Hall in pale gold and throwing long shadows across the square. A flag fluttered above the front steps, edges still frayed from the years after the Fall, but colors bright and stubborn against the sky. People moved with purpose through the open doors—volunteers carrying trays, staff checking lists, a faint undercurrent of nerves and excitement running beneath all of it.

Thane climbed the steps with Gabriel at his side, Holt and Rime padding behind them. The wolves’ claws clicked softly on the stone. Kade and Varro were already inside, spreading maps across a table in the lobby, heads bowed together in quiet discussion.

Marta had insisted the doors stay open. “This isn’t a secret,” she’d said. “If we’re going to govern a valley, the valley deserves to see us walk in.”

Inside, the lobby smelled of fresh coffee, paper, and smoked meat. Volunteers had laid out bread—Holt’s latest, finally consistent enough that even Rime trusted it—and strips of venison on a platter reserved, unofficially, for the wolves.

Rime drifted toward it like a needle to a magnet. Holt bumped his shoulder. “Later,” Holt muttered. “Meeting first. No shame eat after.”

Rime’s ears drooped, but his tail kept a slow, hopeful rhythm.

Thane shrugged out of his jacket and scanned the room. His gaze caught Marta near the council chamber doors, checking off names on a clipboard. She looked up, eyes meeting his. For a moment, the years they’d fought through—snowstorms and raiders and blackouts—passed between them without a word.

“You good?” she asked.

“Standing,” he said. “That’s a start.”

Gabriel snorted quietly beside him. “You’re more than standing. You’re about to lead a regional council. Try not to look like you’d rather be elbows-deep in a phone rack.”

Thane gave him a sideways look.

The front doors opened again. A breeze chased in the smell of pine and cold road dust, followed by Tom Anderson and Tarrik.

Tom walked like a man who’d learned to trust his town to run while he was gone. Beside him, Tarrik moved with measured steadiness—no longer a coiled threat, but a grounded presence. His fur was brushed and healthy, scars visible but softened. Every step carried the weight of someone who had chosen to stay in the world instead of turning away from it.

Tom reached Thane first and held out a hand. “Morning, Thane.”

Thane took it. “Tom.”

Tom’s grin flicked wider, then he stepped aside slightly, making space as Tarrik approached.

Tarrik stopped a pace away and dipped his head—not a subservient bow, not dominance, just respect. “Alpha,” he said. His voice retained that faint feral cadence, but the words were steady. “Eureka sends honor. And thanks.”

Thane studied him for half a heartbeat—the calmer eyes, the absence of the old sneer, the way his shoulders sat level instead of hunched with anger. He remembered Tarrik on the road to banishment, and Tarrik in Eureka with maps spread out, guarding the town as fiercely as he once ruled Iron Ridge. The difference was not small.

“You’re looking good,” Thane said. “Eureka suits you.”

Tarrik’s ears ticked up, just barely. “It is… strange. No chains. Just work. Purpose.” His gaze ghosted past Thane to the maps in the lobby, then back. “Thank you. For that.”

Thane gave a short nod. “You earned it. You keep those people safe, you keep earning it.”

Tarrik’s tail moved a fraction. “I will.”

They moved aside as Nora Ellison and Seth came through the doors. Nora’s expression was bright with curiosity and a bit of mischief; Seth walked a half-step behind her, eyes sweeping the room, posture relaxed but alert. He looked solid, settled—as much Thompson Falls as the river that ran past it.

“Libby cleans up nice,” Nora said, glancing around. “Almost like you all planned this instead of winging it.”

Marta lifted her clipboard. “Don’t say things you know aren’t true, Nora. We’re very much winging it.”

Seth’s gaze found Thane. There was history there—fights, long drives, shared watchfires. Seth stepped forward and clasped Thane’s forearm.

“Good see you,” he said. “Valley feel… different now. Quieter. But not empty.”

“Quiet’s the point,” Thane said. “If we do today right, we keep it that way.”

Delegations continued to arrive. Hal Mason stepped in with folders under one arm, Spokane dust on his boots, eyes carrying too many late nights and early mornings. He clasped Thane’s hand like he was gripping a lifeline.

“Been a long road from emergency triage to council meeting,” Hal said.

“Still beats wondering who’s alive within a hundred miles,” Gabriel put in, appearing at Thane’s shoulder. “Good to see you, Hal.”

Kalispell arrived last. Nadine Carver came through the doors with three aides and the soft scent of rain off mountain stone. She carried herself like someone who had never stopped planning for a future, even when the world fell apart.

Her gaze swept the room, taking in wolves, maps, coffee, paper, the mix of worn clothes and carefully repaired civic uniforms. She reached Thane and offered her hand.

“Glad to see you again, Thane” she said.

Marta clapped her hands once. “All right. We’re as here as we’re going to get. Let’s move inside.”

The council chamber filled quickly. The room had been scrubbed and patched; sunlight spilled across the long table, catching on the polished wood and the faint scars left by years of disuse. Chairs lined the sides, with overflow seating along the walls.

Marta took the center seat at the head of the table. To her right, Thane sat as Libby’s representative, claws resting lightly on the surface, wolf medallion catching the light at his throat. Tom took the next seat, then Hal. On Marta’s left sat Nadine, then Nora, then an empty chair reserved for when they needed to pull someone else into the circle.

Behind Thane, Kade and Varro took their positions, map tubes and notepads ready. Tarrik stood behind Tom, steady and watchful. Seth settled behind Nora. Gabriel slid into a chair against the wall with a notebook of his own, there to listen and catch anything KTNY might need to carry later. Holt and Rime chose spots near the back, officially “observers,” unofficially on permanent alert for anything that might involve food, danger, or both.

The low murmur of voices faded as Marta stood.

“By showing up today,” she said, “you’ve already done the hard part. You left your home towns, your safety zones. You came here to talk about more than just surviving the week. Today we decide how this valley lives for the next ten, twenty, fifty years.” She glanced at Thane. “We’ve been reacting for a long time. Maybe this is the day we start planning.”

She sat. All eyes shifted to Thane.

He was not dressed for ceremony—just sturdy pants, a dark shirt, claws and fur bare, like always—but there was something formal in the way he held himself. When he spoke, his gravel-edged voice carried without effort.

“We’ve all bled for this valley,” Thane said. “We’ve lost people. We’ve nearly lost towns. We’ve seen what happens when one group tries to rule by fear.” His gaze flicked, not unkindly, toward Tarrik, then back to the table. “We’re not doing that. Not here. Not now. This council is not about who’s strongest. It’s about how we keep our people fed, warm, safe, and hopeful. Together.”

He rested his hands back on the table. “Let’s talk about how we keep it that way.”

They started with security. It was the most natural place for wolves and humans alike.

Varro stepped forward, unrolling a map across the table. Kade pinned it at the corners. Town names were marked in firm strokes, roads and trails spidering between them, contours of mountains and rivers sketched with practiced familiarity.

“This is the Quiet Circle,” Varro said, his voice calm and precise. “We run it now for Libby, for Northern Ferals before. We can expand.”

He tapped the loop that encircled Libby, then extended to Eureka, Kalispell, Thompson Falls, and Spokane. “Wolves patrol here. Every day. Same routes. Same eyes. No gaps.”

Thane leaned forward, claws tracing the circle without touching the page. “Right now, my pack runs most of this,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be just us.”

Tarrik’s gaze followed the line. “Eureka take north,” he said. “I know ridges. Old Iron Ridge ground. No one hide there without me smelling.”

Seth added, “Thompson Falls run river trails. We know them best. We see boats. Tents. Quiet camps.”

Nadine nodded slowly. “Kalispell can put boots on the mountain passes. We’ve got people who never stopped hiking, even when it was stupid to do it.”

Hal rested his elbows on the table. “Spokane’s got enough survivors to pull together patrol volunteers. Not wolves, but we can run vehicles along the forest roads, keep an eye out.”

Tom glanced at Thane. “How fast can you move if something goes wrong at any one point on that circle?”

Thane’s eyes swept the map, measuring distance in miles, in hours, in lives. “If we know where we’re going?” he said. “My wolves can be anywhere on that circle inside an hour, hour and a half at worst.” He nodded toward Varro. “And with Varro coordinating, we don’t overlap, we don’t leave holes, and no one gets surprised if a pack of wolves comes tearing through town to help.”

Varro inclined his head, amber eyes thoughtful. “We write schedule,” he said. “Share copies with all towns. Everyone know when wolf or human unit near. Any town can light signal or call KTNY or phone trunk. We respond.”

“Unanimous?” Marta asked, looking around.

Hands went up around the table. Behind them, paws lifted too.

“Done,” she said. “The Quiet Circle becomes valley doctrine.”

Trade came easier than anyone expected.

Nadine laid out Kalispell’s plans to ramp up greenhouse production and grain fields. Nora spoke about the mills at Thompson Falls, the stacks of lumber already curing in the sun. Tom outlined metalwork, talk of tools and brackets, rails and stove parts. Hal offered textiles, trained teachers, long-shelved books. Marta committed Libby to continue serving as power and coordination hub, maintaining the dam, the phone lines, and the fragile web of copper that connected everything.

Thane listened, adding pieces when needed. “We’ve got spare transformers and panels in storage,” he said at one point. “Enough to bring two more small towns fully online if we plan it right.”

“You’re already planning that, aren’t you?” Marta asked.

“Maybe,” Thane said. Gabriel coughed meaningfully behind him; several people chuckled.

They spoke about shared storage for surplus, agreed to regular caravans instead of ad hoc resupply runs, and set expectations for fair trade versus emergency relief. No one wanted a repeat of the days when one town had plenty while another starved just because no one knew.

When the conversation shifted to water and the dam, Thane took the lead again.

“Libby Dam’s stable,” he said. “The BPA retirees have it running better than we ever did. They’re treating it like a job again, not a miracle. That’s good for all of us.” He nodded toward Nadine and Tom. “Upriver and downriver both matter. We keep flow predictable, share data, send people to check the station at least weekly from every town.”

Nadine folded her hands. “Kalispell will send someone once a month to look over their shoulders and bring back reports. Not because we don’t trust them—because this place matters too much to leave in one set of hands.”

“Eureka will too,” Tom said. “We’re closest to the north roads. Easier for us to swing by.”

Thane’s shoulders eased a little. “Then we never again have a dam no one understands and no one’s checking,” he said. “Good.”

Education followed. The mention of the Libby schoolhouse lit something warm in the room.

Hal slid a folder across the table. “We’ve got lesson plans, battered but readable. We can send copies. If we share teachers, we share a future. People need more than food and power. They need something to build on.”

Nadine nodded. “Kalispell has three former teachers ready to travel. They can stay in Libby for a month at a time, rotate back. Teach kids here, bring back methods and structure for our own.”

“Thompson Falls send two,” Seth said. He spoke slower for this, as if careful with each word. “Good with numbers. With little ones. They want to help. They say—” He paused, searching. “They say they tired of only surviving. Want to grow.”

Gabriel, scribbling notes, looked up with a soft smile. “We can integrate music and radio into the curriculum too. Kids already love KTNY. Might as well weaponize that for learning.”

“You just want built-in listeners,” Hal said.

Gabriel shrugged, unashamed. “Both can be true.”

Marta wrote fast. “Shared teachers, shared materials, shared standards. We make sure a child in Spokane learns the same basics as a child in Eureka or Libby.”

Thane shifted, thinking of the little drawings pinned to the cabin walls. “We do this right,” he said quietly, “and they’ll grow up thinking this is normal. Radios that work. Lights that stay on. Wolves who guard instead of hunt. That’s the whole point.”

No one argued.

When emergency response came up, it felt like an extension of what they’d already agreed to.

Hal spoke about disasters that could still come—fire, disease, structural failures. Nadine asked pointed questions about communication and redundancy. Nora and Tom talked volunteers. The wolves talked speed.

“KTNY can be our first line,” Marta said. “We set up codes. If you hear a certain tone and phrase, you know what’s happening and where. Every town sends us logs. We keep the master list.”

Thane nodded. “If something happens in Eureka, Tom calls here, KTNY broadcasts, my pack moves. Same for Kalispell, Thompson Falls, Spokane. No more hoping someone happens to be listening at the right time.”

Hal exhaled slowly. “I spent a year hoping,” he said. “I like this better.”

They nearly sailed through the agenda without friction.

Then Hal mentioned refugees.

“We’re getting signals from camps outside the valley,” he said. “Groups of twenty, forty, maybe more. They hear the phones are working again. They hear music. They want in.”

Nadine’s brow furrowed. Nora tilted her head. Tom’s jaw flexed. The room cooled a degree.

“We can’t open the gates to everyone,” Tom said carefully. “We barely stabilized what we have.”

Nora smiled, but there was no humor in it. “We also can’t leave people to freeze and starve outside and pretend we’re better than the world that died.”

“It’s not about being better,” Tom said. “It’s about not crashing what we’ve rebuilt.”

Nadine tapped her finger on the table. “It is about being better,” she said. “At least partly. But he’s not wrong about strain.”

Silence stretched. Eyes shifted toward Thane, then away, as if no one wanted to say aloud that they were waiting for the wolf to make the call.

Varro stepped forward, breaking the tension like he was stepping into one of his own battle plans. His voice didn’t rise, but it carried.

“In Iron Ridge,” he said, “Tarrik decided who lived there. Who ate. Who slept inside. All by fear. By pain.” He didn’t look at Tarrik when he said it; he looked at the mayors. “It worked. For a while. Then it broke everything.”

Tarrik’s shoulders stiffened, but he didn’t flinch away from the truth. His eyes stayed on the table.

Varro continued. “If valley closes doors now, because we have enough and they do not… we start building same walls. Different reason. Same result.”

Thane watched him for a moment, a faint pride settling under his ribs. The strategist Iron Ridge forged was not gone; he’d just turned his mind to better uses.

Tarrik spoke, finally. His voice was quieter than it had been earlier, but clearer. “Varro right,” he said. “I led by fear. I would have called these camps ‘threat.’” He glanced around the table. “You all… you led different. I see your towns. People laugh. Sleep. Walk streets not scared. We cannot become old Iron Ridge just… bigger.”

Seth shifted his weight, then nodded. “We no open doors blind,” he said. “But we not nail them shut. Check who comes. Ask questions. Give chance. Turn away only if must.”

Marta looked at Thane. “What does the Alpha Wolf of Libby think?”

Thane let the silence stretch, feeling every eye, every expectation. He thought of the ferals Sable once held, terrified of humans. Of Kade, who had lost a pack and chosen a new one. Of Tarrik eating in Eureka’s diner, laughing with Tom. Of children who would never know the sound of a starvation winter if they did this right.

“If we choose fear, we lose,” he said. “Maybe not today. Maybe not this year. But eventually, we eat ourselves from the inside. We start making lists of who deserves to be safe and who doesn’t. We’ve all seen where that leads.” His gaze settled on each mayor in turn. “We take people in. Not all at once. Not without sense. We screen. We set expectations. We put working hands where they’re needed. We watch for predators in the mix and remove them fast. But we don’t turn away families who just want to live under a roof and hear a song on the radio.”

He leaned back. “We build a valley that deserves the power we turned back on. That’s the whole point.”

Tom exhaled, some of the fight draining from his shoulders. Nora’s expression softened. Nadine’s eyes warmed and sharpened at the same time.

Hal nodded slowly. “Resettlement with rules,” he said. “Mercy with guardrails.”

Marta lifted her pen. “All in favor of structured intake, with this council establishing screening standards and shared responsibility?”

Hands went up again.

Paws followed.

When the last agenda item had been checked off and the air felt thick with decisions, Marta reached into her folder and pulled out a single sheet of paper. The edges were worn from handling, corners soft.

“I wrote this after Thane and I talked last week,” she said. “He doesn’t know that, so if you don’t like it, blame me, not him. But I’d like this to be our Accord. The thing we can point to when times get hard again and remember what we promised.”

She didn’t need to tap a glass to get silence. The room was already listening.

“We stand together as towns and as people,” she read. “We share water, food, power, knowledge, and defense. We answer each other’s calls without hesitation. We welcome the innocent and stand against cruelty. We build a world where fear has no place, and where hope speaks across every valley and ridge. We rise as one.”

When she finished, no one spoke for several breaths. The sunlight shifted on the table. Outside, faintly, a dog barked and a child laughed. Inside, the weight of the words settled like a stone in a foundation.

Tom picked up the pen first. “Eureka signs,” he said, and scrawled his name.

Nadine followed. “Kalispell signs.”

“Spokane signs,” Hal said.

“Thompson Falls signs,” Nora added, beaming.

Marta added “Libby” in careful letters.

Then it was the wolves’ turn.

Thane picked up the pen. His claws dwarfed it, but his handwriting had always been neat and deliberate. He signed simply: THANE, LIBBY PACK. He thought, briefly, of all the wolves and humans whose lives had bent to bring this moment into being. The ink on the page felt like a promise to all of them.

Kade signed next, then Varro, then Seth. Tarrik came last, his name uneven but legible, each stroke an act of will.

When he stepped back, he looked at the sheet as though it were something fragile and miraculous.

“Old life had no promises like this,” he said quietly. “Only threats. I like… this better.”

Thane rested a claw lightly against the table near the Accord. “Then we hold to it,” he said. “All of us.”

The formal meeting dissolved into smaller constellations as people stood, stretched, and drifted toward the lobby. Voices rose, lighter now. Laughter sparked here and there.

Children, released from school for the occasion, flooded in. They darted from wolf to wolf, thrusting crumpled papers upward. Rime received another “GUARD WOLF” drawing and nearly wagged himself sideways. Holt showed off his “BIG PAW TEACHER” picture to Tom and Nora with unrestrained pride.

A girl tugged on Thane’s sleeve and pushed a drawing into his hands. He unfolded it carefully.

It showed a broad-shouldered wolf standing atop a hill with a town below, tiny houses and radio towers and telephone poles all connected by a single, glowing line. Above the wolf, a child’s neat block letters read: ALPHA OF EVERYONE.

He swallowed once, then managed, “Thank you.”

“You keep us safe,” she said matter-of-factly. “Mom says you fixed the phones. And the lights. And the wolves.” She frowned. “Did you fix the wolves?”

“They did most of that themselves,” Thane said. “I just yelled a lot until we all started going the same direction.”

She giggled, satisfied, and ran off to tackle Gabriel with a request for a song.

Varro appeared at his side, clutching his own drawing. “Safe Wolf,” he said, showing it. The image was simple—a wolf standing between two children, as if nothing could pass through him that meant them harm. The words were messy but clear.

“Accurate,” Thane said.

Varro’s mouth twitched into the barest suggestion of a smile. “Feels… heavy. In good way.” He glanced toward Tarrik, who stood by the doorway, speaking quietly with Tom. “He carry new weight too.”

Tarrik caught their gaze and walked over, stopping within easy talking distance.

“Your town looks alive,” he said to Thane. “Good alive. Not desperate.”

“Your town looks the same,” Thane replied. “Tom told me about that raider trio from Canada. You handled it.”

Tarrik’s ears tipped back slightly, not in shame this time, but in modesty. “Old me would have made example. New me made warning. Enough. They ran. No dead but one who push too far.” His eyes held Thane’s. “Your way… harder, sometimes. But better.”

“It is harder,” Thane agreed. “Especially when you’re tired or angry. But it’s the only way that doesn’t end in more graves than houses.”

Tarrik nodded slowly. “I stay on that path,” he said. “Any time I start to fall… you remind me.”

“I will,” Thane said. “Or Varro will. Or half this valley will.” His tone softened. “You’re not walking it alone.”

Outside, the square was full. People from every direction had gathered when they heard the council was ending. Some had come out of curiosity, some out of hope, some simply because they couldn’t quite believe all the rumors about working phones and formal agreements and wolves who shook hands instead of hunting at the edges of town.

Marta stepped onto the top stair, holding the Accord high just long enough for people to see it. She didn’t make a speech. She didn’t need to. The sight of a single piece of paper bearing so many names said enough.

The crowd cheered anyway.

Thane joined her there, Gabriel settling on his other side. Tom, Nadine, Hal, Nora, Tarrik, Seth—one by one, they stepped out onto the steps too, forming a loose line of humans and wolves overlooking the square. Varro and Kade stood just behind Thane’s shoulders, as they so often did now, flanking the Alpha like the twin edges of a shield.

From somewhere down the block, the faint sound of KTNY drifted on the air—a song playing, not a survival broadcast, just music. Normal life. The kind of thing that would have been forgettable before the Fall and now felt like a miracle.

Thane looked out at the gathered faces—at children perched on parents’ shoulders, at traders with dust on their boots from Kalispell and Spokane, at wolves sitting comfortably among humans, claws bare and unhidden. The sun was warm on his fur. The town was alive. The valley was listening.

He didn’t raise his voice much. He didn’t need to.

“This isn’t the end of anything,” he said. “It’s the start. We didn’t fight this hard just to get back to where we were. We’re building something better. Together. Humans, wolves, towns, all of us.” He paused, letting the words settle. “We’ll make mistakes. We’ll fix them. We’ll argue. We’ll keep each other honest. But from today on… no one stands alone if they live under these mountains. Not anymore.”

The cheer that rose was not wild. It was deep. It rolled out from the steps and echoed off the brick and glass, off the repaired power lines and the KTNY antenna, off the very walls that had once heard only panic and shouted orders.

Marta smiled beside him. Gabriel wiped an eye and insisted it was just dust. Varro stood a little straighter. Seth’s tail thumped once against the stone. Tarrik lifted his head, breathing in the sound like air.

The valley had been silent once.

Now, it spoke with one voice.

And as the sun slid toward afternoon and people began to drift back to their work and their homes, the promise made inside Libby Town Hall lingered in the air like a living thing: a pact written in ink, sealed in shared effort, carried forward by wolves and humans who finally, truly, believed that the worst was behind them and that what came next could be better.

Not just for one town.

For all of them.

Saturday mornings had a different sound these days.

Not alarms.
Not distant gunshots or the creak of a watchtower.
Not the endless footfalls of wolves pacing the perimeter.

This morning was soft. Quiet. The kind where the cabin felt like an oversized den full of sleeping wolves and lazy sunlight. Rime was stretched on the couch with a book he pretended he wasn’t reading. Mark tinkered with a radio in the corner. Kade and Varro sat at the table working through a map just because neither of them had learned how to relax yet. Holt lay on the rug upside-down, enormous paws in the air, humming to himself. Gabriel sat cross-legged on the armchair strumming something easy and bright.

It smelled like cinnamon bread Holt insisted was “perfect this time” even though the last two batches had been weaponized sugar.

A peaceful house.
A peaceful valley.
For the first time in a long time, the world was allowed to breathe.

And Thane stood by the window, arms folded, staring out into the trees like he could see something far past the valley line.

Rime noticed first. He closed his book, padded over quietly, and stood beside him. “Alpha,” he murmured. “You look at horizon too hard. It will not give answers.”

Thane huffed softly. “I’m just thinking.”

The others heard that tone. The music stopped. The map rustled. Even Holt rolled upright, ears perked in lopsided curiosity.

Kade leaned forward. “Thinking about what?”

Thane looked over his shoulder at them — the little family he’d somehow built out of chaos and winter and grit. “Tarrik,” he said.

Varro went still. Kade’s jaw tightened—not in fear, but in attention. Holt’s ears flopped sideways. Gabriel arched a brow.

Thane turned fully away from the window. “It’s been a couple days since everything happened in Eureka,” he said. “I’ve been watching. Listening. And I think… Tarrik has earned something.”

A ripple went through the room, not tension, but the weight of a truth they’d all felt coming.

“He’s shown remarkable change,” Thane continued. “Not pretend change. Not fear-made change. Real, bone-deep, humbling change. He’s doing the work. He’s facing ghosts that would break other wolves.” He rested one clawed hand against the windowsill. “And I think he deserves to be part of our pack.”

Holt’s jaw dropped. “Wait… like… pack pack?”

Thane nodded. “Pack pack.”

Rime lowered his head in thought. Gabriel’s claws tapped on the guitar body. Mark leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Thane held up a hand. “Before anyone speaks… understand something. I would keep Tarrik living and working in Eureka. That won’t change. But a wolf needs a home—true home—to run toward when his past comes knocking. I want him to know he has one.”

He looked at Kade first. Then Varro.

“I will not bring Tarrik into this pack if it would harm either of you. Or make you feel unsafe. Or unsettled. This must be unanimous.”

Holt’s ears flicked up. “What is… unani-muss?” he asked, stumbling over the word.

He blinked, genuinely puzzled.

“Sound like sweet thing. We eat it?

Mark rubbed his face. “Oh my god.”

Gabriel grinned. “Buddy… that’s ‘danish.’”

“Oh,” Holt said brightly. “Then what’s a unami— unimo— unanimoose?”

Kade sighed hard enough to fog the window. “It means we all agree, Holt.”

“Ohhh.” Holt nodded, satisfied. “Still hungry though.”

The room eased just enough to breathe—but the weight remained.

Varro spoke first, voice calm but low. “If you’d asked me that the night of the battle… I’d have said no.” His amber eyes flicked toward the window. “But I watched him in Eureka. Not the wolf who beat me for losing a hunt. Not the commanding voice. Just a wolf doing penance without expecting forgiveness.” He folded his arms. “Thane… if you believe he belongs here… I won’t stand in the way.”

Kade drew in a breath through his nose. “He hurt me,” he said plainly. “We all know that. Hurt a lot of wolves I knew.” His claws tapped once on the table. “But… I watched him this week. He isn’t the wolf from Iron Ridge anymore.” He rested his elbows on the table. “If you’re asking whether I feel unsafe? No. Not anymore. Angry sometimes? Maybe. But unsafe? No.”

Thane gave him a quiet nod of respect.

Gabriel leaned back, guitar resting across his lap. “I don’t trust easily,” he said. “But what I saw in Eureka… that wasn’t a manipulator. That was a wolf who woke up for the first time in his life.” He shrugged. “I won’t be best friends with him. But I won’t oppose it. He’s doing better than a lot of humans I’ve met, frankly.”

Mark grunted. “He’s been helpful. Consistent. No ego. No pushback. And Tom says he’s saved his ass twice on the river pumps.” He crossed his arms. “If you think he belongs, Thane, then I’m good with it.”

Rime stepped closer to the center of the room. “He carries weight with honesty now,” he said. “Not pride. Not fear. That is rare. I have no objection.”

Everyone turned to Holt.

Holt blinked, head tilted, ears loose and honest.

“I think he good,” he said, voice warm. “Smells… heavy-sad, but trying. Working hard.” He scratched the side of his muzzle with a claw.

“Water thing in Eureka? He fix fast. Strong paws.”

Then his ears perked. “Do we get cinnamon bread if he join pack?”

“No,” Mark said.

“Still yes,” Holt replied.

The room went quiet again.

All eyes shifted back to Thane.

“Then it’s decided,” Thane said softly. “I’ll go to Eureka tomorrow and tell him. He deserves to hear it directly.”

Kade frowned thoughtfully. “What do you think he’ll say?”

Thane’s eyes warmed with something heavy and quiet. “I think he’ll cry,” he said. “And I think he’ll try very hard not to.”

Varro gave a rare, crooked smile. “That sounds about right.”

Holt beamed. “We should throw a party. With bread. And maybe a unanimoose.”

“Not a thing,” Mark muttered.

Gabriel laughed, setting his guitar in his lap. “God help us if Holt ever learns Latin.”

Rime sat on the arm of the couch and looked at Thane with calm certainty. “This strengthens us,” he said. “Him, too.”

Thane looked out the window again — but his eyes weren’t distant now. They were focused. Steady. Purposeful.

“I buy in,” he said, voice quiet but carrying through the whole cabin. “When I choose to help someone become better… I buy in one hundred and twenty percent. Tarrik has earned this. And we will stand with him when the next ghost walks out of the snow.”

The pack murmured agreement, the shape of it warm and grounding.

Outside, the valley rolled on — peaceful, alive, and stronger than it had been the day before.

Inside, the pack sat together on their first real day off in years.

And Thane looked at his wolves and knew the truth:

The next chapter of their future had just found its missing piece.

---

The cabin stayed warm long after the laughter faded. The pack drifted into their lazy Saturday routines again — Gabriel strumming softer now, Holt sprawled on the rug humming nonsense, Kade and Varro trading quiet glances that held a weight only wolves with shared history understood.

Thane, though, still stood by the window.
He felt lighter, sure — but settled in that deep-chest way that said a piece of the future was finally aligned.

By late evening, everyone had moved on to chores or naps or whatever passed for downtime in a house full of claws and oversized personalities. But Thane’s mind stayed on tomorrow.

On Tarrik.
On the look he’d have when his world shifted from lonely redemption to something like belonging.

Sunday morning came with an orange sunrise and the smell of Mark frying something vaguely edible. Thane grabbed a mug of coffee, stepped onto the porch, took a long breath of spring air, and knew the moment had come.

He took the Humvee alone.

The drive to Eureka was quiet, the road curving along the river in long, familiar lines. His claws drummed lightly on the steering wheel — not nerves, just the slow rhythm of a wolf turning over the right words.

He pulled into town just before noon. The streets were calm, shutters open, kids chasing each other with sticks, the smell of bacon drifting from somewhere near City Hall.

Thane parked in front of the Sheriff’s office and stepped inside.

The deputy on duty, Maria Cables, sat behind the desk, boots propped up, reading a dog-eared field manual.

She looked up fast. “Thane. Everything okay in Libby?”

“All quiet,” Thane said. “I’m looking for Tarrik. You seen him today?”

Maria nodded toward the street. “He and Tom headed down to the cafe about twenty minutes ago. Sunday ritual, y’know.”

“I do,” Thane said. “Thank you.”

He stepped back outside and followed the scent of coffee and warm bread down the block. The little corner cafe had its windows open, lace curtains swaying. A few townspeople sat on the patio drinking tea, chatting about fishing or patching roofs or some new shipment from Spokane.

Thane parked in front and walked in.

There they were.

Tom Anderson and Tarrik sat at their usual table — the one against the wall with the dent where Holt once bumped it during a supply run. They each had plates of eggs and smoked trout, half-eaten. Tom was in mid-sentence, animated, pointing at the floor under their chairs.

“…I mean think about the traction you guys must get with those claws, right? I’d kill for that. I could climb the ridge in half the time. Don’t even need boots.”

Tarrik snorted softly. “Trust me. If you had claws, you would not want boots, or tools, or anything. Claws do all.”

Tom laughed. “Awesome.”

They were relaxed.
Laughing.
Whole.

Thane let the door close behind him.

Tarrik saw him first.

The shift was instant — ears pricked, shoulders stiffened, tail froze. His eyes widened just enough to show white at the edges. Tom’s smile fell too, turning wary.

Thane lifted one paw. “Not that look,” he said calmly. “I know that look. That’s the ‘I’m about to be yelled at’ face. I’m not here with bad news.”

Tom let out a breath he clearly didn’t mean to hold. “Well… good. Because the trout’s amazing and I’d hate to throw up.”

Tarrik still looked rattled.
Thane gave him a small nod. “I do need to talk to you.”

Tom gestured. “Sit. Please.”

Thane slid into the booth beside Tarrik, whose body language danced tightly between bracing-for-impact and trying-not-to-sweat.

Thane folded his hands on the table. “Yesterday… the pack and I talked.”

Tarrik stared at his claws. “About… me.”

“Yes,” Thane said. “About you.”

Tom went still.
Tarrik didn’t breathe.

Thane leaned forward slightly. “You’ve made incredible progress, Tarrik. Real progress. Not for show. Not out of fear. Out of choice. Out of wanting to be better than you were.”

Tarrik swallowed, throat tight.

“So,” Thane said gently, “I brought it to the pack. Every single wolf. And I told them what I saw in you. The change. The humility. The way you faced Joss without running. The way you chose to stay and work and rebuild when you could have disappeared into the mountains.”

Tarrik’s eyes finally lifted. There was fear there, yes — but something else too. Hope he didn’t want to name.

“I told them,” Thane said softly, “that you deserve a place. That you’ve earned a place.”

Tarrik’s breath hitched. “A… place?”

Thane nodded once. “If you want it… Tarrik of Eureka… you have a pack now.”

For a moment, Tarrik stayed perfectly still — the kind of stillness that only wolves understand, where every muscle locks because the heart just dropped out of the body entirely.

Then his eyes filled.

He blinked hard, trying to hold it back, jaw clenched tight enough to shake.
A tremble hit his shoulders.
His throat moved once, strangled and quiet.

“Thane…” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“You… you’d make me pack?”

Thane rested a steady clawed hand on his shoulder. “You already started becoming one. We’re just naming what’s true.”

Tarrik made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob — then lunged forward and hugged Thane so hard he knocked both their chairs screeching across the floor. Tom grabbed his plate before it launched onto the next table.

The hug was crushing, desperate, grateful in a way that cut through the entire room. Tarrik’s claws dug into Thane’s back, not out of threat but out of sheer overwhelming relief.

He pulled back only when he realized he’d damn near flattened the table. Tears streaked dark lines through his muzzle fur.

“Yes,” Tarrik said, voice breaking. “Yes. Of course. Yes.”

Tom blinked, then broke into a wide grin. “Well, hell. That explains the emotional earthquake happening over here.”

He cleared his throat, then looked at Tarrik softer than Thane had ever seen him. “Since we’re doing big news… I’ve been sitting on something.”

Tarrik wiped his face with the back of his arm, embarrassed. “What?”

Tom scratched his cheek awkwardly. “You earned a place here, Tarrik. Not a cot in the clinic. Not a bunk in the pump house.” He pulled a folded set of keys from his vest and put them on the table. “You have a house now. In city limits. Fixed it up this week. Fresh paint. Working stove. No leaks.”

Tarrik’s jaw dropped.

“You’re welcome here,” Tom said. “For good.”

Tarrik stared at the keys like they were made of gold. Then he looked at Thane. Then back to Tom. Tears threatened again.

“I… I do not know what to say,” he whispered.

“Say what you feel,” Thane said.

Tarrik swallowed hard and finally managed words.

“I thought… world wanted me dead,” he said quietly. “Every day before I came south, I believed that. And every day since… you show me I was wrong.”

He looked at Thane with awe and something close to devotion.
“You gave me life back. You gave me work. And now you give me… pack.”

Tarrik’s voice dropped to a trembling whisper. “I will not fail you.”

Thane squeezed his shoulder. “I know.”

Tom slapped the table lightly. “Well damn. If this isn’t the best Sunday lunch I’ve had in years.”

Tarrik huffed a wet, shaky laugh and picked up the keys with trembling claws. “A house,” he murmured. “And a pack.”

“And a future,” Thane said.

Tarrik’s eyes shone again. “Yes. Future.”

Outside the cafe window, the town of Eureka rolled on with easy Sunday warmth — families walking in the street, dogs dozing in patches of sun, the river glittering in the distance.

Inside, a wolf who once lived by fear finally understood what it meant to live by belonging instead.

And for the first time in his life, Tarrik sat at a table not as an Alpha, not as a monster, not as a ghost of his own wreckage…

…but as a packmate.

Tom stepped out, wiping his hands on a rag. His hair looked a little less gray in the early light, and he’d stopped jumping every time Tarrik walked into a room. Progress.

“You keep treating my pump house like it’s a holy altar, and I might start letting you order parts without supervision,” Tom said.

“That would be a mistake,” Tarrik replied, deadpan. “I would order three of everything. In case raiders shoot the first two.”

Tom snorted. “The way things are going, raiders are more afraid of the valley than we are of them.” He nodded toward the town. “I’m due back at City Hall for the morning meeting. You want to—”

He broke off. His eyes flicked past Tarrik, narrowing.

Tarrik smelled it a heartbeat later. Human. Sweat, blood, fear. Not the sharp, clean fear of a man in a fight; this was sour, long-brewed, lived-in terror sunk into cloth and skin.

He turned.

A man stood at the edge of the trees, just beyond the gravel road. He looked like he had walked a long way and then gotten lost for another lifetime. Mid-forties, maybe. Face hollowed out, beard overgrown but patchy. His coat was in tatters. A strip of dirty cloth was knotted around his left forearm, dark and stiff with old blood.

He saw the wolf by the pump house.

He froze.

Tarrik did not move. He had learned that in Libby and Eureka both: sudden movement around a frightened stranger only made things worse.

“Hello,” Tarrik said, voice low, careful. “You are hurt. We have a clinic. You can—”

The man’s knees gave out as if someone had kicked them from behind. He dropped onto the gravel, hands shaking, eyes locked on Tarrik.

“You,” the man whispered. The sound was soft, but it carried. “You.”

Tarrik’s ears tipped forward. Something cold and old crawled up from the back of his mind, a shape he had tried to leave behind in the snow.

“I know you,” the man said. His voice rose, rough and broken. “It’s you.”

Tarrik did not recognize his face. But there were hundreds of faces he had seen only once, under winter skies and torchlight. That was the problem.

Tom stepped forward slowly, hands open. “Hey now. You’re in Eureka. You’re safe. My name’s Tom. Let’s get you inside—”

The man’s gaze flicked to Tom and back to Tarrik, wild and furious.

“He owes me,” the man rasped. His teeth bared in something that wasn’t quite a snarl. “He owes me blood.”

Tom’s jaw tightened. The breeze shifted, carrying the sour fear smell against Tarrik’s tongue. He swallowed around it.

“What is your name?” Tarrik asked.

The man’s eyes rimmed with tears, sudden and hot. “Joss,” he said. “Joss Talven. And you—” His voice broke. He pointed a shaking finger, arm trembling under the bandage. “You’re the wolf who killed my family.”

The wrench slipped from Tarrik’s left hand. It hit the concrete with a ringing clatter he barely heard.

He did not say no.

Tom looked between them, frown swallowing his face. “Let’s get him to City Hall,” Tom said quietly to Tarrik. “We’re not having this conversation in the road.”

Tarrik nodded once. He bent, picked up the wrench with hands that suddenly felt wrong on the tool, and set it carefully by the door. Then he walked toward the kneeling man, claws clicking on gravel.

Joss flinched but did not run. His eyes burned holes straight through the fur on Tarrik’s chest.

Tarrik stopped a few steps away and dipped his head a fraction. “I will walk ahead of you,” he said. “You can follow me or walk with Tom. No one here will hurt you.”

“You hurt me,” Joss hissed.

“Yes,” Tarrik said. “I did.” His voice came out hoarse. “Once.”

Tom watched him for a long second, like a man trying to read a weather front. Then he offered Joss a hand. “Come on. We’ll get you water, food, a place to sit. You can tell your story where everybody can hear it.”

Joss stared at Tarrik another heartbeat, then took Tom’s hand.

Tarrik walked ahead of them up the gravel road, feeling the weight of every step like chains.

---

The cabin smelled like coffee and Holt’s stew, and someone had left a half-read map of patrol routes spread across the kitchen table. Kade and Varro’s careful notes looped up the margins. Outside, children’s laughter drifted faintly from the direction of the schoolhouse.

Thane sat with the handset cradled in clawed fingers, listening to Marta go over bank schedules for the week. Her voice was crisp and tired in that way that meant things were actually going well.

“…and Hal’s sending another truck down from Spokane on Thursday with more small bills,” she was saying. “We’ll need—”

Late morning light slanted through the cabin windows, catching the steam from Mark’s stew pot and the pile of patrol maps spread across the table. Thane had just finished a cup of coffee when the landline on the desk rang — sharp, urgent, not part of their usual morning cadence.

Mark looked up. “That’s Eureka’s line.”

Thane crossed the room and lifted the receiver.
“Libby cabin. Thane.”

Tom Anderson’s voice came through tight and uneven.
“Thane. I hate to drop this in your lap, but we’ve got a situation out here. I need you in Eureka as soon as you can manage it.”

Thane’s ears angled forward. “What happened?”

“A man walked out of the trees,” Tom said. “Forties, half-starved, arm’s a mess. Says he knows Tarrik. Says Tarrik destroyed his settlement and killed his family.”

The room went very still.

Mark froze mid-ladle.
Kade stopped in the doorway.
Rime straightened where he stood, eyes narrowing.

Thane pulled in a breath. “Is anyone hurt? Are people panicking?”

“Not yet,” Tom said. “I’ve got him in City Hall with a few council members. Tarrik’s here too. Thane… he’s not denying any of it.”

“I’m on my way,” Thane said, and hung up the receiver.

Thane sighed. “Rime,” he called.

The gray wolf stepped in from the porch. He must have heard enough through the open door; his ears were flat against his skull, eyes already serious. “Yes, Alpha.”

“Eureka,” Thane said. “We have to help keep something from turning into something else.”

Rime nodded once. “I will ride with you.”

Varro pushed off the doorframe. “You want me along?” he asked.

Thane shook his head. “Keep Libby steady. If anything… spills over, we will need you here more than there.”

Over the gravel road that had seen too many stories already. Thane drove with his usual calm, hands easy on the wheel, eyes flicking between the road and the instruments out of long habit. Rime sat in the passenger seat, braced, claws hooked lightly on the frame.

For a while, no one spoke. Trees slid by outside, green and patient.

“What you thinking?” Rime asked at last, eyes still on the road.

Thane watched the line where the hood met the horizon. “I am thinking about mercy,” he said. “And about how long it actually takes to finish.”

Rime exhaled through his nose. “Something from Tarrik’s life going to surface,” he said quietly. “You don’t lead pack like that, for that long, without ghosts.”

“Yes,” Thane said. “The question is whether the wolf he is now can stand in front of them.”

“He got you,” Rime said. “That helps.”

Thane’s claws tapped a slow rhythm on his knee. “It also paints a target on my back.”

Rime leaned over. “We carry it with you,” he said.

Thane’s mouth twitched. “I know.”

Eureka came into view under a sky so painfully blue it felt like an accusation. Smoke curled from chimneys. Children ran in the street with something like real carelessness. Men were checking hoses in front of the firehouse, laughing with their sleeves rolled up.

Normal life.

Thane would never get used to how fragile it looked.

Tom met them outside City Hall, jaw tight, hands jammed into the pockets of his vest. He watched the Humvee roll to a stop, studied Thane’s face as the big brown-gray wolf stepped down onto the street with his usual solid, unhurried weight.

“Appreciate the quick response,” Tom said.

“When my name is on the line, I like to show up in person,” Thane replied. “Where are they?”

“Inside,” Tom said. “I’ve kept it small. Me, Joss, Tarrik, two of my council, and Dr. Henley. A couple folks are milling around outside, but no crowd yet.” His gaze flicked to Rime as the gray wolf came around the Humvee. “That your shadow for today?”

“Yes,” Thane said. “We do not bring all our teeth into someone else’s house unless we have to.”

Tom snorted. “Fair enough.” He hesitated. “I’ll give it to you straight: Joss is a mess. Arm’s half-healed wrong, he’s been walking wounded a long time, and he’s held that anger even longer. He sees Tarrik and doesn’t see the wolf who fixed our pump house. He sees… well. You know.”

“I do,” Thane said.

“And Tarrik?” Tom asked.

Thane’s jaw tightened. “I will see for myself.”

Inside, City Hall smelled like paper, coffee, and nerves. The big room’s long table was scarred from decades of use, its surface now cluttered with maps and ledgers instead of emergency ration lists. Sunlight came in through scrubbed windows.

Joss Talven sat at the far end, a blanket around his shoulders, fingers clenched white-knuckled around a tin cup of water. His eyes went to Thane as soon as the wolf entered, flicked to Rime behind him, then snagged hard on Tarrik.

Tarrik stood against the wall opposite, arms at his sides, claws bare. He looked like he had deliberately removed anything that could be mistaken for armor. No tools, no gear. Just a wolf in a plain work shirt and worn pants, fur ruffled from the river wind, shoulders slumped but squared to the room.

He had never looked so much like a soldier waiting for a verdict.

“Thane,” Tom said, stepping in. “You know Tarrik. This is Joss Talven.”

Thane nodded once to Joss, then to Tarrik. “Tarrik,” he said.

Thane took in the set of his jaw, the way his tail hung low but not tucked, his eyes open and unshielded. He smelled of river water, machine oil, and a twisted underside of old fear aimed inward.

Thane moved to the table. He did not sit yet. “Tom says there is a story that needs to be told,” he said. “I would like to hear it from the beginning. Joss.”

Joss’s fingers tightened around the cup until it shook. “I already told it,” he muttered.

“Tell it again,” Thane said, voice gentle but flat. “So I can put my word on it with both eyes open.”

Joss looked at him properly then, measuring this new wolf against the one who had marched an army to his door years ago. He swallowed.

“My name is Joss Talven,” he said. “I had a settlement… had a town. North and east of here. We called it Three Pines. Twenty families. We had greenhouses, livestock, a well. We kept our heads down, did our work. Heard stories of wolves, sure. Packs taking what they wanted. But they were far away.”

His eyes slid back to Tarrik, venom and grief tangled in one tight knot.

“Then this one showed up,” Joss went on. “Snowstorm night. Twenty-one wolves behind him, all teeth and claws. He said… he said we owed them tribute for using ‘his’ hunting ground. We didn’t even hunt. We grew things. We tried to talk. Didn’t matter.”

His voice cracked. He stared at the tabletop, breathing hard.

“He took our winter stores,” Joss said. “Food we’d put away for months. Medicine. Half the blankets. Said anyone who argued would lose more. He… he broke my arm when I tried to stop them loading the last truck.”

“He told his wolves to throw me outside the gate,” Joss whispered. “Said if I could crawl home, I could keep breathing. If not, I’d fed the snow. My wife… she carried our daughter out after them. Begged. He said if she wanted to join me in the snow, that was her choice.”

The room was dead silent.

“They left,” Joss said. Tears tracked clean lines down the grime on his cheeks. “Storm hit full after that. Whiteout. I crawled. She tried to carry the girl. We didn’t make it. I woke up in a ditch two days later, under two feet of drift. Arm… wrong. Head wrong. Everything… wrong. A scavenger crew dug me out. I never saw my family again.”

He lifted his head and stared straight at Tarrik, eyes burning like coals. “I know your face,” he snarled. “I’ve seen it in my sleep every night since. You owe me blood.”

Thane let the words hang in the air.

Then he turned slowly to Tarrik. “Is any part of this untrue?” he asked.

Tarrik’s throat worked. His claws flexed, scraping faintly against the floor through the thin soles he’d bothered to wear earlier.

“No,” he said. His voice was low but steady. “It is all true.”

Joss surged to his feet, the chair screeching back. “Then why is he here?” he shouted. “Why is he walking free in some nice little town with power and water and kids on the street? Why does he get a second chance when my whole life is under a snowdrift?”

Tom took a step, but Thane lifted a hand. Rime shifted his weight closer to the wall, stance ready but nonthreatening.

“Because we gave him one,” Thane said. “And because he chose to take it.”

Joss rounded on him. “You think that makes it right?”

“No,” Thane said simply. “Nothing makes what he did right.”

He walked to the center of the room, claws clicking on the wooden floor, and turned so he faced both men.

“When Tarrik came to my town with his pack,” Thane said, “he tried to do the same thing. Take what he wanted. Rule by fear. Make other people pay for his hunger.”

He remembered the gate, the snow, the line of wolves behind Tarrik, all deadly and sure. He remembered the feel of the bullet in his side, the heat of his own blood, the way mercy had tasted like rust in his mouth and still been right.

“I stopped him,” Thane said. “It cost blood. I had the chance to end him, right there in the snow. No questions, no arguments. He had earned it a hundred times over.”

He looked at Tarrik. The other wolf’s eyes met his and held.

“I did not,” Thane said. “I chose to break the chain instead of his neck.”

Joss barked an ugly laugh. “And look how that turned out,” he spat. “He’s got a job and a town and friends. I’ve got ghosts.”

“Yes,” Thane said. “You do. And that is the part that matters today.”

He moved a little closer to Joss, slow, no sudden movements. He set his claws on the back of an empty chair, grounding himself.

“Mercy is not a gift we give to the people they hurt,” Thane said. “It does not erase what was done. It does not balance some invisible scale. Your pain is real. Your family is gone. Nothing I say here will change that.”

Joss trembled, rage and grief fighting for space.

“But there is another truth,” Thane went on. “The wolf who did that to you”—he nodded toward Tarrik—“is not the one who has been living here the last months. That one is gone. What stands here is what we made after he lost. We pointed him at broken things instead of people. He chose to fix them. He chose to stand beside us instead of on our backs. He did not earn forgiveness. He earned work.”

Tarrik’s eyes closed for a breath. His hands fisted at his sides.

“You want blood,” Thane said quietly to Joss. “Part of you will always want that. I cannot blame you. If someone had done that to my pack, I would have wanted it too.”

He took his hand off the chair and stepped closer to Tarrik, until he stood almost shoulder to shoulder with him, facing Joss across the room.

“But understand this,” Thane said. “By sparing him then and building this now, I put my own name on everything he did. I tied his future to mine. When you say he owes you, you are also saying I do. If you want a debt collected, you are collecting from me as well.”

Joss stared at him, stunned. “Why in hell would you… why would you take that on?”

“Because someone had to,” Thane said. “Because if every monster we ever made dies the day we catch them, nothing better ever gets built out of the wreckage. Because if Tarrik had died in the snow, no Canadian raiders would have died north of this town, and some child in Eureka might be telling this story instead of you.”

He let that settle.

“And because mercy is only real if you keep paying for it,” Thane finished. “Day after day, choice after choice. Not just once in the snow.”

Joss’s shoulders shook. He looked at Tarrik. The wolf had not moved, but tears had tracked silently through the fur along his cheekbones.

Tarrik’s voice cracked as he forced the words out.
“I am sorry,” he said, and it hit like gravel in his throat. “I… I know what I did. I know the damage. I cannot fix it. I cannot give you back anything I broke.”
He swallowed hard, eyes low.
“But I can stand in front of you now. I can fight for you. I can make sure no one ever feels what I made you feel. If you allow it… I spend the rest of my life proving that.”

He swallowed. “If you want me gone, I will go,” he said. “If you want me dead, I will kneel. If you want me to work for you until I fall over, I will do that gladly. But whatever you choose, understand: without him”—he nodded at Thane—“I would still be the thing you remember. He broke me on purpose. And then put me back together.”

The room breathed in and out. Outside, a dog barked once, far down the street.

Joss wiped his face with the heel of his hand, angry at his own tears. He looked down at his twisted arm, then back up at the two wolves standing in front of him. One, brown-gray, calm, steady as a mountain. The other, tan-gray, shoulders bowed under a weight he did not try to shrug off.

“You trust him,” Joss said to Thane. It wasn’t quite a question.

“I do,” Thane said.

“You trust him after… that?” Joss asked, gesturing at his own ruined history.

“I trust the wolf he is now,” Thane said. “Because I watched him choose to be that wolf when it would have been easier to stay the other one. I watched him stand between this town and claws that used to answer to his voice. I watched him take orders instead of give them. I watched him bleed for people he once would have used. That does not erase what he did to you. But it tells me what he is likely to do tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.”

Joss’s throat worked. “And if he… slips?” he asked roughly. “If he goes back?”

Thane’s eyes were very clear, very cold for a moment. “Then I end it,” he said. “Myself. Because my word is what keeps him here. If he breaks it, I pay. That is the bargain.”

Silence again. The kind that weighed.

Tom shifted behind them, but stayed quiet. This was not his call, and he knew it.

Finally, Joss swayed and dropped back into his chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He buried his face in his hands, breathing raggedly.

“I want them back,” he whispered. “I want my wife. My little girl. I want that night not to have happened. Can you do that?”

“No,” Thane said softly. “I cannot.”

Joss’s hands fell away. He looked up at Thane, eyes raw and red. “Then what the hell can you do for me?” he demanded.

Thane thought for a moment. He did not rush the answer.

“I can make sure you are never alone like that again,” he said. “I can make sure you have a bed, food, people who know your name when you walk down the street. I can make sure that if anyone ever comes for you again, they find a wall of wolves and humans standing between you and them. And I can make sure that every day Tarrik draws breath, he spends it paying into the world you lost, not taking from it.”

He stepped aside, leaving Tarrik visible, fully exposed.

“If you stay in Eureka,” Thane said, “you will see him working. You will see him hauling hoses, fixing pipes, standing night watch. You will see what your story did to him. That does not heal your pain. But it might turn it into something that builds instead of something that eats you alive.”

Joss stared at Tarrik for a long time. Long enough that the wolf’s shoulders began to shake, just a little. He clenched his jaw to still it.

“I hate you,” Joss said to him. The words were flat, tired. “I don’t know if that’s ever going to change.”

“I know,” Tarrik whispered.

“But…” Joss went on. He scrubbed his face again, then looked back at Thane. “If you trust him with your life… maybe… maybe I can trust him with mine. A little.” He coughed a dry laugh. “Not my heart. That’s gone. But my back, maybe. On a bad day. If there’s a fire.”

Tarrik’s knees buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the table, claws biting into wood.

“You do not owe him that,” Thane said gently. “You owe him nothing.”

“I know,” Joss said. He looked exhausted, as if some dam inside him had finally cracked and let years of frozen, stagnant water out. “That’s why it’s worth something.”

He pushed the cup away and looked at Tom. “You got room in this town for one more broken body?” he asked.

Tom huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “We specialize in them,” he said. “You stick around, we’ll put you to work, same as anybody.”

Joss’s gaze slid back to Tarrik. “You so much as raise your voice to a kid in the street,” he said, voice low, steady, “I’ll take this arm and beat you with it.”

“You will not be alone,” Rime murmured from the wall. “We will help.”

Tarrik let out a sound that might have been a laugh and a sob tangled together. “I will not,” he said. “Ever again.”

Thane stepped back, letting the air in the room ease a little. His chest felt tight, like he’d been holding a weight there since the phone call.

Tom blew out a breath. “Well,” he said. “I’d expected yelling. Maybe a broken chair. I’ll take this over a riot any day.”

“Riot would have been simpler,” Thane said dryly. “You just hit the loudest one and the rest decide how much they actually care.”

Tom shook his head. “You have a way of making the hard road sound like the only road, you know that?”

“That is because it usually is,” Thane said.

He turned to Joss. “If at any point you decide you cannot bear to see him,” he said, “you tell Tom. We find you a place elsewhere in the valley. Not as exile—” he looked at Tarrik “—as accommodation. Your pain is not a problem. It is a fact. We work around facts.”

Joss nodded slowly. “I’ll… try here, first,” he said. “Feels like this is where the ghosts are, anyway. Maybe seeing him suffer a little hauling pump parts will do me good.”

“It will hurt,” Tarrik said quietly.

“Good,” Joss replied.

They held each other’s gaze for one long, unsteady moment. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But something had shifted, almost imperceptibly, from pure hatred to a jagged, working truce.

Later, after Tom walked Joss down to the clinic and Dr. Henley looked over his arm, after Tarrik had been sent back to the pump house with a list of chores long enough to keep his mind busy and his guilt honest, Thane and Rime stepped out into the spring sunlight.

The town looked the same as it had when they arrived. Kids still chased each other between buildings. Someone hammered something onto the side of a shop. Power lines hummed quietly overhead.

Rime came to stand beside Thane on the City Hall steps, folding his arms, claws resting lightly on his elbows.

“You bent heavy branch today,” Rime said. “Did not let it break.”

Thane watched Joss’s small, hunched figure moving slowly down the street between Tom and the doctor. “We will see,” he said. “Sometimes wood hides cracks you do not see until the next storm.”

“We stand under it,” Rime said simply. “If it falls, we take weight.”

Thane huffed. “You were not this poetic when I met you.”

“You were not this tired,” Rime replied.

Thane’s mouth twitched. “Fair enough.”

Tarrik emerged from the side of the building a few minutes later, having looped around to avoid walking directly past the clinic. He approached the steps and stopped at the bottom, head bowed.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” Thane asked.

“For not letting me run,” Tarrik said. “I would have. If you had not come, if Tom had not called, I would have taken any pack from my old life—” his mouth twisted on the phrase “—and run into the hills and never shown my face to this man.”

“Yes,” Thane said. “You would have. That is why I told Tom to call me the first day I told you to go here.”

Tarrik blinked. “You… told him?”

“I told him that one day, someone from your past would crawl out of the forest and come here with a story like Joss’s,” Thane said. “And that when that happened, I needed to be standing between you and the door.”

Tarrik stared at him. “You planned for this?”

“I planned for the day your debts started walking on two legs,” Thane said. “Mercy does not erase the ledger. It just changes the currency.”

“How many more?” Tarrik asked quietly. “How many more Joss Talvens are out there with my name clawed into their grief?”

“Too many,” Thane said. “But that isn’t a surprise. Not to me.”

Tarrik looked up, startled.

Thane stepped down one stair so they were closer to eye level. “Tarrik… I didn’t save you because I thought your past was clean. I saved you knowing exactly what kind of weight would eventually walk out of the trees.” His claws tapped once against the railing, thoughtful. “This was never an ‘if.’ It was always a ‘when.’ And you made it through the first one without running. That matters.”

Tarrik’s throat tightened. “You… don’t hate me for it?”

“No,” Thane said. “I knew history like this existed before you ever set foot in Eureka. I am not swayed by ghosts I already accounted for. When I choose to help someone become better…” He exhaled, slow and steady. “I buy in one hundred and twenty percent. That means I expect these days to come. And when they do, I’m not shocked. I’m not shaken. I’m right where I planned to be — standing beside you until you stand on your own.”

Tarrik blinked hard, shoulders trembling under the weight of it. “I don’t know how to deserve that.”

“You don’t,” Thane said simply. “You live it. That’s the difference.”

He put a heavy paw on Tarrik’s shoulder — not dominance, not restraint, just grounding. “This was the first ghost. Not the last. But you faced him. You told the truth. You didn’t run. That tells me more about you than anything Joss brought through the door.”

Tarrik bowed his head. “I won’t make you a liar.”

“I know,” Thane said. “That’s why this works.”

Rime approached then, quiet as snowfall. “You softened storm,” he murmured to Thane. “Turned into rain.”

“Rain grows things,” Thane said. “Let’s go home.”

Tarrik watched them go, standing alone in the sunlight outside City Hall — but not abandoned, not cast out. Just a wolf learning how to carry a different kind of weight.

As Thane climbed into the Humvee and turned the key, the engine catching with a familiar growl. The valley opened ahead, green and steady.

Rime tilted his head. “Alpha.”

“Yes?” Thane said.

“You buy in,” Rime said. “You mean it.”

“I do,” Thane replied.

“Is heavy for one wolf.”

Thane watched the road. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not carrying it alone.”

The town of Eureka faded behind them, but not the lesson, and not the bond.

Tarrik had been tested by the past — and Thane had made sure it didn’t bury him.

“Why do they all end up owing you?” Rime asked. “Tarrik. Varro. Kade. Joss, maybe, one day. Even towns. Even rivers.”

“They do not owe me,” he said. “They owe the chance. I am just the one handing it out.”

Rime considered that. “Still feels like debt,” he said.

“Maybe,” Thane said. He rested his elbow on the window frame, claws drumming a slow, thoughtful rhythm. “If they pay it in kindness, I am content to be very rich.”

They drove on, the engine’s low growl steady, the valley stretching open before them like a ledger with more blank pages than bloodstains now.

Behind them, in Eureka, a man with a ruined arm sat at a clean window and watched a wolf who had once destroyed his life carry hoses for his new town.

Ahead of them, Libby waited, warm and noisy and alive.

Mercy did not erase the past.

But for another day, in another town, it had been enough to keep the future from breaking.

The idea for the forum had been building for weeks. Libby was brighter now—lights on in every home, water flowing, shops open, the school full of children again. With stability came reflection, and with reflection came questions. Not just whispered ones, either. Questions asked in the market, at the diner, at the bank, on the radio. People wanted to understand the wolves who had rebuilt their world. Some were curious. Some were nervous. Some were ready to be combative because fear was easier than gratitude. Marta Hale had been listening to all of it, and one afternoon she finally announced that silence would only feed the wrong stories. If the valley had questions, then the wolves would answer them openly. A public forum, she said. Any question allowed. No filters. No rehearsing. Just truth.

The Libby Pack didn’t hesitate. Thane simply nodded. Gabriel laughed and started imagining which microphones the school auditorium still had. Mark asked whether the acoustics had survived the winter. Holt blinked slowly but agreed. Rime tilted his head in that thoughtful way of his. Kade offered a single, calm “Understood.” Varro said nothing at first, then gave a quiet nod that carried the weight of someone who had survived far harsher interrogations. The decision was made.

By the time the evening came, the auditorium was filled to the rafters. Restored power lights cast warm gold across clean floors. Chairs lined the length of the room, nearly all occupied. Posters drawn by schoolchildren hung on the walls—wolves with oversized paws, bright eyes, and humans beside them, all holding hands. One drawing labeled a gray wolf “Guard Wolf.” Rime had kept that drawing folded in his vest pocket for days.

The pack entered together. Thane led them, brown-gray fur catching the light with each step. Gabriel followed, relaxed and smiling. Mark was straight-backed and tidy, adjusting the sleeves of his shirt like he was preparing for a lecture. Holt’s eyes scanned the room with open curiosity, pausing on the smell of popcorn. Rime moved with quiet calm. Kade surveyed the exits automatically. Varro held himself in perfect posture, hands clasped behind his back, a picture of discipline.

They took their seats behind a long table at the front of the stage. No disguises. No softening of their presence. Clawed hands visible, fangs where nature intended them.

The murmurs settled.

Marta stepped to the mic, her clipboard ready with three pens clipped across the top. “Good evening. Tonight we’re holding our first open forum with the Libby Pack. Any question is welcome. Ask honestly; they’ll answer honestly.”

The first man stood—a lean, sharp-featured figure with tension in his shoulders. “How do we know you won’t turn on us someday?” His voice carried accusation wrapped in fear.

Thane answered without hesitation. “You already trust us. You sleep while we patrol. Your children walk to school while we watch the streets. If we meant harm, you’d know it by now.”

Mark added softly, “Trust goes both ways. You trusted us during the darkest days. We haven’t forgotten that.”

The man didn’t look satisfied, but he sat down.

A teenage girl raised her hand next. “Um… what exactly do you eat?” she asked, pen poised.

Holt brightened. “Meat. And bread. Mine better now. Not rocks anymore.” His pride was so genuine it sent laughter rippling through the room.

Rime nodded in agreement. “Town feed wolves, wolves feed town. Balance.”

Mark translated with an amused smile. “We hunt, we trade, and we eat what everyone else eats—just more of it.”

A younger man at the back stood with the next question. “Stories always said werewolves shift. Human to wolf. Wolf to human. But you’re always wolves. Why don’t you ever look human?”

Before Thane could respond, Holt blurted out, “Wolf shape best shape. Strong, fast, claws. Why be less?”

The entire auditorium broke into mixed laughter, gasps, and a few surprised claps. Holt sat back proudly.

Thane’s ears tipped in amusement. “Our form isn’t a disguise. This is who we are. Always.”

Gabriel added, “Plus the fur looks fantastic.”

The crowd loosened.

A woman in a denim jacket asked nervously, “Do you… feel emotions like humans do?”

Varro answered with steady clarity. “Yes. All of them. Anger, grief, joy, loyalty. Sometimes sharper than humans. Sometimes steadier.”

Gabriel nodded. “We just show them differently. Or louder.”

Holt placed a paw on his chest. “Loud hearts good.”

The woman smiled in relief.

A man with a stern jaw stood next. His voice held challenge. “What happens if one of you loses control?”

Thane didn’t flinch. “Then the pack corrects it. Immediately.”

“You expect us to believe wolves police themselves?” the man demanded.

Kade leaned forward, voice cool and controlled. “Yes. I left a pack where fear ruled. This one does not allow that. If any wolf here posed danger to the valley, every wolf on this stage would stop him.”

Gabriel crossed his arms. “Five wolves for every one mistake. That’s pack life.”

Holt cracked his knuckles. “Pack keep pack straight.”

Varro’s tone was iron. “A disciplined pack is safer than a single wolf.”

The challenger sat down slightly paler.

Mayor Nora Ellison stood next. “Do you see yourselves as part of this valley? Or separate from it?”

Thane spoke plainly. “Part of it. Fully.”

Gabriel nodded. “We work with you, teach with you, build with you.”

Holt added with genuine concern, “Share stew with you.”

The room laughed openly.

A mother raised her hand. “My son wants to join your pack. Could a human ever be part of it?”

The wolves straightened.

Rime answered softly. “Heart choose pack. Not fur.”

Mark nodded. “Humans can apprentice. Learn. Help us. Live by the same values.”

Thane’s voice warmed. “Your boy doesn’t need claws to be family.”

The woman wiped her eyes.

A hardened man near the back lifted his chin. “Why trust wolves from other packs? What if more like… your old Alpha come here?” His eyes flicked to Varro.

Varro rose slightly in his seat. “I came from Iron Ridge. I was shaped by fear and cruelty. This valley gave me choice. Respect. A voice. You don’t trust strangers blindly—but you can trust the pack that teaches them a better path.”

Thane gave a slow nod of agreement.

Another man asked, “What if new people come to the valley and fear you? What then?”

Gabriel leaned in. “Then we talk to them.”

Kade added, “Truth stands. Fear fades.”

Thane’s expression didn’t shift. “Rumors break on truth.”

Then came the sharpest question of all.

A middle-aged woman stood quickly, cheeks flushed with anger. “What gives you the right to live in a human world? You’re strong enough to take over. You’re everywhere. Why shouldn’t you stay out in the woods like wild animals? Why should humans have to share towns with creatures who aren’t even human anymore?”

The room tensed.

Not one wolf moved. Not a growl. Not a twitch.

Thane answered with complete calm. “We don’t live among you. We live with you.”

She scoffed. “Same thing.”

“No,” he said. “Among means pretending. Hiding. Playing human to keep others comfortable. We do not hide. What you see is who we are. And we build this valley beside you.”

Varro followed with quiet conviction. “I lived under an Alpha who believed wolves should dominate humans. That world collapsed. This one thrives.”

Rime added, “Same snow. Same danger. Same home.”

Holt leaned forward earnestly. “Same stew.”

The timing was perfect. The audience burst into laughter, the tension melting instantly.

Marta stepped beside the wolves, voice carrying. “If the wolves didn’t belong here, many of us wouldn’t be alive. They brought back our power, our water, our safety, our communication. They earned their home here.”

The woman sank slowly back into her chair as applause rose like a tide—not thunderous, but heartfelt, steady, grateful.

A tiny boy raised his hand next. “When wolves howl… is it because you’re happy or sad?”

Rime’s expression softened. “Both. Howl speak heart.”

The boy smiled wide.

That became the last question.

One woman stood, then another, then nearly everyone in the auditorium. Not clapping for spectacle, but in a quiet wave of gratitude. A valley choosing trust.

As the crowd filtered out, Rime leaned toward Thane. “Holt answer strongest question.”

Gabriel groaned softly. “He’s never going to let us forget it.”

Varro allowed himself a faint smile. “The simple truth often wins.”

Kade watched the dispersing families with calm certainty. “Tonight… the valley feels whole.”

Thane looked over the room, over his pack, over the human faces warmed by understanding. The valley did feel whole. It felt honest. It felt like a place where wolves and humans lived not in fear, but in truth.

The pack walked out into the cool spring air together, paws quiet on the path, hearts steady, knowing the valley had taken another step toward healing—because truth had been spoken, and truth had been believed.