Category: New World Life Page 3 of 9

The phone rang mid-morning.
It wasn’t the sound that startled them — it was what it meant.

Thane was at the workbench tightening a terminal block when the new phone, the one Mark had wired in from City Hall, gave a sharp, old-world trill. He blinked once, looked up at the others, and reached for the receiver.

“Cabin,” he said simply.

Hank’s voice came through, strained but professional. “Thane, you might wanna come down to the west gate. Got three wolves here. Not locals. Say they want to speak with you — urgent. Said something about… returning someone.”

Thane’s eyes flicked toward Kade.

Kade froze mid-step near the stove. His claws lightly scraped the floorboards before he caught himself. That tiny sound said everything — the sort of involuntary noise only fear makes.

Thane’s tone didn’t change. “We’ll be there in five.”

He hung up. The click sounded heavier than the ring had.

“Trouble?” Gabriel asked, leaning against the counter.

Thane’s gaze stayed on Kade. “Maybe. Three wolves at the gate looking for someone.”

Mark caught the tension instantly. “And Kade’s got that look.”

Kade tried to speak evenly, but the words dragged. “They’re from my old pack,” he said quietly. “It has to be. My Alpha doesn’t let wolves just… leave.”

Holt straightened, ears tilting forward. “They come take you back?”

“That’s what it means,” Kade admitted. “If Sable told them where I went… then they know.”

Rime stepped closer, calm as ever. “We go with him. Yes?”

Thane nodded. “All of us.”

He reached for his coat and radio harness, though they all knew this wasn’t going to be a shooting problem — not unless the visitors wanted it to be. “Let’s move.”

---

The air outside bit cold and clean. Libby’s streets were quiet but watchful — people sensed the shift the way animals do before a storm. The pack moved together: Thane in front, Gabriel and Mark flanking, Rime and Holt walking just behind Kade like instinct itself had formed a bodyguard detail.

As they neared the west gate, Hank’s deputy raised a hand in signal. Beyond the heavy steel doors, three wolves stood on the old county road — snow dusting their fur, breath steaming like fog around them. They were all northern-born: taller, leaner, rougher. Their pelts were more wild than civilized, matted in places from travel and weather.

The one in the center stood straight and steady, scarred across the muzzle with eyes like yellow fire. His voice, when he spoke, carried the slight clipped edge of someone who had learned human speech but never liked the taste of it.

“You are Alpha of this place?” he asked.

“I am,” Thane said evenly. “And you are standing at my gate.”

The wolf inclined his head — not respectful, but not reckless either. “I am Varro. I speak for our Alpha — Tarrik of the Iron Ridge Pack.”

“Tarrik,” Thane repeated, filing the name like a weapon. “And what does Tarrik want?”

Varro’s eyes moved past him to Kade. “That one.”

Kade’s jaw tightened. His claws flexed against the frozen ground.

Thane didn’t look back. “Why?”

Another wolf on Varro’s right — younger, rough-faced, voice rougher still — growled low. “He leave. No permission. Alpha say traitor. He come back. Face judgment.”

Varro lifted a hand and silenced the younger one with a look. Then, in calm, steady English: “He broke oath. Walked away without leave. No wolf leaves Iron Ridge alive. Tarrik demands his return to answer for it.”

Thane’s tone stayed calm, but his eyes had the edge of a drawn blade. “He has a home now. Here.”

Varro frowned. “You claim him?”

“I do,” Thane said simply. “He’s part of my pack. My responsibility. And my protection.”

The third wolf — the largest of the trio — stepped forward with a snarl. “You think walls stop Alpha’s law?”

Hank and his deputy, standing behind the gate controls, tensed automatically, hands on rifles but not raising them. They didn’t need to; Thane’s pack didn’t flinch.

Thane took one slow step closer. The snow under his claws crunched in the silence. “You want to test those walls? Be my guest. You’ll find out fast that our laws are older than your threats.”

Varro’s expression shifted, irritation flickering beneath restraint. He studied Thane like a wolf reading a language he didn’t quite know but suspected was dangerous.

Kade stayed still, but Thane could feel the tension radiating off him like heat. This was the first time the others had seen him unsure — the Pathfinder whose calm never cracked now standing like a man facing ghosts.

Thane glanced back at him once. “You know them?”

Kade’s voice was low. “The middle one’s Varro. He is Tarrik’s right hand. The others… pack enforcers. If Tarrik sent them, it means he’s serious.”

Varro’s gaze fixed on Kade. “Why leave?” he demanded. “Why run south and hide among humans?”

Kade met his eyes. “Because I wanted to live without fear. Without watching wolves tear each other down because the Alpha said it was strength.”

The younger wolf spat into the snow. “Weak talk.”

“No,” Kade replied. “It’s honest talk.”

Thane turned back to the three northerners. “You have your answer. Kade’s not going anywhere.”

Varro’s voice cooled. “This is not a request.”

“Then it’s not a negotiation either,” Thane said. “You came to the wrong town for that.”

The youngest wolf bristled. “You stand between Alpha and justice?”

Thane took another deliberate step forward. “I stand between my pack and anyone who thinks they can drag one of us away. You’ll leave now, and you’ll tell your Alpha that Kade belongs to Libby — under my oath. You want him, you come through me.”

The wind paused. Even the snow seemed to stop falling.

Then Holt moved.

He stepped forward, slow, deliberate, placing himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Thane. His massive frame blocked half the road, eyes locked on the northern wolves like an avalanche deciding when to fall. Rime came next, calm and silent, taking the opposite flank — one paw settling lightly in the snow beside Thane’s.

Varro’s expression faltered. The posturing melted into calculation. He took in the line — Thane’s calm certainty, Holt’s looming strength, Rime’s steady precision — and something in him understood the math wasn’t worth the blood.

Thane let the silence hang until it became truth. “We’re done here.”

Varro stared another heartbeat, then gave a single nod. “You make enemy of Iron Ridge.”

Thane’s reply was soft, and therefore final. “You’ll have to get in line.”

The three wolves turned. The younger one threw a glare over his shoulder at Kade. “He pay later.”

Rime’s claws twitched. “Maybe you pay sooner.”

They vanished down the road, gray against gray until they were just motion and distance again.

---

The gate closed with a heavy clang that sounded more like punctuation than defense.

Kade stood there, still looking in the direction they’d gone. His breath came too slow for calm, too fast for ease.

Thane turned to him. “You good?”

Kade blinked, then exhaled. “I didn’t think you’d stop them.”

Thane frowned slightly. “You really thought I’d hand you over?”

“You don’t know Tarrik,” Kade said. “He’s not the kind of Alpha who lets things go. If it meant keeping peace, I thought—”

Thane cut him off gently. “Kade. There’s no peace worth selling a packmate for.”

Rime grunted. “He right.”

Holt stepped closer, resting a heavy paw on Kade’s shoulder. “You safe here. No one take you from pack.”

Kade looked at him, a little lost, a little awed. “You’d fight for me?”

Holt’s teeth showed in a grin that could melt snow. “Already did. Just not need claws today.”

Mark, still leaning on the gate’s inside rail, added dryly, “And if they had tried? They’d have found out the hard way that we keep the good ammo for guests like that.”

Gabriel chuckled from behind him. “And the loudspeakers. Nothing ruins intimidation like a blast of classic rock.”

Kade gave a shaky laugh — the kind of laugh that sounded like it hadn’t been used in years. The weight started to slide off his shoulders piece by piece.

Rime tilted his head. “Why so fear?”

“They’re not like us,” Kade said. “They don’t talk things out. They don’t forgive. When someone leaves, it’s betrayal. And betrayal means blood. I thought maybe—” He looked at Thane again, voice quiet. “I thought maybe I’d brought trouble on you.”

Thane’s tone softened but stayed steady. “Kade, we are trouble. Ask anyone. But we’re the kind that keeps people safe.”

Gabriel stepped closer, elbowed Kade lightly. “You really think the guy who told an armed raider to apologize to a gate is gonna fold because some snow-wolves stomp their paws?”

That finally cracked a full smile out of Kade. “Guess not.”

“Exactly,” Mark said. “You’re one of us now. That means you get the full Libby guarantee: chaos, chores, and unconditional protection.”

Holt nodded enthusiastically. “And stew.”

“Don’t forget stew,” Rime echoed deadpan, which somehow made it even funnier.

Kade’s eyes softened, the fear replaced with something steadier — belonging. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t,” Thane said simply. “Just stay. Do your job. Live your life. The rest will sort itself out.”

They stood there a while longer, the cold air quieting into that particular peace that only comes after the possibility of violence fades.

Finally, Thane looked back at the town. “Let’s go home.”

---

Back at the cabin, the mood had loosened by the time the stove crackled back to life. Gabriel pulled strings of heat from the guitar while Mark checked the relay logs on the new phone line. Holt busied himself ladling leftovers into bowls the size of hubcaps.

Kade sat by the window, watching the last of the daylight crawl across the snow. He looked… lighter somehow. Not free of worry, but freer than he’d been in a long time.

Rime leaned against the doorframe, eyes half-closed. “They come back?”

“They might,” Kade said quietly. “Tarrik doesn’t like losing.”

Rime nodded once. “Then we teach him how it feel.”

Holt rumbled a low laugh. “Lesson cost extra.”

That earned another grin from Kade — a real one this time.

Thane came over and set a bowl beside him. “Eat,” he said. “Can’t defend the town on an empty stomach.”

Kade looked up, a small flicker of gratitude warming the yellow of his eyes. “Thank you. For standing up for me. For… all of this.”

Thane shrugged, half-smile curving the corner of his mouth. “You’d have done the same for us.”

Kade hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I would.”

Gabriel strummed a lazy chord in the background. “That’s how it starts, you know,” he said. “You show up scared, end up family.”

“Pretty good deal,” Mark added, not looking up from his notes.

Holt raised his bowl. “To pack.”

Rime echoed, “To pack.”

Thane lifted his mug in silent agreement, eyes on the team — wolves and humans and everything between — all of them bound not by fear, but by choice.

Kade looked down at his own bowl, then around the room, and finally said the words he hadn’t been able to before.

“To pack,” he murmured.

Outside, the wind shifted north, carrying the faintest echo of wolves on the move — distant, restless, fading. But inside Libby, the den stayed warm, and no one looked back.

The morning came quiet, soft light leaking through clouded glass and dust motes hanging in still air. Spring had finally reached the valley for real this time; the kind that didn’t hesitate. Snow clung only to the highest ridges now, a half-hearted holdover from winter. The rest of the world had decided to live again.

In the cabin, the coffee pot hissed over a propane flame. Thane stood by the counter, medallion resting against his shirt, claws curved around a chipped mug. Gabriel was still asleep on the couch, one arm thrown dramatically over his face, muttering about guitar strings. Rime was outside, stacking wood in lazy circles and humming something tuneless. Mark’s paws clicked down the hallway as he yawned. “Morning,” he said, voice tired.

Before Thane could answer, the room filled with a sudden burst of static. The radio on the counter crackled once, twice, then carried a voice—thin, nervous, but unmistakably human.

Voice: “—Libby, this is… this is the Bear Pass shelter. Do you read?”

The words snapped Thane fully awake. He set down the mug, reached for the mic, and keyed it with a practiced claw. “This is Libby. Go ahead, Bear Pass.”

There was a pause filled with faint wind noise and the tick of the carrier signal. Then the father’s voice returned, shaky but steady enough to make it through.

Father: “You told us we could come. For the doctor. If we wanted my leg fixed. I think… I think I’m ready.”

Thane smiled—a small, private thing that lived more in the eyes than the mouth. “Glad to hear your voice. Roads are muddy but open. We can send a truck by midday.”

Father: “Don’t want to trouble anyone.”

Thane: “You won’t. It’s what we’re here for.”

He replaced the mic, and let the quiet fill the room again. Mark was already grinning. “Guess that radio worked better than we thought.”

“It worked because they believed it would,” Thane said, finishing his coffee in a long pull. “Round up Kade and Gabriel. Take the flatbed. Holt and Rime go too. Tell them it’s time to bring that family home.”

---

By midmorning, clouds were breaking into long white scars across a blue sky. The truck had been warmed, packed, and stocked with what Kade called just-in-case gear—extra blankets, food, one old first-aid kit, and two thermoses of coffee Gabriel swore were essential morale boosters. The flatbed’s paint had seen better decades, but the engine’s low growl was solid, a promise of return.

Gabriel drove, window down, sunglasses on, radio humming low through the dashboard speaker. Kade rode shotgun, map folded neatly on his knee. Rime and Holt sat in the bed with the supplies, their fur flattened by wind, tails flicking lazily. They looked content, two wolves who’d decided the day didn’t need drama.

The road wound north along the river, mud spattering in sheets across the truck’s fenders. Patches of ice lingered in shadows, flashing white against the brown ruts. Birds had returned in force—warblers, finches, one distant hawk calling across the valley. The sound of them filled the world like memory stitching itself back together.

Gabriel drummed his claws on the steering wheel, glancing sideways with a crooked grin. “Operation Mercy. That’s what I’m calling this one.”

Kade raised an eyebrow. “You’re naming errands now?”

“Everything needs a name. Makes it sound official.”

Kade smirked. “You do realize Thane would make that face—the one where his ears twitch and he pretends not to be amused.”

Gabriel laughed under his breath. “Oh, he’d love it. He just wouldn’t admit it. Beneath that gravel voice is a true marketing soul.”

From the bed of the truck, Holt leaned in through the sliding rear window, fur tousled by the wind. “Thane not care about names. Only that we make it back.”

Rime nodded, eyes half-closed against the breeze. “Talk less. Drive more. Road good today.”

Gabriel grinned. “My critics speak.”

Kade chuckled. “Drive the truck, artist.”

---

It took three hours to climb the pass. The last mile narrowed between sheer slopes where meltwater ran in long silver ribbons across the dirt. The cabin stood where it always had, quiet beneath the tall pines, smoke curling from the chimney in a slow spiral. The smell of pine resin and cooked beans met them before the truck even stopped.

The little girl was the first to appear, waving both arms from the porch. The boy followed, ducking under the low beam, his face splitting into a grin when he saw Kade jump from the cab. Behind them, their father stood framed in the doorway, pack slung over one shoulder, crutch under one arm, determination written in every line of his posture.

Kade climbed the steps and offered his forearm. “You ready for a long ride?”

The man clasped it firmly, the grip strong even through pain. “I’ve been ready since the day you left. Just needed to believe you’d come back.”

“We always keep our word,” Kade said.

Holt and Rime made short work of the supplies. They packed blankets around the flatbed, built a soft seat of folded tarp and spare bedding, and helped lift the man up with practiced ease. Rime fussed over the padding until it was just right, tugging and smoothing like a craftsman. The little girl handed him her wooden wolf before climbing into the cab beside Gabriel.

“Hold on tight,” Gabriel told her. “First rule of Libby: the roads are exciting.”

“Second rule,” Holt called from the back, “is bGabriel grinned over his shoulder. “Hold on tight — first rule of Libby is that the roads are an adventure.”

Kade smirked. “You mean barely roads.”

From the bed, Holt leaned toward the cab window, fur catching the wind. “Road fine. Just soft. Truck heavy.”

Rime chuckled, eyes scanning the trees. “Still better than mountain path.”

Gabriel laughed quietly. “I like this optimism. Let’s try to keep all four wheels attached, then.”eans always.”

The girl giggled, clutching the carved wolf and nodding solemnly as if these were sacred laws.

---

The journey down was slower but warmer. The world around them glowed—the last snow runoff sparkling in every ditch, the green of new grass burning bright against gray trunks. Every bend of the road smelled like thawing earth. The father sat in the back beneath a patchwork of blankets, watching the mountains recede behind him. Sometimes he closed his eyes, and the lines around them softened; other times he stared wide-eyed, afraid the view might disappear if he blinked too long.

Kade watched him through the rear window. “He’s tougher than he looks.”

Gabriel nodded. “They all are. Anyone still standing after all this—you don’t survive by accident.”

They hit level ground by afternoon. Libby appeared first as a shimmer, then as a shape, then as a town that looked like it meant to stay. Rooftop panels caught the light. A handful of kids chased a ball in front of City Hall, laughter echoing off the brick walls. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys that smelled of cedar, not fear.

The family fell silent, taking it all in.

The father whispered, “You built this back.”

Thane waited for them in the square, arms folded, expression unreadable until the truck stopped. Then his mouth broke into that rare, tired smile that always meant the world had done something right. “Welcome to Libby,” he said. “Your home if you want it to be.”

Marta came out of City Hall, clipboard in one hand, scarf whipping in the wind. “Clinic’s ready. Doctor’s been waiting since you called.”

The boy frowned, still not quite believing. “You really have a doctor?”

Before Thane could answer, the clinic door opened. A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out, wiping his hands on a towel. His hair was steel gray, his eyes a sharp, weathered green. His lab coat had seen better days but was clean. He looked like someone carved from hard work and caffeine.

“Dr. Donovan Wade,” he said, voice low and practical. “You’re my patient from Bear Pass?”

The father nodded. “That’s me. I hope I’m not wasting your time.”

Wade’s mouth twitched. “You came all this way on a bad leg. That earns you all the time I’ve got. Let’s take a look.”

Holt helped the man down. Rime carried the crutch. Inside, the clinic smelled faintly of antiseptic and cedar soap. The doctor’s instruments were old but cared for: stainless steel shining, linen neatly folded, power tools rigged to a solar line. Wade had built the place himself, same as everyone else had built what they needed.

Thane watched them disappear through the curtain, then turned to the children. “He’s one of the best,” he said. “And grumpiest. That’s how you know he’s good.”

Gabriel crouched beside the girl. “While your dad’s getting fixed, want to see something cool?” He pointed to the far corner where a crank-powered phonograph sat. “Still works.”

She smiled shyly. “It plays music?”

“Plays old music,” Gabriel said, winding it up until a slow, crackly swing tune filled the room. “This one’s older than any of us.”

Rime swayed his tail in time. “Good sound,” he murmured.

---

The operation took nearly two hours. Outside, the pack waited in the square, taking turns checking the generator cables or making small talk with townsfolk who wandered over to see the newcomers. Marta brought coffee. Holt managed to talk a baker into giving him a biscuit the size of his paw. Kade sat on the clinic steps, staring north toward the ridge. Every so often, his claws tapped against the step like a quiet metronome.

Finally the curtain pulled back. Wade stepped out, rolling his shoulders, gloves hanging from one hand. “Clean break now. Pins in place. Bone lined true. He’ll walk again once it sets.”

Thane stood. “You did it.”

Wade gave him a look. “I always do it. Just need good patients and better luck.”

The boy rushed past them into the room. A moment later came the muffled sound of relief—laughter and something that might’ve been crying. Wade leaned against the doorframe, rubbing his forehead.

“He’ll need rest and a proper diet,” he said. “Keep the leg stable, change the dressing every morning. I’ll check it in two days.”

Thane clasped his shoulder. “Good work, Doc.”

“Tell Holt to stop bringing me half-feral projects and I might live to retire.”

Thane chuckled. “You wouldn’t know what to do with peace.”

“You’re probably right,” Wade said, but there was a ghost of a smile under the fatigue.

---

Evening came on like a slow spill of gold through the windows. The father slept on a proper bed in the clinic, leg bandaged, steady breathing. His children sat nearby—one reading a weathered magazine, the other using the carved wolf as a pillow. Outside, lamps came on in the square, one by one, warm halos in the cooling air.

Kade stood near the door, arms folded. “They’ll be okay now.”

Thane nodded. “Because you brought them in.”

Kade looked out at the lights of Libby. “Because we gave them somewhere to come back to.”

They stood there a while in the comfortable silence of a job done right. Gabriel appeared carrying paper cups of coffee. “Doctor says the leg will be better than new. Also says his caffeine levels are dangerously low.”

“Then we saved two lives today,” Thane said.

Rime poked his head in. “Beans soon?”

“Beans always,” Thane said automatically, and Rime grinned like that was the password to everything.

---

Later, when the square quieted and most of the lights had dimmed, Thane lingered outside the clinic. The air was cool, smelling of river water and wet earth. Somewhere distant, the phone relay clicked—Whitefish or Spokane, maybe, testing the lines again. The world was connected now, in small but stubborn ways.

Inside, Dr. Wade cleaned his instruments, humming something low. The kind of man who didn’t brag about saving lives; he just kept doing it until someone forced him to rest. Kade leaned against the doorway watching him work.

“He’s good,” Kade said.

“The best,” Thane replied. “We were lucky to have him when the world fell. He was the last man to leave Kalispell before the roads froze. Walked thirty miles with his kit on his back.”

Kade nodded thoughtfully. “Seems like the type who doesn’t break easy.”

“None of us do anymore,” Thane said.

The two of them watched the activity through the clinic window for a long time. Then, without needing to say it, they both turned their eyes north, toward the line of trees that marked the road back to Bear Pass. The cabin up there would be empty tonight, chimney dark, but it wasn’t abandoned anymore. It had done its job.

Thane exhaled, long and slow. “Tomorrow we start mapping the next line—beyond the northern ridge. If the valley’s going to stay alive, we keep the roads breathing.”

Kade smiled faintly. “Always forward.”

Thane nodded. “Always.”

The frogs sang in the creek below town, the turbines whispered their slow circles, and Libby’s lights shone steady against the mountains. Somewhere inside, a little girl dreamed of wolves who helped instead of hunted, and a man slept with the comfort of knowing he would walk again.

The pack was home, the town was healing, and the world, little by little, was remembering how to trust.

Early spring did not arrive with fanfare. It seeped into the valley on quiet paws: meltwater slipping under the crust of old drifts, the smell of damp earth rising through pine needles, the creek voices sharpening as ice let go. On the ridge above Libby the morning light cut the spruce tips like bright wire, and wind moved through the trees in a low conversation that made you want to listen instead of talk. Inside the cabin, a map lay open on the table, corners pinned by claws.

Kade stood over it like he was still part of the paper. He had drawn the route by memory, the lines sure, the spacing of switchbacks neat, the river crossings marked with tiny Xs and careful notes about slope and runout. He touched one place with a blunt, scarred claw. “There,” he said. “Old logging road. North of the northern camp, along Bear Pass Ridge. It’s not the fastest way, but the footing is good and the path is protected. If a storm blows up while we’re on the road, it makes sense to have somewhere solid to stay. This cabin was that place.”

Thane leaned, the table creaking under his weight. “You’ve walked it alone before?”

Kade nodded slightly. “Yeah. I used it back when I was with my old pack. I didn’t like the pack, but I liked knowing there was a safe stop in the woods.”

Thane didn’t ask anything more. He just took a calm breath, nodded once, and turned to the others. Gabriel wiped the crumbs of a bagel off his claws. “All right, I could use a hike. And you know what they say: nothing says spring like exploring abandoned forest architecture.”

Rime slapped Holt on the shoulder. “Race you to the first switchback.”

“You’re already losing,” Holt shot back, stepping toward the door with a grin.

Thane clapped his paws once, the sound snapping the morning together. “Gear up. We head up Bear Pass. We fix what needs fixing, make the shelter usable again, and stock it later if it’s solid.”

Kade folded the map and tucked it in his pack. “Lead the way,” he said, and they filed out into the fresh air and bright pine scent of a full thaw.

The world smelled like new rot—the good kind that makes mushrooms and soil. Rime loped ahead, weight on his toes, sniffing as if the day itself had a direction. Holt matched him, shoulder to shoulder, bumping, darting off to kick a drift and return like it was a game he’d invented. Gabriel stopped twice to kneel over half-lidded skunk cabbage and announce, to no one’s surprise, that it was in fact skunk cabbage. Kade traveled like he always did on ground he knew: almost invisible. You watched the trees and then discovered he had already chosen a line you were taking without thinking. Thane followed the shape of Kade’s path and found himself trusting it three steps in. The pack breathed together without trying.

“You remember everything about this road,” Thane said low as they crested a narrow stretch of ridge.

“I remember what mattered,” Kade said. “I used this trail the way some men use taverns or churches. A place that lets you breathe. That cabin was the one spot I knew no one else bothered, even my old pack. I could be alone there and not feel abandoned.”

Thane nodded. “Feels like the right kind of place to save, then.”

Gabriel came up beside them with a small huff of effort. “Quick update: I’ve fallen in love with three patches of moss and only insulted one rock. My personal growth is immense.”

Holt grinned. “His knees soft.”

By the time they reached the rise where the path dipped toward the river, snow had thinned into patchy islands in the grass. The cabin stood under a heavy-branched pine, silent but not asleep. Woodsmoke pushed a faint ribbon into the air. Someone was living here.

Thane lifted his hand, halting them. Kade’s clawed fingers curled loosely near the knife on his belt, not threatening — just aware. They moved forward slow. Footsteps creaked on the floorboards inside.

Then the door slammed open and a teenage boy rushed out, gripping a piece of split wood like a club. A little girl hid behind him, clutching a tattered stuffed doll. Behind them, half in the doorway, stood a man with a carved walking stick under one arm and one leg badly braced — rope, leather, tarp, pain.

“Get back!” the boy shouted, trembling. “We don’t want trouble!”

Kade raised his palms slowly. “Nobody’s here to hurt you. We didn’t know anyone was still using this place.”

The boy’s voice broke. “You — you’re one of them! The wolves who came before — they looked like you.”

Kade’s voice stayed even. “I was with that pack. I’m not now. I left because of what they did.”

Thane took a slow step forward, hands open, posture calm. “We’re from Libby. We’re rebuilding food stores, hunting areas, shelters like this one. We came to make sure this cabin still stands.”

The father’s eyes flickered with shock. “Last wolves came through here. Took our food. Tried to run us out. I told them to leave us be… and they broke my leg when I refused.”

Kade tensed. That grief — it wasn’t a surprise, but it still came in fresh.

Thane nodded once, jaw tight. “That wasn’t us. We run our pack on rules — honor, protection, kindness. Hurt like that doesn’t happen under us.”

The boy stared hard at Kade. “Why should we believe anything you say?”

“Because I walked away from the wolves who did this,” Kade said. “I chose different. I chose them.” He nodded to Thane and the others behind him. “You can hate what I was — you should. But judge me by where I stand now.”

That was when the little girl peeked out from behind her brother’s arm — saw Holt’s curious half-grin, saw the way Rime crouched low, eyes soft. Her fear shifted, just a little.

Thane lifted a hand toward the cabin. “Let us fix your stove and your roof. If you still want us gone afterward — we’ll go. No questions, no harm.”

The boy faltered, then looked at his father. The man took a deep breath — the kind that lets survival speak instead of pride. “Fix the stove,” he said quietly. “And the roof. We’ll go from there.”

What followed was instinct. Holt and Rime carried wood — selecting the good pieces, discarding the old season-rot. Gabriel knelt under the stovepipe, tested the collar by hand, and tightened the draw. Kade kneaded pitch into a burst seam in the chinkwork, humming under his breath. Thane climbed the roofline and reseated three loose boards, nails greased with resin to keep the water out.

During it, the girl sat quietly near the hearth. Rime sat cross-legged across from her. He pulled a small carved wolf from his pack — little more than scraps of scrap pine, sanded smooth — and offered it with a gentle smile.

“For you,” he said. “He helps watch.”

She took it like it might turn to light. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Rime nodded back. “Pack protects.”

Once the pipe was seated, Gabriel placed a two-way radio and foldable solar charger on the table. “Channel three,” he said. “That’s Libby. If anything happens — injury, raiders, food shortage — just call. We answer.”

The father blinked twice. “You’re giving this to us?”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said with a small smile. “Our support plan. No monthly fees unless you want our coffee service, which I wouldn’t recommend unless you love sudden heart attacks.”

Holt leaned in. “Do not let Rime drink it. Trust me.”

Thane looked to the man. “Libby still has a working clinic. We’ve got a doctor — real, with real tools. If you want to get that leg reset properly, we’ll send someone to bring you in once the road clears fully.”

The father froze. “You… have a doctor?”

Thane nodded with quiet certainty. “And enough medicine to do it right. You don’t owe us anything — except the courage to walk through the door.”

The man’s eyes went raw and wet without breaking. “I don’t want to be the reason my children can’t leave. I want to walk again.”

“Then come,” Thane said simply. “When you’re ready.”

They packed up without hurry. Before the wolves left, the girl set her new wooden wolf on the cabin’s windowsill, watching through the glass like an oak sentinel.

Far down the ridge, Thane finally broke the quiet. “You did good today, Pathfinder. You helped turn a memory of fear into a real shelter.”

Kade’s voice was quiet, but fuller. “I used to walk this path to stay away from people. Today, walking it with all of you — it felt like the road came back to life.”

Thane smiled a little. “Sometimes the only way to fix the world is to fix just one corner of it.”

Ahead, Gabriel sniffed the wind. “That scent? Freedom. And beans. Beans for days.”

Rime perked up. “Beans now?”

“Beans always,” Thane answered.

The valley spread out below them again — longer thaw lines, faster streams, deeper greens. Somewhere behind them, a family went to sleep with a working stove, a fresh roof, and a radio tuned to hope.

And for the first time since the Fall, they did not feel alone.

The morning started like most in the Libby den — with the scent of woodsmoke and coffee, and the low murmur of wolves not yet fully awake. The cabin wasn’t silent so much as it was peacefully loud: the stove knocking heat into the room, Gabriel humming a low tune with no words, Holt doing his quiet version of stretching that somehow always sounded like lumber creaking.

Thane stood by the counter, steaming mug in one hand. Mark was already at the table with a notebook open and pencil tapping.

“All right, day briefing,” Thane said casually, raising his voice just enough to catch everyone’s floating attention.

“That’s the nicest way you’ve ever said ‘chores,’” Gabriel replied with that grin that always started in his eyes. He slid a plate of fried potatoes and eggs across the table toward Thane.

“It’s called delegation,” Thane said with a smirk. He sat, inhaled the steam off his mug, and started in: “Mark and I are going to get this cabin wired into the City Hall Definity. We already got the PBX side working, now it’s time to give this place a landline.”

Holt frowned. “Is landline a new stew?”

Gabriel elbowed him. “No, big guy. It’s a phone. A real one. Rings. Talks. Like the ones we used to take off the hook when telemarketers wouldn’t leave us alone.”

Mark nodded like a professor. “Also runs entirely without cell towers or satellites, which will make you love it and fear it at the same time.”

“Or love it because you’re the one who patched the wires, like me,” Thane added, grinning into his coffee.

Gabriel leaned on the back of Holt’s chair. “Speaking of fear — Holt and I will be working on guitar lesson number five.”

Holt perked up; his ears went tilt-happy. “I learned G chord. Hurt less than last time.”

“Which is progress,” Gabriel said. “Good job. By lesson eight, you’ll be playing songs without breaking strings or claws.”

Kade and Rime stood near the window, already half-geared. Kade rolled his shoulders like the start of a shifting ritual.

“And you two,” Thane said, pointing at them with a nod, “Patrol.”

Rime nodded once. “Standard loop. River. Ridge. East trail. Back fence.”

“Report anything weird,” Thane added. “Even if it’s just an odd animal track or a dropped bag.”

Kade dipped his head respectfully. “Understood. We’ll keep our eyes open.”

“I know,” Thane replied. “That’s why you’re out there.”

Across the room, Holt waved a hand. “And what me do after guitar?”

Mark pointed at a page in his notebook without looking up. “Unload the woodpile next to the barn.”

Holt saluted with dramatic flair. “Understood. Holt will bend logs to his will.”

Rime’s low chuckle was barely audible — but Kade heard it and smiled.

As everyone began to drift into their day’s roles, Thane took a long breath, soaking in the sight: the pack in motion, the den alive, the cold world held at bay by the heartbeat of a town collectively rebuilding.

“Good day ahead,” he murmured.

---

Mid-morning found Mark on his knees near the cabin’s crawlspace, pushing decades-old insulation aside and grumbling under his breath in a mix of engineering jargon and mild curses. Thane held a flashlight steady above him, coiling a length of Category 3 cable in clean loops on the floor.

“Punchdown block’s still live,” Mark said, voice muffled by the dust. “City Hall’s still sending dial-tone on the copper pair. All we need is tie-in. The real chore’s gonna be finding the demarcation point under this place.”

“I can’t tell if you’re complaining or thrilled,” Thane said, grin audible in his voice.

“That’s me,” Mark replied, scooting forward and blowing dust out of his nose. “The exhausted cheerleader of analog communications.”

Thane fed the cable through the old conduit port in the cabin’s sidewall. “Tell you what — getting a line out here will make life easier. If Marta needs us fast, no more runners or radios.”

“Or wolves shouting through the window,” Mark added.

“Effective,” Thane said. “But not subtle.”

Upstairs, Gabriel was bent over Holt, whose claws were wrapped as carefully as hands could be around a guitar neck that looked almost tiny against his arms.

“Okay, one more time,” Gabriel said, as patient as a saint. “Curl the fingers. Claws out of the way. Just enough pressure to get the note. Not enough to crush the fretboard. We’re playing guitar, Holt. Not trying to win a fight with it.”

Holt looked down seriously, as if the guitar had just insulted his mother. Then, carefully, painfully, he strummed.

It sounded like a metal pipe being dragged across angry gravel. But one chord in the mess was almost right.

Gabriel grinned. “There we go! That’s the beginning of ‘House of the Rising Sun,’ Holt.”

Holt blinked. “Good house?”

“Decent house,” Gabriel replied. “Built on sadness and terrible choices. But musically, it’s very pretty.”

Down the hall, Kade and Rime slipped on their packs and stepped out silently, closing the door against the cold.

“Ridge first,” Rime said.

“River bend after,” Kade agreed. “Trail iced over. Might be slippery.”

“Mm,” Rime said, nodding. “Instinct before speed.”

Kade smiled with soft respect. “Same rule my grandmother used to say… ‘fast paws trip first.’”

Rime looked sideways at him. “She smart wolf.”

“The smartest,” Kade agreed.

They padded over frost-stiffened grass, moving like shadows. Their claws clicked softly on stones. Their ears rotated constantly, mapping the world the way some people map roads. To them, the snow glittered with a thousand messages — each track, each broken stick, each scent note placed like syllables in a language anyone could learn if they were willing to kneel long enough.

They found deer sign clustered around the south draw. The herd had passed in the night, light-footed and calm.

They passed the fox burrow under the old mandolin tree, and Rime dropped a pinch of dried venison by the entrance.

“Why feed it?” Kade asked.

“Good fox means fewer rats,” Rime replied, simple and true.

“And fewer rats means fewer sick human kids.”

Rime glanced at him sideways. “Also fewer rats means happy Mark.”

Kade laughed once, a quiet sound like a relieved exhale. “Fair enough.”

---

Just before noon, Marta and Hank were in the square, surrounded by three townsfolk who were trying to decide whether the new storage building needed one more coat of stain or if they should save the can for spring.

“Decisions are easier,” Marta said with a flick of her wrist, “when you have warm stew and a place to argue about it.”

“Or someone to make the call,” Hank added, straight-faced.

She threw him an exaggerated scowl. “You saying I’m indecisive, Hank?”

“Nope,” he said. “Just saying you let others think you are. It softens them up for when you roll right over whatever they wanted.”

Marta snorted. “Fair.”

A little ways off, Jesse was at the northern fence line, working with another volunteer to drive replacement stakes into a gap left by shifting frost. He took each hammer strike with the dignity of someone paying back a debt, not fulfilling a sentence.

“You’re better at this than most who’ve been here three years,” the volunteer said, wiping her brow.

“I had a lot of practice working stuff alone,” Jesse replied, giving the final hammer blow. “Just… didn’t always have a community to fix it for.”

She nodded with real warmth. “You do now.”

Jesse’s smile held gratitude that didn’t need a louder word.

---

By mid-afternoon, Mark and Thane had crawled out of the under-floor darkness victorious.

“Cable’s run,” Mark declared, wiping cobwebs off his arms. “We just need to trim the line, punch it into slot sixteen, and mount the handset.”

“Then dial tone,” Mark confirmed, brushing dust from his jeans.

“Analog gods, bless us,” Thane said half-seriously.

Gabriel walked in with Holt behind him. Holt held his guitar like a defeated warrior holding his own shield.

“I think,” Gabriel said, “that today we learned one chord with only minor property damage.”

Holt held up a bent string. “Never knew metal ribbon could scream.”

Thane nodded at him. “You’re learning. Stick with it. By spring, we’ll have you doing open mics.”

Holt frowned, then paused. “Is Mike a man who needs opening?”

Gabriel burst into laughter so hard he nearly fell over.

---

Late afternoon layered gold over the valley. Rime and Kade returned to the cabin with light steps and alert eyes.

“Movement on the river,” Kade reported. “Just deer. No people tracks since yesterday.”

“We cleared fallen tree off east trail,” Rime added. “Holt can move the trunk with Jesse tomorrow.”

Thane nodded. “Good. Anything feel off?”

“Not today,” Kade said, voice calm and content. “Feels like… peace.”

“That’s because it is,” Thane replied. “Good day.”

He watched as Kade hung up his pack and Rime leaned his spear-bladed tool in its usual corner.

Just then — the newly mounted phone on the wall rang.

Everyone in the cabin jumped — then froze — then burst out laughing.

“First call,” Mark said, grinning, as Thane stepped to the handset.

“Line’s good,” Thane said into the phone. “This is the cabin.”

Marta’s voice came loud and clear, warm as a wool coat. “Just checking the connection, Thane. Also reminding you that your stew pot is invited to the square tonight if you’re cooking.”

Thane smirked, covering the mouthpiece. “She’s just fishing for Holt’s soup.”

Holt puffed up, proud and deeply unconcerned with the accuracy of the joke.

“Tell her we’ll be there,” Thane said into the line.

Marta laughed. “I’ll set the bowls.”

The phone clicked off as the room filled with the steady hum of wolf comfort.

---

Night rolled in with the easy confidence of a friend who didn’t need to knock. The cabin buzzed with low conversation, bowls clinked, and Holt’s latest batch of stew filled the air with spice and heart.

Gabriel strummed for the group, and Holt actually managed to pluck his first clean note.

“Nice,” Gabriel said. “That almost sounded like music.”

“That was music,” Holt insisted, and nobody disagreed.

Mark crossed out the last note of the day’s tasks. Kade sat in the middle of it all, silent but full — not just with stew, but belonging.

Thane leaned back against the wall, one hand around a warm mug, one paw propped on the rung of Rime’s chair.

“No howling today,” he said softly.

“No fights,” Gabriel added.

“No one trying to knock down the gate,” Mark said.

“Good day,” Kade murmured.

“Earned day,” Rime corrected.

Thane let himself smile, just enough to show teeth that weren’t meant for fear.

“Yeah. Good work. Good day.”

---

And in Libby, the night held that truth gently — like a story being set aside for the next chapter.

Dawn slid silver over Libby and caught on every nailhead in the south fence, making the town look like it had been sewn together with light. The cabin breathed slow—stove ticking, kettle thinking about boiling, the floorboards remembering yesterday’s clawed feet. Rime stood by the door already, gray fur rucked at the shoulders, eyes so awake they made the window seem dim. Kade stood beside him, hands open, claws visible, yellow eyes reading the morning like a map.

Thane watched them both from the end of the table, arms folded loosely, the gravel in his voice softened but still there. “Kade.”

Kade looked up.

“Your skill isn’t just instinct,” Thane said. “It’s craft. It belongs to the pack now. You’re the new Pathfinder.”

Kade didn’t blink for a heartbeat. He bowed his head—not low, not performative, just enough to acknowledge both weight and welcome. “I accept.”

Rime’s mouth did the smallest curve. “Good,” he said. “He quick. Quiet. Head stays working.”

“You and Rime will run the daily recon,” Thane continued. “Perimeter lines, river bend, south draw, ridge windbreak. You find trouble before trouble finds us. You find clean lines so our people don’t bleed walking home.”

“Understood,” Kade said, steady. “I won’t fail this.”

Holt produced a pair of jerky sticks like magic. “Meat tax for patrol,” he declared. “Rule I just made.”

Mark looked over the top of his notebook. “Rules invented by Holt are nonbinding but strongly suggested.”

Rime made the noise he made when he didn’t intend to smile and then did anyway. “We go now,” he said to Kade. “Fast feet. Slow minds.”

Kade grinned once. “Always.”

They slipped out into the cold with the door cracking softly behind them. Their pace at first was the one Rime taught every new set of paws: not showy, not lazy, just the economy that put miles behind you without borrowing from your lungs. Kade matched it like he’d been waiting years for someone to set a metronome where his heart already was.

“River first,” Rime murmured. “Ice thin, but not liar. Listen.”

They listened. The creek said things about depth and stones. Kade felt the terrain in his ankles, let his weight ride the pads of his feet, clawed toes gripping the slick edges of root and rock. They cut left for the old road where the plow scars made a shallow, frozen gutter. Kade paused, crouched, and touched a print softened by last night’s powder.

“Deer,” he said quietly. “Three. Moving north. The small one favoring right hind.”

Rime bent, looked, grunted approval. “Good eyes.” He pointed farther on—two ovals pressed in differently spaced. “Hare and fox. Fox hungry.”

“Everyone is,” Kade said.

“Mm.” Rime straightened, sniffed once. “We check south draw, then fence line by windbreak.”

They moved. Their talk stayed in the small spaces between breath and step.

“You always read this well?” Rime asked.

“Better since I left,” Kade answered. “When you’re alone, you start listening harder. Everything becomes a letter in a word you don’t want to misread.”

Rime nodded like he’d been waiting for that sentence for a year. “Yes.”

They made the south draw by sun-fist through cloud. The draw wore wind like an old coat. The snow there had a different language, one that wrote in drifts and rattles. Kade stopped, angled his head, then pointed to a place where the scrub switchbacked.

“Here,” he said softly. “Someone cut through last night—human, not wolf. Heel digs deep on the upslope. Boot tread. Not wide.”

Rime crouched, pressed one claw lightly into the edge. “Good. Small steps. No slide. Careful feet. Not drunk.”

“Not armed heavy,” Kade added, scanning the side scatter. “No tell-tale drag of a long gun butt. No extra weight at the hip. Bag, maybe. Left shoulder.”

Rime looked at him for a long fraction. “You see much.”

“I practiced,” Kade said simply.

“Good,” Rime repeated, but the second good carried more. “We follow this later. Now fence.”

They pushed east until the fence came up like a stand of steel trees. Rime checked posts with a gloved knuckle, listening for the hollow clack that meant rot under the cap. Kade walked the line and found three spots where the bottom edge had been lifted by frost, then set back—minutely wrong. He marked them with a small twig teepee and a scratch.

“Why the teepee?” Rime asked.

“So the person who fixes it knows how many I found,” Kade said. “One for Holt is a suggestion. Three means now.”

Rime looked, absorbed, nodded. “He learn fast,” he murmured to the cold. It sounded a little like pride and a little like relief.

The ridge windbreak smelled like old pine and last week’s laughter. Kids had made sled tracks that froze into bright scars; wolf prints ran alongside them, big, careful—adults who knew fun and fear had to shake hands if anyone wanted to keep their bones. Rime pointed to one track with his chin.

“See? Small humans run and hug legs. Rule: do not fall on them.”

Kade smirked. “Holt told me.”

“Good,” Rime said. “Holt fall like tree.”

They looped back by the river on purpose, Kade drawing them in a wide, thoughtful arc that gave him angles on angles. He sniffed the air, tasted a sour tinge that didn’t belong to game or pine. He stopped dead and Rime stopped with him, instantly.

“What,” Rime said, flat. Not a question about a mistake—an invitation to say the right thing.

“Smoke,” Kade said. “Not from a chimney. Cold smoke. Thin. From the willows.”

Rime’s eyes sharpened. “We go soft,” he said. He tapped two claws twice against his thigh—his hand-sign for split and circle. Kade mirrored it without thinking. They melted into the brush.

It was nothing first. Then it was a shape. A man, not old, not well, huddled half under a bent willow with a small guttering fire he’d tried to hide with stones. He had a tattered backpack, a tin cup dented into a weird oval, and that look men wear when the world has never shaken their hand properly. He was rubbing numb fingers, muttering to them like they were misbehaving pets.

Kade looked across at Rime through the brush. Rime’s eyes asked: Threat or need?

Kade’s reply was one thumb angled down and a flat palm: Not a threat. Hungry. Desperate. Cautious. Then he pointed to his own eyes and then to the man’s bag: Look for tools, not weapons.

They watched long enough to know the man had a small folding knife, a coil of wire, and the kind of attention that kept checking toward the town and away from it, as if he wanted to flee both.

Rime made the decision with a small flick of his chin. He stepped out first, not slow, not fast. Kade stepped from the other side, same distance, hands open.

The man jerked like the willow had screamed. He scrambled backward, heel catching on a root, almost pitched himself into the frozen creek.

“Easy,” Kade said, steady and calm. “We see you now. You’re not in danger. Let’s talk this through.”

The man’s eyes did the wild dog thing, then the math thing. He saw claws, teeth, calm faces. “You… you’re the wolves,” he managed. “From Libby.”

Rime tilted his head. “Yes. You come last night? Foot small. Careful. You do not cut fence. Good.”

“I didn’t— I just… I needed food,” the man said, words crashing. “I wasn’t gonna hurt nobody. Just… take a little. I got nobody.”

Kade looked at Rime. Rime looked back. The world drew one of those lines it drew sometimes between wisdom and kindness.

Kade nodded once. “We’ll bring you in,” he said. “The Alpha will speak with you. Then we figure out what’s next.”

The man swallowed like his throat had forgotten water. “If I go there,” he said hoarsely, “do I come out?”

“Yes,” Rime said, simple. “If you not make stupid.”

“That’s… fair,” the man conceded, bewildered by the concept in the winter air.

They brought him in the quiet way. No rope. No theatrics. Just a slow flank that walked his fear into a corner that had an open door. Back through the draw, across the fence line Kade had marked, down the frozen gutter where the plow scars were honest. The town saw them coming because the town always watched; heads appeared, then disappeared, not to chatter but to make space.

Inside the cabin, heat pooled like an animal on the floor. Holt lifted his head first, eyes bright, expression open as the sky. Gabriel looked up from stringing a wire through a new switchplate. Mark slid a second chair from under the table like the den had been expecting exactly one need it could fill easily.

Thane stood, the kind of rising that made anyone in front of him feel less judged than examined for wounds. He looked at the man and then at his wolves, taking summary from their posture.

“Name,” Thane said, not unkind.

“Jesse,” the man croaked. “Just Jesse.”

“Have a seat, Jesse,” Thane said. “Warm up. Get a drink if you need it. Then we’ll talk.”

Jesse sat. He held the mug Rime handed him like it had told him a fond secret. He drank and some of the animal left his face, leaving a human who had lines where a map would have been helpful.

“You were on our south side last night,” Thane said. Not accusation—accounting. “Why not come to the gate.”

Jesse’s mouth twitched. He looked at the door like it might be listening. “Gates,” he said, and the word carried a lifetime of miserable little lessons. “Mostly they’re not… yours. You knock, and you don’t get help. You get a gun in your face and a speech. Or they take what you got left. Or they make you work for a week for half a loaf so you’ll leave and tell the next guy it wasn’t worth it.”

Mark exhaled through his nose, something between anger and pity filed neatly away for later policy.

“We’re not like most places,” Thane said evenly. “If you’d come to the gate and asked, you’d have been heard. Maybe the answer’s no, but we don’t shoot people for asking questions.”

Jesse looked like his body had been given a wrong answer to a right equation. He shook his head slowly. “I… didn’t know that.”

Kade stood a little behind Thane and to the left, Pathfinder posture: not guard, not threat, just witness and assurance. Rime leaned against the door, arms folded, eyes soft but not naive.

Thane let the silence sit for one beat. Then two. Then he made the decision that would become a story.

“Jesse,” he said, steady but firm. “You came in the wrong way. You slipped past fences and crept by the river instead of walking through the gate and asking to come in. That’s trespassing. And that’s not something we ignore here.”

Jesse’s hand tightened on the mug. “I said I’m sorry— I’ll work— I’ll— I didn’t—”

Thane lifted a hand and Jesse’s words broke on it like water on rock. “You’re going to learn what trespass gets you here.”

Kade felt something in his chest tighten—old worlds colliding with a new one he preferred. He trusted Thane, but the sentence carried old thunder.

Holt didn’t move. Not yet. Thane turned his head just enough for Holt to see his eyes. Then Thane winked, a small, wicked flash. Holt’s ears went up like someone had offered him dessert.

“Holt,” Thane said, gravel gone iron. “Show him what trespass earns.”

Holt straightened to full height—wide and tall and brown-black fur making him look like a living wall. He rolled his shoulders once. Crack, crack. He took one step, then another, claws clicking on wood in a slow, thunderous metronome. His eyes went from kind to cold with an actor’s precision. He opened his mouth and let a low sound roll out—not full snarl, but the promise of one. Gabriel took a half-step back purely for drama; Mark did not move but his mouth thinned like a man watching a play from the good seats.

Jesse’s breath went to pieces. The mug tilted; tea sloshed.

Kade didn’t twitch. Rime didn’t blink. They both now understood something was happening besides threat.

Holt stopped just short of Jesse, close enough that Jesse could see the old nick on one of Holt’s fang tips. Holt dropped his voice into that rumble that sounded like a landslide deciding between choices.

“You trespass,” Holt said. “Pack punish.”

Jesse made a sound like a door hinge in a haunted house.

Holt lifted one claw—massive, blunt-sharp, all promise—and then pivoted, almost daintily, to the table. He picked up a clean bowl. He ladled stew slow and deliberate, and set the bowl in front of Jesse with ceremony. Holt’s face split into the wide, toothy grin of a wolf who refused to let the world forget it could be kind.

“Eat,” Holt said cheerfully.

Jesse stared at the bowl like it was a snake that had decided to be a pie. Confusion fought fear and then kicked it out into the snow. “I… what?”

Gabriel couldn’t help it. He barked out a laugh. Mark snorted and covered it with a cough that fooled no one. Rime’s mouth twitched in a way that would be illegal in some counties. Kade’s shoulders finally loosened.

Thane let the room laugh. Then he dropped the line that made the lesson stick.

“Just kidding,” he said, deadpan melting into grin. “Eat up. It’s pretty good.”

Jesse made a noise that might have been laughter and might have been a sob. He ate. The first spoonful hit like heat finding the center of a cold man. The second was faster. By the fourth, his shoulders had rolled down from around his ears and decided to be shoulders again.

Kade watched the whole arc with eyes that caught more than light. He stood where he could see Thane’s face and Jesse’s hands and Holt’s satisfied posture—the theater of a lesson learned done right.

“You could have gone the other way,” Jesse said between bites when breath returned to him. “You could have… made me…”

“We could have,” Thane agreed. “But we don’t do that here unless it’s necessary. Fear travels farther than kindness on the first day.” He pointed lightly with one claw at the bowl. “Kindness travels farther on the last.”

Jesse nodded, tear-bright without embarrassment because the room didn’t treat tears like shame. “I’ll work,” he said, immediate. “Whatever you need. I can fix fences, coil wire, dig. I don’t want to take. I want to— I just—” He shook his head. “I didn’t know a place like this still… existed.”

“It does because people work,” Mark said mildly. “And because we don’t shoot at questions.”

Gabriel rested his elbows on the back of a chair. “Also because our stew is apparently the ninth wonder.”

Holt looked pleased enough to tip over. “Holt soup save lives,” he announced.

Rime’s eyes softened. “Sometimes.”

Thane waited until Jesse slowed his spoon and the color had come back to his face. Then he laid the rest of the law, not as threat, but as structure a man could lean on.

“Rules,” Thane said. “You want help, you come to a gate. If you’re hungry, you say so out loud. You don’t take what isn’t offered. You don’t test our fences in the dark. You need work, we have it. If you lie, you won’t like who I am after that.”

Jesse nodded fast. “Yes, sir.”

Thane’s mouth quirked. The sir landed without ceremony and didn’t make anyone in the room uncomfortable. “You stay tonight in the hotel,” he said. “Tomorrow morning you go see Marta. She’ll put you on a work crew and a fair tally. If you decide Libby isn’t your place, you leave through a gate after saying so. You don’t vanish. I don’t like hunting ghosts.”

“Yes, sir,” Jesse repeated, steadier.

“Good,” Thane said. He leaned back, letting the decision loosen his shoulders. He looked to Rime and Kade. “Nice catch.”

Rime shrugged the minimal shrug of a wolf who didn’t need applause. “He was cold,” he said. “Cold makes men stupid.”

Kade’s grin was quiet and honest. “We saw his wire before his knife,” he said. “He wanted to snare dinner, not a guard.”

“Pathfinder,” Thane said, approving without syrup.

Kade accepted the praise like a tool he intended to use carefully.

Holt plunked a slice of bread down beside Jesse’s bowl like a judge handing down a much-wanted sentence. “Eat more. Then nap. Then maybe shovel,” he said, clearly outlining every good life.

Jesse smiled into his bowl. “Yes… sir,” he said again, but this time it sounded like thank you in a dialect the room spoke fluently.

By late afternoon, the light thinned. Rime slipped out to walk the last short line of fence because his paws got twitchy if the map didn’t end clean. Gabriel tuned his guitar to some scale that made the stove hum friendlier. Mark sorted small bags of nails by size into coffee tins because the world, to him, was a series of correct piles. Holt made more stew because he’d tasted approval and was now drunk on it. Jesse dozed upright in the chair like a man who hadn’t slept with his back against anything trustworthy in weeks.

Kade stood beside the window and looked out at the street, then at Thane’s reflection in the glass. “I have a question,” he said.

Thane did not turn fully, just enough to let the reflection carry his attention. “Ask.”

“What would you have done if he’d lied?” Kade asked. No edge. Just the real question.

Thane’s gravel softened and didn’t lose any truth. “Made him stop. Made him leave. Or made him pay with work until his lie stopped being a habit.” He nodded toward the bowl. “This is the lesson I prefer. It costs less in the long run.”

Kade took that in the way he took terrain—slow, with respect for the small angles. “Mercy travels farther on the last day,” he repeated.

Thane’s mouth curled. “You’re listening.”

“I’m learning,” Kade said.

“Good,” Thane replied. “You’re also leading now.” He tapped the window, where the fence line and the ridge made a clean V in the distance. “The new post suits you.”

Kade glanced at his clawed feet, flexed them against the floor, the pads making that soft sound only wolves noticed. “Powerful paws,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Powerful me.”

Thane heard it, smiled and said nothing, which was as good as praise.

Evening came in patient, not rushed. Rime returned with his report: “Fence good. Two posts tired. I fix with Mark tomorrow.” Gabriel tried a song he’d been threatening for weeks and Holt declared it good. Jesse woke to the smell of more stew and looked around like he couldn’t quite accept that waking could be better than sleeping.

Thane stepped to the center of the room, and as he so often did, he set the final line that turned a day into a story.

“Pathfinder,” he said to Kade, voice loud enough to fill the beams. “Tomorrow, you and Rime run the west line first. Everything else follows.”

Kade nodded once, eyes bright. “Yes.”

“And Jesse,” Thane added, “tomorrow, you knock on the gate when you want in.

Jesse nodded, smiling despite himself. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Thane said, again. He looked around his den—wolves, heat, a man learning how not to steal, a town learning how to breathe—and let the smile up one more notch. “Eat. Then sleep. Then the map.”

Holt slammed a ladle into the pot like a bell. “Stew is ready for judgment,” he announced.

“Objection,” Mark said dryly. “It was sentenced hours ago.”

“Appeal denied,” Gabriel added, grinning, and struck a bright, silly chord.

They ate. They laughed. They let the quiet between them be something more than silence. Outside, the fence stood and the river remembered that it had brought a man to a door, and the door had opened. Inside, two quiet wolves—one who had always known the line, one who had learned to find it again—looked at each other and understood the thing they shared:

Fast feet. Slow minds. Strong oaths.

The den held the truth like it held heat: generously, until everyone in the room glowed.

Morning wore a clear edge of sunlight over Libby like a blade polished for work. The den smelled of coffee and drying smoke and a hundred small domestic victories: a patrol done, the generator fed, the radio happy for a tune. Thane moved like a man that morning who’d decided the world needed attention and that attention would not be delayed. He checked a strap on his pack, then glanced toward the armchair where Kade had been sleeping on and off since joining the den. The new wolf sat up with that steady, watchful calm he had displayed from the first day—hands curled, claws showing, hair ruffled from sleep. He smiled once when he saw Thane move.

“You ready?” Thane asked. The gravel was low in the question, not a challenge.

Kade’s yellow eyes narrowed with pleased energy. “Yes. Today I meet Marta and Hank?”

“You do,” Thane said. “Officially.”

They walked together through the town—two wolves who’d recently learned to share a world. The Humvee sat where Thane had left it, heavy and practical and a little too proud of its off-road dents. They climbed in; the engine started with a familiar grumble that made the cab smell like old leather and road. Thane slid the Humvee into gear, and for a half-beat the world outside them was all glass and motion.

Marta’s office in City Hall had that scent of baked bread and paperwork that belonged to towns that kept going because someone remembered names. Marta looked up as they walked in—broad smile, hands still dusted with flour from the bakery she doubled at, eyes the sort that had been judging good people and bad for twenty years and had learned to like the good ones.

“Thane,” she said, clasping his paw in two of her own. “You’re at it early today.”

“As always,” Thane said, then turned to Kade. “This is Kade. He’s joined the Libby Pack.”

Marta’s eyebrows rose once, then dropped into the delighted surprise of someone who hadn’t expected that but always liked to be in on anything that worked. She bent to Kade with the affability of someone who sheltered stray dogs as a hobby. “Well, hello there,” she said.

Kade inclined his head with polite reserve. “Ma’am. Thane brought me. I am grateful to be here.”

Hank arrived a minute later, mechanics’ grease under his nails, shotgun across one shoulder as a kind of casual posture. He had been at the wall the day of the raid and now wore the easy tiredness of a man who’d watched a thing go right. He looked Kade up like a man checking the fit of a new boot and did a slow double-take at the smooth cadence in Kade’s voice.

“He talks like you, Thane,” Hank commented dryly. “Clean. No broken stutter.”

Thane let a small, pleased sound out. “Taught himself well,” he said. “He picked up English from good people on a long route.” He left out the parts about fear and the north; that would be a later conversation.

Marta gave Kade a quick assessment—warm, practical, a professional’s bright gaze. “If he’s with you, he’s got to know we’ll make him a cup of coffee that’s survivable,” she said, and winked.

Kade grinned in a way that was half shame at his enthusiasm and half gratitude. “I have not had coffee here yet,” he admitted.

Hank barked a laugh. “You’ll survive. Maybe.”

The meeting was short, warm, and ceremonial in the efficient manner of towns that both had to be practical and liked being polite. Marta and Hank both extended the sort of immediate conditional trust a town offered those who carried proven honor. Kade felt it and answered with a small bow of appreciation. The town leaders liked that. Thane liked that. The day had been set in ways that counted.

“Good,” Marta said. “Now go get something to eat before you two take a joyride somewhere ugly.”

Thane grinned and tossed her a clawed thumbs-up.

They climbed back into the Humvee and headed for the south road. The drive to Glendive was a two-hour ribbon of cold and pine, a trip that showed Kade how humans had once routed things and how wolves followed the lines people still left behind. Thane liked letting the land speak; Kade liked hearing it. They talked in simple bursts about the rig, the radio, and small mechanical things—talk that belonged to people who trusted each other’s hands.

Glendive had a different feel from Libby. Where Libby protected itself with community and warmth, Glendive had a taut, watchful edge—barbed wire, a scarce number of shopfronts, men who sized visitors like a measurement. But in this winter, it was also a place that still traded, that still took goods for goods, and that still needed the kind of common-sense agreements people like Thane liked to build.

Thane had his reasons for coming. Not just trade—though good trade never hurt—but also a softer lesson: showing Kade the nets that mercy cast. Thane wanted Kade to see what a kindness-based reputation built on rules and restraint looked like, and what it earned in return.

They rolled into town carrying crates of tools—salvaged, cleaned, and brought with the kind of care that made men business-ready—along with a few boluses of medical supplies and a couple of radio parts the Libby crew couldn’t afford to keep stockpiled. Glendive’s market had things to swap: a pallet of decent tires, a crate of salt, a small bunch of farm tools with handles that felt loved by hands. Thane had packed things that would give them immediate bargaining chips.

They found the market in the center of town, a small cluster of trade tables and a single awning that did a lot of polite shading. Vendors’ faces unrolled in degrees—some distrust, some curiosity, some quick calculation. Thane rolled the crate to a table and started talking trade with a cadence that read as both polite and unbreakable. Kade watched the people trade. He took in how an apology travels farther than a threat, how a fair trade made a man stop wearing distrust like armor.

A known figure moved through the market like a shadow: Garrick Voss. The same Voss who had run Glendive in ways that left teeth marks on towns, the man whose name adventure-told as a local villain. He paused when he saw Thane and relaxed just enough to be cautious. People around them held their breath like a small, polite tension.

Voss came forward with trepidation in his step and that thick town-boy-turned-boss drawl that had become his armor. He looked at Kade and saw a new face beside Thane. His eyes narrowed the way a man sizes the particulars of a risk: a newcomer, Thane’s Humvee, the weight of story in a day.

“Thane,” Voss said, formal and a touch brittle. “Came here to trade or to preach?”

Thane offered him a level look and the faintest half-smile. “Both,” he said. “Depends on your needs.”

Voss’s mouth twitched. “We have needs. We could use some radios and a good set of tools. And we’ve got salted venison—good cut. We could use a few of your… uh, parts.”

Trade began the way trades did: with numbers and small courtesy. Thane moved his pieces like someone who’d sat at enough tables to know where the lines fell. Kade watched how Thane did not only barter but also listen—how the man across from him started defensive and came out making an offer. Kindness in practice: give a man a fair chance and he will sometimes meet you halfway.

Voss cleared his throat, then looked at Kade like he was trying to place a face in a crowd. “And this is…?”

“Kade,” Thane said. “He’s from the north. A skilled pathfinder. Now with us.”

Voss lingered on Kade’s claws, on the calm stillness in the newcomer’s posture — the kind of stillness earned, not posed. The awareness in Kade’s stance said two things at once: I don’t want trouble, but I’m not afraid of it if you bring it.

Voss looked away first.

Thane didn’t smile, not out loud. But under his breath, just for Kade, he said:

“You don’t have to prove anything here. He remembers what happened last time I taught a lesson.”

Kade leaned in slightly, voice quiet with realization. “You didn’t need to say anything to him.”

“I didn’t,” Thane said. “The world did.”

And it was true. Between the crates, the quiet, and the memory of apology on the cold wind, Voss and his men stayed cautious — not because they were scared of being mauled, but because they’d already seen what Thane did to pride without bloodshed.

They finished the trades—tires in exchange for radio capacitors, a crate of venison taken in return for a stack of tools and a small spare alternator—and found themselves lighter in the cab on the ride back. Kade hummed quietly to himself like a wolf spoil-satisfied by the day’s small victories.

On the drive home Thane told him small things about managing people: the difference between a lesson and a punishment; how mercy taxes the teacher but makes the town cheaper in the long run; how an apology can be stronger than a blade if you know how to use it. Kade absorbed it all, fingers drumming on his knee, yellow eyes thoughtful.

When the Humvee slid back into Libby and they climbed out into a sun that had softened like well-tempered iron, Kade’s smile was full of something that had been missing in his step for years.

“Today,” Kade said finally, quiet and soft, “I saw why you chose mercy.”

Thane hummed, pleased. “You did?”

Kade nodded. “I like how the world buys peace after you teach the lesson. It’s cleaner.”

Thane tapped the Humvee with his knuckles and let a grin curl. “Cleaner’s good. Strong’s good. Kindness makes both last.”

Kade’s shoulders eased. He looked at Thane in that way one only does when a thing has been taught and caught. “Thank you.”

Thane chuckled—half pride, half indulgence. “You keep doing the right math. You’ll be useful for a long time.”

Kade laughed, low and happy. He walked with Thane toward the cabin like a wolf who had just finished a lesson and eaten the meal that proved it.

Inside, the den welcomed them back. The pack drifted toward them with questions and jokes and a dozen small claims of ownership. The day had been a lesson; the town had been a market; Kade had seen the taste of mercy and liked it.

Thane clapped him once on the shoulder, the same hand that had steadied him when they untied rope months before. “Tomorrow,” Thane said, “we check the battery stash and see who needs parts out on the east road. But tonight—soup, and perhaps Gabriel will grace us with a song about a Humvee and a howl.”

Kade smiled at that. The way the cabin hummed, the way people eased into the ordinary, the way small mercies stacked into something that smelled like home—all of it made him settle in further. Thane’s grin was a secret between them, and Kade answered with a small, feral chuckle because he understood the command under the instruction: play it up, but never forget who you are.

They shared a look, equal parts conspirators and teacher-student, and then let the rest of the den pull them back into the warm, messy, fiercely lovable center of things.

Saturday found the Libby den standing in the soft hush of a day with nothing left to demand of it. The chores were done. The firewood had been stacked twice as high as Mark’s head. The creek had been cleared of debris. The south gate’s bullet scars had already begun to develop stories all their own. Even Holt—the unshakable engine of spontaneous effort—had no task to swing at.

So they did the only reasonable thing wolves do on a taskless day:

Absolutely nothing productive at all.

The cabin was a zoo of calm chaos.

Holt demonstrated his deeply-held belief that lying on the floor in strange positions counted as stretching. He balanced a leather boot on one foot for no reason. “Helps blood,” he muttered to no one. “Balance of spirit and sole.”

Gabriel sat at the corner table with his guitar, spinning out a lazy improvisation that somehow sounded like the river and a bar fight at the same time. His hair was wild, eyes half-closed as though dreaming. Every once in a while, he’d pause, scribble something in his songbook—or steal Mark’s pencil and sabotage one of his neat lists.

Mark, in turn, kept resetting his clipboard traps. Every time Gabriel swiped one, he’d calmly retrieve another from the shelf, muttering something like “pen thief” and pretending he wasn’t borderline amused by the whole ordeal.

Rime sat by the woodstove, feet and claws bare on the warm stones, sharpening a small hunting knife with the patience of a glacier and occasional commentary.

“No more steel on wood table,” he reminded Holt without looking.

Holt withdrew the blade from the table edge like a sulking child and moved to the floor. “Fine. I sharpen floor then.”

“Don’t,” Rime said.

“Will not,” Holt corrected.

Near them all, Kade sat on the arm of the couch like he wasn’t sure he deserved more surface area than that, but also like he knew he’d be forgiven anyhow. He watched the rest with half a smile—like a man slowly believing a dream and trying not to breathe too fast.

And on the sofa, Thane watched them all with that gaze that took in chaos and foot-swinging and off-key whistling in full acceptance. Maybe even pride.

He broke the lazy noise first.

“Kade,” Thane said, just calm enough to get attention without trying. The newcomer lifted his head immediately.

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Tell me about your pack.”

Everything stilled—not hostile, but expectant. Even Holt raised an eyebrow and stopped torturing the kitchen chair leg.

Kade sat quieter, like a man deciding whether to open a door to a room that wasn’t built well enough to walk through.

“What… specifically?” he asked.

“Everything,” Thane said. “Where you came from. How you lived. Your Alpha. Whether we need to keep an eye on the horizon.”

Kade’s instinct to protect old secrets tightened his shoulders, but he softened. They were pack now. He had chosen them. And he understood what the question was really doing: ensuring the den remained safe.

“My pack…” he began, slow as if uncoiling an old rope. “Was not like this one. Or Sable’s. Not even like raiders who use chaos for tribute. Mine leaned into fear like it was a wise elder. The Alpha taught that control was love and suspicion was survival. That being obeyed meant being respected. He used words like strength, and necessary, and never trust softness.”

Gabriel plucked one low, tense note that sounded like a question mark.

“Were they like pure ferals?” Mark asked. “Meaning—no towns, no tech, no speech beyond basic?”

“Not exactly,” Kade said. “We understood people. We just didn’t want to be anything like them. We didn’t wear clothes except when dealing with those you call ‘townfolk.’ We scouted human shelters for parts. We learned to drive, but only to salvage and escape. We understood territory. But cooperation?” He shook his head. “That’s a weakness. In their eyes.”

Thane’s gaze deepened, not unkind, but studying. “So they know of places like ours.”

“Oh yes,” Kade nodded. “They probably believe you’re weak for having walls at all.”

Holt snarled under his breath. “Stupid thought. Walls strong. Keep pups safe.”

“Walls keep minds safe, too,” Gabriel added. “Safety gives us music. Stories. Soup.”

Rime nodded from the stove. “Free wolves choose walls. Others live with claws only.”

Kade’s smile was part admiration. “Exactly.”

Thane let the lull rest for a moment before he asked the real question, voice lower, gravel true.

“Do they know about us?”

Kade hesitated only long enough to consider what name information carried.

“No,” he said firmly. “Only that I headed south. No details. I left quietly. The ones who might’ve followed were too busy controlling what was left behind.”

“And,” Thane continued. “Should we be worried they might come here?”

Kade’s eyes flicked toward the window. Not nervously. Thoughtfully.

“No,” he said, and there was certainty in it. “They’re too feral. Not stupid—just clinging to survival the way a rope clings to whatever it’s tied to. They won’t enter a town. Not unless they’ve already died in their heads and don’t know it yet.”

Thane leaned back, arms crossed, one clawed foot idly tapping the woodgrain.

“Sound logic,” he agreed. “But I ask you straight, Kade—should we intervene? Should we teach them a lesson?”

Kade’s face didn’t move for half a beat. He did not look away. He breathed in once, sharp, let it out slow.

“No,” he said. Not weak, not hesitant—but unfinished. Like a promise he wasn’t ready to cash in yet.

It landed like a stone dropped into clear water.

Thane’s brow rose slightly. “That’s an answer,” he said, leaving the second half unsaid.

“It is,” Kade nodded, tone steady. “They’re not ready. And we’re not done here.” A small glance at Gabriel and Mark, then Rime, then Holt. “I’m not done learning what strength really is.”

No one spoke for a moment. They didn’t need to. The fire cracked, the knife scraped the whetstone once more, Mark’s pencil ticked across a page like thunder deciding to be quiet.

Then Holt ruined the silence, as was his sacred duty.

“You talk heavy,” Holt declared. “Like wet wood. But… right.”

Kade laughed once. “Apologies. I… don’t know what normal days are supposed to sound like. I haven’t had enough of them.”

“This is normal,” Gabriel said, pointing to the entire room, including Rime trying to see if the cat on the windowsill would high-five him. “Welcome to it.”

“It is very loud,” Kade said.

“It gets worse,” Mark promised.

“Better,” Rime corrected.

Thane rose to check the lantern wick, but paused long enough to say:

“We’re going to revisit that question—about your old Alpha. Not today. Not before you’re ready. But someday I’ll need a better ‘No.’”

Kade nodded once. “I’ll give it to you.”

Gabriel strummed—a bright chord this time, a promise-not-promise. “Hey Kade.”

“Mm?”

“If you ever want a louder answer… we can teach you how to play guitar and annoy hundreds of people at once.”

Kade laughed, and this time it was clean. “I look forward to that.”

Rime finally got the cat to high-five him. Holt declared the soup reheated. Mark rolled his papers and banned Gabriel from stealing any more clipboards. The cabin hummed.

And in the quiet undercurrent between breaths and bursts of laughter, Thane logged Kade’s answer the way he logged every important variable in his world:

Later.

Evening settled into Libby the way music settles into a room no one asked to be quiet in. The south had been tested and held. The gate had made its point. The truck of raiders was long gone, wheels chewing dirt somewhere past where decency ran out. The pack—some still half-dusted from the road, others already joking about whose turn it was to light the lanterns—crossed the square on sure paws and tired legs, pulled back toward the warm hearth of their den, mission complete.

The cabin welcomed them with all the usual expected grace. The stove clicked and hissed as if it had been waiting, the air smelled like tea, woodsmoke, and a dozen stories not yet told. Rime entered first, doing his perimeter ritual with the door before letting the others pass. Holt ducked in second, muttering about soup. Mark followed, already unrolling one of the maps near the table and making a note about patrol paths. Gabriel took the corner chair, guitar in hand, tuning half in rhythm and half in thought.

Kade paused at the door for half a breath, one clawed hand over the frame—not hesitation, but gratitude disguised as careful posture.

Thane stepped in last, looked once around the den, and allowed the weight of the day to drop into the floorboards with his paws.

“Close the door,” he said, voice lower but steady. “Cold’s had enough of us today.”

Rime clicked the bolt into place.

Inside, the den rolled into its familiar chaos—Rime lighting lamps, Holt claiming the ladle and stirring nothing in particular with grave authority, Gabriel plucking a bad blues riff that made Mark say “please don’t” without looking up. Noise swirled easily, in that way that felt like music made by people who trusted one another.

Thane crossed to the long sofa beneath the window and sat down, shoulders tired but unbowed. He angled his body slightly—space open beside him.

Kade saw the opening and moved toward it with the energy of a wolf who had earned a place but wasn’t sure yet if he was allowed to relax into it. He sat, careful at first, and then let himself ease back an inch. Not quite shoulder to shoulder, but close enough to share heat.

For a long minute they said nothing. The kind of nothing that filled a room with ease.

Then Kade looked over, yellow eyes still bright under dusk lamplight.

“You didn’t kill them,” he said.

Thane didn’t pretend the reference was unclear. “No.”

“They shot you. Point blank. Came to take what was ours. And still you left them alive.” Kade exhaled, slow. “That’s… not what happens where I’m from.”

“No?” Thane asked, the smallest tilt of amusement in his voice.

“No.” Kade shook his head. “Where I’m from, they’d be dead. Skinned, maybe even left in the open as a message. Or at best—limbs shattered, sent away crawling. Instead you made a man apologize to steel and left him his legs.”

Thane turned his gaze toward the window, where snow drift was layered like discarded parchment. “Mercy is not pacifism,” he said. “Mercy is knowing exactly how far you could go and choosing a shorter road instead.”

Kade turned that over a few times behind his teeth and then nodded, slowly. “You did teach him something. I saw it on his face. Fear… but also confusion. He didn’t know how to process the idea that brutality wasn’t the default.”

“He will,” Thane said. “Confusion is a seed. Let it sprout.”

Kade huffed a quiet laugh—old instincts arguing delightedly with new philosophy. “I respect that,” he said. “Weapons down. Lesson learned. Gate forgiven.” He shook his head. “You are the kind of Alpha I was always hoping existed.”

Thane didn’t answer that with words. The ache and weight in his posture said enough: leadership was a burden carried best when no one had to admire it.

From the table, Holt’s voice boomed like he was practicing for an amphitheater. “Soup is… not soup. Yet. Needs liquid. Fire. Ingredients.”

Mark didn’t look up from his notebook. “So everything, then?”

“Small details,” Holt said, lifting the ladle like a scepter. “Soup will exist. Trust process.”

Gabriel nodded gravely from behind his guitar. “Art and cooking have that in common. No one sees the nonsense until it becomes delicious.”

Rime snorted. “You use fire on guitars?”

“Sometimes,” Gabriel deadpanned.

Kade glanced over at Thane, eyes bright with the kind of awe that belonged to someone who might’ve forgotten this level of ease existed. “Do they always do this?”

“Yes,” Thane said. “This is the quiet version.”

The laughter slid through Kade like someone pouring warm metal over cracked stone.

“They said something earlier,” Kade continued, “during lunch. I didn’t think to ask until now. Something about… no shoes?”

Thane blinked. Then the grin happened—one of the rare ones. The one that changed the gravel in his voice to more of a rumble.

“Right,” he said, leaning back. “That.”

Kade adjusted on the sofa, all earnest interest and wolf instinct. “Gabriel mentioned it. Holt threatened it. I noticed no one wears them in here. Thought maybe it was… I don’t know, a rule of the house. But he made it sound like… culture.”

“It is,” Thane said. “It’s a wolf thing. Or it is in this den.”

Kade blinked, waiting.

Thane put a hand over one of his own clawed feet, tapping the thick pads beneath. “Powerful paws mean powerful you. Clawed feet are meant for ground. For grip. For balance. For work.”

Kade stared down at his own feet—dark claws hooked and sharp, fur splitting around knuckles, toes spread naturally on the wooden floor. He spread them more, feeling the full surface. Something clicked. “So shoes… get in the way.”

“Exactly,” Thane said. “Unless,” he added, voice dropping with mock solemnity, “you have powerful—or aggressive—human shoes. Most don’t.”

Kade broke into a laugh that shook loose every last knot of tension left from the gate. “That makes so much sense,” he said. “I’ve… never once heard someone put it that way. But it’s true. Feet are weapons. Balance. Everything. It never crossed my mind that shoes were the problem.”

“Shoes,” Holt rumbled from the table, “are human nonsense. Slow you. Muffle toes. Socks are betrayal. Den does not allow betrayal.”

“Tell that to the laundry basket,” Gabriel muttered.

Rime pointed with a claw without turning his head. “Laundry basket can’t run from Holt.”

They all paused a moment and looked toward the hallway like they half-expected the basket to roll past on its own.

Kade chuckled again, leaning back deeper into the couch. “Powerful paws,” he repeated, as if memorizing a code. “Powerful me.”

Thane nodded. “One of the house truths around here.”

“What’re the others?” Kade asked, genuinely curious.

Thane lifted a single finger. “Under my roof means under my oath.”

Second finger. “You leave the den, you say where you go. So we don’t hunt ghosts.”

Third. “You break something, you fix it. Or you tell somebody who can.”

Fourth. “If Holt says it’s ‘not soup,’ it’s probably a war crime in progress.”

“YES,” Holt boomed.

“Fifth,” Thane said, flicking his chin toward Gabriel. “Music is always allowed, unless it makes Mark write threatening letters to the concept of melody.”

Mark didn’t even look up. “The songs were fine. The lyrics were a felony.”

“Still writing that letter,” Gabriel said.

Kade sat there soaking it up—this collective, this offbeat communion held together by truth and sarcasm and the quiet unbroken line from one beating heart to another. He exhaled, slow, content. “You know,” he said. “In my old pack, strength meant solitude. It meant fear. Down to the bone. Everything was edged.”

“And here?” Thane asked.

“Here,” Kade said, “strength looks like shared bowls. Like unlocked doors. Like… the right kind of noise.”

Thane worked his shoulder unconsciously, where the earlier bullet hole had already faded to almost nothing beneath the shirt. He said nothing for a moment.

Then: “You fit here. Doesn’t mean you have to. But if you stay, the work will be real. The rules—harder than they look. Loyalty has sharp teeth. So does quiet.”

Kade nodded. “I’m ready for sharp things. I’m tired of the blunt ones.”

Thane grunted once—a nod of approval.

Across the room, Holt finally declared war on the soup, dragging the pot to the center table. “Soup exists,” he announced, voice full and holy. “Witness.”

Rime sniffed. “Not soup. Stew.”

“It has liquid,” Holt snarled.

“Barely,” Rime said.

Gabriel strummed a chord that almost fit the tone. “Holt, what was your ratio again? Two parts potato to one part onion, seven parts ‘don’t question me,’ and one part water?”

“Yes,” Holt said proudly.

Mark scribbled a formula. “I think that technically qualifies as porridge wearing a hat.”

Kade turned to Thane with the grin of a man who’d been gently mugged by friendship.

“I would like,” he said, “to stay.”

“Then stay,” Thane said plainly.

Kade leaned back more fully into the sofa. For the first time in a long time, he let his guard drop—just enough to believe the wood wouldn’t splinter beneath him, the walls wouldn’t thin, the air wouldn’t turn sharp.

Thane watched him settle. Watched the newcomer’s claws rest easily against the grain of the floor. Watched yellow eyes soften just a shade under lamplight.

“Welcome to the pack,” Thane said at last.

Kade nodded. “Feels like it.”

Gabriel played something bright and crooked. Holt declared everyone must taste the not-soup or confess cowardice. Rime quietly stoked the stove, refusing to stand down until the fire’s heartbeat matched the room’s.

Outside, the dark took its time. Inside, legs uncurled, hands brushed, jokes landed, and a wolf who had once walked alone found himself in the heart of something he understood for the first time with more than instinct:

Home.

Lunch settled the cabin into a work-quiet hum. Bowls stacked. Stove fed. Tools and bags reclaimed the places they always went without anyone telling them where. Outside, the sky leaned pale and clean over Libby, light biting at the borders of snow still clinging to eaves. The town sounded like a place that planned to keep existing: axes somewhere, a voice calling across the street, the lazy clank of a wrench against a truck frame. The south wind carried metal and pine in equal measure.

Kade stood by the shelf, testing a latch he and Gabriel had reseated that morning. It held. He let his hand fall, claws clicking once on wood. He had learned in a day the rhythm in Thane’s den: speak plain, work steady, eat when given, ask when unsure. He did not call what he felt home, not yet. But he could see how someone would. It sat in the corners like warmth you forgot was there until you needed it.

Holt leaned on the table, a mountain pretending to be furniture. “Window good,” Holt said, approving. “No more sing in wind. Gabriel happy. World safer.”

Gabriel, coiling a length of wire with a musician’s neatness, smirked. “The south wind can sing, just not through that latch anymore. Kade’s a fast study.”

Rime eased the door open with two fingers and listened. He had a way of tilting his head that looked like a bird in snow. “Street quiet,” he said. “Hank drilling men by east hole. Marta talk at City Hall.”

Mark finish-checked his list. “Then we—”

A fist hit the cabin door exactly twice. Not frantic. Official.

Rime had it open before the third beat could land. One of Hank’s deputies stood on the step, breath smoking, eyes locked to the Alpha like a compass finds north. Younger guy, nervous energy contained by training.

“Thane,” he said, not wasting air. “South gate.”

Thane was already shrugging into his coat, voice gravel and decision. “What, how many, how armed.”

“Pickup. Six men. All with rifles that look… maintained enough. They rolled up hard and started putting rounds into the gate. Hank sent me. He says they’re yelling for entry, food, supplies.”

“Anyone hurt inside?”

“Negative,” the deputy said. “Gates are holding. We reinforced them last month. You asked; so we did.”

Thane’s mouth twitched at the corner. Approval. He moved once, and the room moved with him.

“Holt, Rime,” Thane said. “On me.”

“Always,” Rime answered.

Holt’s big hands closed and opened. “Good,” he said, like a man who enjoyed carrying heavy things more than breaking them.

“Mark,” Thane continued. “With Hank’s line. Keep them organized. Make sure our rifles are eyes-on and cool heads only, no hair triggers.”

“On it.” Mark grabbed his radio and the wide leather strap of calm that he wore like armor.

“Gabriel,” Thane said, already halfway out the door. “With me. Kade—”

Kade straightened without knowing he’d done it.

“—on my left,” Thane finished. “You asked to be useful. Come see what the law looks like here.”

Kade nodded once. “Understood.”

They crossed town at a run that read as walking. People knew enough to get out of the way when Thane moved like that. Heads turned; doors cracked; a child on a porch counted wolves under his breath like a spell. The path bent to the south, past the square, past the radio shed that hummed like a living thing, past the racks where cut wood was stacked by height and season. The south gate rose at the end of the street, metal-clad and iron-braced, the fence on either side a wall of salvaged steel sheets and timber bolted into a kind of stubborn strength.

Noise met them before the view did: the bright, ugly clang of rounds hitting steel; the shouted laughter of men who did not understand what they were asking for; the overlapping bark of Hank’s people keeping order atop the walkway.

Thane and his wolves stepped into the gateyard.

The pickup idled twenty yards beyond, paint scabbed off in big flakes, grille punched by deer or anger or both. Six men. One in the bed with a rifle propped on the cab, two on either side with guns down at ready-shoulder, one in the passenger seat smoking like he’d trained for it, and the driver—big, burly, hat pulled low, jaw set hard enough to break teeth. He climbed out as Thane approached and swaggered forward like all the bad movies taught him to. Cowboy accent thick enough to pour.

Hank stood up top behind the crenels, wide stance, shotgun across his arms, eyes level. He saw Thane and flicked two fingers. All good. No breach.

Thane didn’t bother with the walkway. He nodded, and Hank’s men unbarred just enough iron to let a human-sized door crack open in the main gate. Thane slid through the seam with Rime, Holt, Gabriel, and Kade right behind. They rebarred the gap behind them: a statement. We are not foolish.

The raiders laughed at the procession like boys at a carnival exhibit. One called, “Aw, lookit! They brought the pets to talk.” Another tried a bark and made it sound like a coyote tripping over a bucket. The man on the cab spit over the side. “Heard all kinds about you dog-people.”

Thane’s face didn’t change. He stepped until he was ten yards out and no more. Close enough to see pupils. Far enough not to get flanked.

“Afternoon,” he said. The gravel took no effort. “This is the south gate of Libby. You’re at the wrong door if you came to sell Girl Scout cookies.”

The burly leader barked a laugh and planted boots shoulder-wide. “We ain’t selling,” he said, vowels long. “We’re collecting.” He gestured with his rifle barrel at the gate, at the town. “You got food. You got fuel. You got guns. We need all three.” He spit. “So… open.”

Thane glanced at the gate, then back. “No.”

The man blinked, offended by the letter count. “No? That it?”

“That’s it,” Thane said. “You can also have no with a please if you’re a manners man.”

The passenger with the cigarette leaned out his window. “We got six guns,” he called around his smoke. “You got… what is that? A couple house mutts and the town knitting circle up there. We’ll cut you up and wear you like coats.”

Holt smiled. It wasn’t friendly. Rime didn’t smile; he didn’t do theater. Gabriel folded his hands in front of him like a polite man at a funeral. Kade looked at the arrangement and thought, This is what he meant by mercy with teeth.

Thane lifted one hand, palm down, the gesture that did more than shouting. The town rifles along the wall stayed shouldered but did not track. No sudden flinches. No wasted bravado. The men up top breathed in and out the way Hank had drilled into them.

“Last chance to be a better story,” Thane said conversationally. “Turn it around. Go north, go east, go to hell—I don’t care. But you’re not coming through this gate.”

The burly leader’s smile turned into something sharp. “You think we’re asking?” He looked back at his men. “Boys, show the dogs why we don’t ask.”

The man in the bed of the pickup—edgy, young, stupid—did not wait for ceremony. He snapped the rifle to his shoulder and fired, not at the wall this time, but straight at the center mass of the wolf with the gravel voice.

The shot cracked the air. Sound hit first. Then the slug hit Thane’s left shoulder, square, and went through fur and fabric and flesh the way fast metal does. It snapped his jacket back, jerked him half a step. Holt’s snarl detonated like a small storm. Rime slid a foot and found a new angle. Hank’s men went statues with hot eyes.

Kade didn’t breathe.

Thane looked down at his shoulder. At the widening dark on the shirt. He rolled it once to test the mechanics. He flexed his hand. When he looked back at the raider leader, his smile had changed shape.

It had gone feral.

“I am getting pretty tired,” Thane said, and the words came out like new gravel being laid on an old road, “of random raiders ruining perfectly good shirts.”

The leader’s mouth opened, stayed there a second like his brain forgot which order words came in. The young shooter in the bed took a small step back. The passenger dropped his cigarette and missed it twice before he picked it up again. Something like a collective thought tugged at them: That is… not how humans react.

Kade watched the wound close. Not fast like a trick, not slow like a sermon—just steady, flesh knitting under the shredded fabric, blood drying faster than it had any right to. He felt a click in the deep part of himself that judged leaders without being asked to: This is the fire he meant. The one for cooking, not worship.

Thane let them see it. Let them watch proof demand new behavior. He took another step forward, not enough to close, just enough to underscore the arithmetic.

“You brought six guns and a truck that’s older than your best excuse,” he said. “You shot the gate of a town that did nothing to you, then you shot a wolf who asked you to be smarter. You’ve got two choices; maybe three if we’re generous.”

“Option one,” Thane continued as if he were ordering coffee, “you drop your weapons on the ground, very carefully, and you leave in your truck. You do not come back. You do not send friends. You tell anyone who asks that Libby is not worth the ammo it takes to annoy it.”

Holt’s teeth showed in a grin that promised nothing good if option one wasn’t selected.

“Option two,” Thane went on, “is you try your luck.” He tilted his head toward the wall. “Those rifles up there do not miss unless I tell them to, and I’m not telling them to today. I would prefer not to stain the snow with you. The town kids have to walk this way to the forest.”

Rime’s eyes never left the driver’s hands. He shifted half a degree, a calculation that had kept a hundred mornings intact.

The burly leader found his voice. “What’s option three.”

Thane smiled, small. “You apologize to my gate.”

A twitch. Confusion. “What?”

Thane pointed, patient as a drill sergeant with humor. “You had your boy there put holes in a door that has done nothing wrong this week. You apologize. Out loud. So the men on the wall hear you. You tell my gate you made a bad choice, and you’ll be trying better ones soon.”

Rime’s mouth almost curved. Almost.

Gabriel exhaled a laugh that sounded like trouble deciding to be kind.

The leader stared. The world pivoted under him and he hated it. He looked at the gun in his hand like it had betrayed him. Then he looked at the hole closing in Thane’s shirt and did the math everyone did in this town now: blood plus time, minus panic.

The man in the bed moved first. He put his rifle down on the cab gently, like it might explode if insulted. His hands lifted. “Boss,” he said, voice high and eaten-out, “I don’t get paid enough for… for wolves that talk.”

“Nobody pays you,” the passenger muttered, ash trembling. But his gun went down too. One by one the others followed, steel touching dirt with small hollow notes. The leader was last. He held on as long as pride could. Then he laid his rifle on the ground like he loved it.

Thane nodded once. “Good. Now the apology.”

The leader swallowed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Very,” Thane said. “We do not let men leave with a story that says ‘we got away clean.’ We send men away with a story about how they knelt to a gate because they were not brave enough to kneel to a town.”

Silence pulled tight.

Kade watched the leader’s throat work. Watched shame wrestle ego. Watched a man realize which memory would travel farther.

The leader turned, slow as sap. He faced the metal-clad gate with its scalloped patches and ugly welds that had saved lives. He cleared his throat. The men on the wall leaned out despite themselves.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” the leader said. The word cracked. “For shooting the gate.” He stood there like the apology had length.

Thane lifted his chin a quarter inch.

The leader clenched his teeth, then unclenched them. “Was a bad choice. We’ll make better ones.”

From up on the wall, someone snorted. Hank did not. He nodded, solemn. “Apology accepted,” he called down, voice like an old fencepost. “The gate will try to forgive you.”

The leader stuttered. “So you’re just… letting us go.”

Thane’s eyes were winter under lantern light. “I am teaching you,” he said. “Next time you pull up on a town with a plan like this, you’ll remember that the world still has rules. And that there are people who will enforce them.”

Gabriel folded his arms tighter to keep from clapping.

Rime did not blink.

The men moved slow. They climbed into the truck without turning backs to the wolves because fear had made them careful. The engine coughed, caught, rattled like something with opinions.

Thane lifted a hand. “One more thing,” he said, and every muscle in the pickup cab went rigid. “You tell the next men that ask—that Libby still stands, and that wolves guard it.”

The leader met his eyes. And in that second—the exact length it takes to lose or keep your life—he found enough sense to nod.

“Yessir,” he said. The sir landed by accident, because he was a man built by a world that still remembered the sound.

They drove. Not fast. Not slow. The tires crunched old snow and new fear. The pickup rattled away down the south road and faded behind the bend, leaving only exhaust and a story that would cost them pride every time they told it. Hank’s men held positions until the truck was long gone, then started breathing like men who had not moved for a small eternity. On the wall, someone finally laughed like a pot releasing steam. “He apologized to a gate,” the man wheezed. “Gonna be telling that one to my grandkids.”

Thane stood a moment more, listening to the space that violence had wanted and did not get. He rolled his shoulder. The hole in his shirt was ugly but old already. He looked at the gate.

“Good work,” he told it.

Kade had not moved.

He watched Thane watch the space. Watched the way Rime’s stance returned to easy without ever dropping readiness. Watched Holt grin like a man who liked that the world got to keep spinning. Watched Gabriel’s eyes shine with a kind of earnest pride that sometimes embarrassed him and sometimes saved him. Watched the town above relax like a net easing off its catch.

He stepped forward, slow, and stopped beside Thane at the same angle a soldier reserves for men he has chosen to—not forced to—follow.

“That,” Kade said, voice low and not thin, “is exactly the kind of Alpha I am looking for.”

Thane didn’t make a scene of it. “Is it.”

“Yes,” Kade said. He looked down at the torn shirt, the drying blood, the unbent quiet. “You took the shot. You didn’t make theater out of it. You taught them a lesson that will go further than pain or death.” He swallowed. “I would be honored to stay. If you’ll have me.”

Holt made a pleased noise that sounded like a log catching. “He stays,” Holt decided to the universe.

Rime’s nod was a piece of iron. “He earned look. More later. But yes.”

Gabriel didn’t bother with cool. He grinned, teeth flashing. “Welcome home, Pathfinder.”

Mark, coming down off the wall with Hank, caught the tail end and lifted his brows. “That was fast.”

“Some choices take all winter,” Kade said. “Some take a single breath when someone teaches the right lesson.”

Hank clapped Thane’s shoulder—the uninjured one—with a palm like a workbench. “We’ll police the road,” Hank said. “If they’re dumb enough to stop inside a mile, we’ll help ‘em regret it.” He glanced at the drying patch on Thane’s shirt and shook his head as if at a familiar dog who’d rolled in mud again. “Gonna start charging raiders by the shirt.”

“Put it on Marta’s fee schedule,” Thane said. The corner of his mouth gave away laughter he rarely let anyone buy. He looked back to Kade. “House rules still stand,” he said.

Kade nodded once, slow. “Understood.”

The unbar, rebar, and return into town took minutes. Inside the gate, people gathered with questions they didn’t need answered because they’d watched the whole calculus from above. Thane lifted a hand and said, “Back to it,” and they did—because a town that lives knows how to let the moment resolve and turn it into work.

Back in the gateyard, Mark handed Kade a small, battered notebook like his own. “If you’re staying,” Mark said, “this is in case you start keeping your lists. It’s how I make sure days stack into a life.”

Kade ran a thumb over the cover. “I will.”

Rime cut a glance south one more time, then looked to Thane. “We sweep?” he asked.

“Take Holt,” Thane said. “Out and back to the bend.”

“Good,” Holt said, as if given dessert. He clapped Kade once on the shoulder on his way by. “You stay,” he repeated, satisfied. “We teach you everything. Even how to drink coffee.”

“Especially that,” Gabriel said.

They shook out like a banner and returned to their day. Hank’s deputy walked back to the station with his spine a little straighter. The wind fussed at the top of the fence and then got bored and went to bother the pines.

As they crossed back toward the square, Kade matched Thane’s stride without thinking about it. The blue light of winter held on the edges of roofs. Somewhere a radio test tone peeped and died. The world looked like a place that had chosen to be something decent, and it showed.

“Thane,” Kade said.

“Mm.”

“I meant what I said,” Kade told him, eyes forward, voice not performing. “I would be honored to stay in your pack. Under your rules. Under your oath.”

Thane didn’t stop. He didn’t fill the air with words. He let the statement sit. Then he reached over and tapped the notebook still in Kade’s hand.

“Write it down,” he said. “Promises are better when they live in more than mouths.”

Kade opened the little book. He scratched three neat lines in tidy block letters with a pencil Gabriel produced from nowhere.

• Stay.
• Earn.
• Do not make him regret it.

He closed the book and slid it into his belt. Then, because he understood that a lesson wasn’t finished until the teacher nodded, he looked at the Alpha.

Thane’s answer was simple as a door opening. “Welcome,” he said.

Kade let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been rationing since before the north went bad. He adjusted his coat, flexed his hands, and turned toward the cabin that smelled like metal and bread and something he could spend a winter learning to call by a larger word.

Behind them, the south gate watched the road and remembered an apology. In front of them, the day asked for wood, wires, and a dozen small kindnesses.

Kade stepped in time with the pack and did not need to count trees anymore to know where he was.

Dawn came in like a quiet promise and immediately lost the argument.

The cabin woke messily. The stove clicked and knocked, announcing it needed wood. The kettle fussed. Someone’s elbow hit a pot lid and sent it skittering like a cymbal. Claws ticked across plank floors, and the whole place smelled like meat, tea, cold air, and the damp wool of bedrolls recently surrendered.

Rime was first fully upright, because Rime usually was. Gray fur rucked at the shoulders, eyes clear, he rose from his station near the door, shook once like a dog shedding a thought, and swung the bolt back to let in a blade of winter. His clawed toes touched the frozen threshold and then he shut the day out again, satisfied with whatever he had smelled. “Quiet,” he said, voice low in that hard-earned cadence of his. “Town calm. Trees say nothing.”

Holt rolled onto his back like a felled bear and stayed there, big chest rising and falling, brown-and-black fur a rumpled blanket all on its own. “Tea first,” he rumbled at the ceiling. “Then world.” The world did not disagree.

Gabriel surfaced next, sitting up with that not-quite-awake smile, black fur a little wild, eyes creased at the corners. He reached for the kettle by habit. “I can get water—unless we’re rationing my helpfulness after… prior caffeinated incidents.”

Holt’s ears flattened with theatrical suspicion. “No coffee,” he warned, jabbing a claw toward the shelf like a courtroom lawyer. “Gabriel bring chaos drink last time. Sable still want to bite.”

Mark, already on his feet and pulling a sweater over a broad chest, deadpanned, “Statistically, Sable always wants to bite you,” and crossed to the basin with the water bucket, testing its weight. “Half full. We’ll refill after breakfast.”

Kade woke into this clatter with the stillness of a wolf who has learned to wake without making himself a target. Yellow eyes opened; breath measured. He registered Rime near the door, Holt near the stove, Gabriel at the counter, Mark at the basin—pack, moving in practiced orbits. He flexed hands slowly, feeling old rope burn pull at the skin. His clawed fingertips glinted when the lamplight caught them; his feet, tipped with the same honest weapons, made faint sounds against the wood. He breathed in—meat and metal and heat—and something in him that had spent a long season braced eased by a degree.

Thane stood from the corner bedroll with the kind of economy that made furniture respect him. Gravel voice came standard. “Stove,” he said.

Rime already had the door open on the iron belly. Holt, despite his protests, was upright in three beats and feeding in split oak with gentleness belying size. The fire took a breath and then another, orange mouth waking into a steady hunger.

“Fenn?” Gabriel asked, glancing toward the bench where the younger wolf had dozed the night before.

“Left before first light,” Rime answered. “Back to Sable. He said… ‘Tell Alpha thank you,’ then ran quiet.” The last two words—ran quiet—carried compliment weight in feral grammar.

Thane nodded once. “Good. He did right.”

They fell into breakfast the way they fell into patrol lines: with quiet competence and cheerful insults.

Mark sliced potatoes with a practiced rhythm while Gabriel cut onions that made his eyes water more than he’d ever admit. Holt handled the skillet like a sacred object, laying down bacon without splatter, turning it with two claws instead of tongs, humming under his breath in a deep, ridiculous key. Rime chopped herbs—where he’d found them in winter was his secret—and swept them into a bowl with precise strokes. Thane cracked eggs one-handed into a tin pitcher and whisked with a fork until the room smelled like a memory of kitchens that no longer existed.

Kade watched. He couldn’t help it. The movement, the wordless communication, the little joking bumps of shoulder and elbow that said we without anyone needing to say we. He felt the old habit of keeping plates on the edge of the table in case of a fast exit loosen. He let himself move a little, stand, roll a shoulder, test the room.

Rime noticed the minute shift—the way he noticed wind changing and tracks under frost. He slid a cup along the table to Kade without looking up. “Tea,” he said. “Good for hands.”

Kade wrapped his scarred knuckles around the cup. Heat crawled up into bones that had recently believed cold was permanent. “Thank you.”

“Not coffee,” Holt warned again, for the record.

Gabriel poured hot water with reverence. “He has a point. We’re a tea civilization now. Coffee only for diplomacy or revenge.”

“Same thing,” Mark said.

Thane grunted, amused. He looked over the table at Kade. “Eat.”

It wasn’t an order and wasn’t a suggestion. It was how Thane spoke blessing.

They ate like wolves in a warm place: quick at first, then slower as bodies caught up. Bacon, fried potatoes, eggs folded with herbs, bread warmed near the stove and brushed with a little fat. Kade tried and failed to hide that it was the best meal he’d had in months. No one called him on it. Holt made a satisfied sound like an idling truck. Rime ate fast and then went to the door again with his bowl still in his hand because he could not not check. Gabriel’s eyelashes finally stopped watering.

When the first wave of hunger had been sated, talking came in.

Thane put down his fork. The room shifted with him—the way it always did when he drew focus without raising volume. “Kade.” The name landed like a steady hand. “A few questions for breakfast. More after chores. Fair?”

Kade wiped his fingers on a cloth, set it down just so. “Fair.”

Thane stayed casual, eyes kind but not soft. “You speak very well. Who taught you?”

Kade’s mouth touched the edge of a smile that wasn’t ready to be fully born. “A teacher who cared,” he said. Then, after a beat, “A long time ago.”

Gabriel leaned in on his elbows, voice a shade lighter. “A school? Or somebody like… an old English teacher who collected strays and grammar?”

Kade’s eyes flicked quick at the image. “Not a school. A man and his wife on the edge of a town that couldn’t decide whether it still was one. He had books, and she had patience, and they had a stove that never seemed to go cold. They traded bread for labor and letters for time.”

Mark smiled, small and real. “That sounds like the world at its best.”

“It was,” Kade said. “Until it wasn’t.”

Holt pushed a plate of potatoes without looking up, as if potatoes could stand between a man and a memory. “Eat,” he said gruffly, which in Holt’s language meant we will hold this with you if you want, and we will not if you do not.

Kade took another bite and worked it down. “He taught me to listen first,” he added, quieter. “That was the hardest part.”

Rime muttered, “True,” near the door and somehow made the single word sound like a philosophy.

Thane nodded. “Second thing. In your last pack, what was your role?”

Kade turned the cup in his hands, claws ticking once against tin. He didn’t preen; he took inventory. “They used me as a pathfinder,” he said. “I could follow a line in my head from one ridge to another and put the camp on the safest side without thinking about it. When patrols got lost, I found them. When hunting parties got greedy, I brought them home. When the Alpha needed someone who would take a short line through a bad idea, he asked me first.”

Gabriel’s mouth curved. “Because you’re smart. Or because you’re expendable?”

“Yes,” Kade said, and the corner of his mouth tilted. The first joke landed like a coin in a jar.

Rime let out a small huff of laughter. “He funny. Good.”

Thane studied him—a soldier read by a general who hated waste. “You kept them alive.”

Kade’s expression didn’t change much. “A fair number,” he said. “Not all.”

Mark’s pen appeared from nowhere and made a note in the small, battered pad he kept near his belt, because Mark never trusted memory with something a pencil could protect. “Pathfinder,” he murmured. “Learned English from a family on a stove. Left because…”

He trailed off there—politeness. The question hung in the room with the weight of things that had to be asked and might cost to answer.

Thane didn’t dress it up. “Why did you leave? That’s not a small thing.”

Kade took a drink to buy three seconds. The tea was bitter and honest. He set the cup down. He kept his eyes steady on Thane because a man owed the one who pulled him out of a noose more than he owed his own pride.

“The Alpha was right about a lot of things,” Kade said at last. “Fear travels farther than kindness. It does. If you want to move a crowd quick, you light the part of them that wants not to burn.” He exhaled. “But he started using it like a campfire and not a flare.”

Gabriel’s brows pulled. “Meaning?”

“Meaning fear became the thing itself,” Kade said. “Not a tool. A home. We used to take food because we needed it and left thanks in work or wood. Then we started taking food because we were afraid someone else would first, and left nothing.” He rubbed his thumb across the rim of the cup, not seeing it. “We started punishing quiet disagreements like they were threats. The young learned to shout before they learned to ask. The old learned to keep their heads down even when the ice looked wrong.”

Rime’s jaw set the way it did when he wanted to bite a memory in half. “Bad Alpha.”

“Not at the start,” Kade said, because fairness mattered to him even now. “At the start, he was the fire we needed. He just forgot fires are for cooking and signal, not for worship.”

Holt grunted approval at the metaphor, or at the meat, or both. “Fire good. Burn all—bad.”

Thane’s voice went softer, which in him felt like the room got closer. “What broke it.”

Kade smiled once without light. “A choice at a river,” he said. “A family downstream of us had a freezer we kept running for them with a turbine—your ‘river wheel,’ like I heard one of Sable’s call it yesterday. Their boy got sick. They came to our camp at night to ask for one of our generators for a day to run a heater and a machine that would help his lungs.” He swallowed, and the muscles in his throat moved like he had not had much practice with this part of the story. “The Alpha said no. Said if we gave once, we’d have to give again. Said fear traveled farther than kindness.”

The room went silent in the way that made the stove sound loud.

“What happened to the boy?” Mark asked, because Mark always asked the ledger question even when he braced for the answer.

Kade rolled the cup once. “He lived,” he said, surprising them. “Because three of us took a generator in the dark and walked it down, and we put it back before dawn, and we were good at our jobs, so no one heard us.” He looked up. “But the Alpha knew someone had done it. And after that… the air changed. He started making examples to teach obedience. It did not matter whose example.”

“And you left,” Thane said. Not a question.

“I left,” Kade confirmed. “Because if I stayed, I would have had to stop him. And all the ways I know to stop someone like that are ugly, and they always teach the wrong lesson to the ones watching.”

Gabriel’s throat clicked. “So you tried a different lesson.”

Kade nodded once. “I chose to walk and bet that somewhere there were wolves who used fear like a flare again.” His voice gentled. “I got caught by your northern friends, and then you taught me the right lesson anyway.”

Holt pointed at him with his fork. “He say thank you now,” he declared to the room, heavy-eyed and pleased with himself.

Kade turned to Thane, and the caution slid aside for plain truth. “Thank you,” he said. “You did not have to. And you took the cost onto your own name.”

Thane’s answer was a small lift of his chin. “Under my roof means under my oath.” He let the words sit, then added, “You pay it forward by not making me regret it.”

“Understood.”

Rime finally stepped away from the door. “Enough talk. Work now,” he said, and it carried no disrespect—just a feral’s calendar. “Town needs things. Den needs things. We split.”

Mark finished his tea and ticked items off the air with one claw like checkboxes only he could see. “All right. Tasks. We need wood—Holt and I can fell and split. Rime, you should check the ridge line for new sign after last night’s wind. Gabriel, Kade—pump and haul water, then you two can reseat the south window latch; it keeps drifting in the cold. Thane—”

“City Hall,” Thane said, like the morning had already told him. “Check the Definity batteries; weather’s been hard. Then a stop at Marta’s to go over the phone routing we installed last week.”

Gabriel raised a hand without looking up. “And we swing by the radio station on the way back? I want to make sure the generator’s happy. Kade, you’ll love the transmitter room. It hums like a dragon.”

Holt perked. “Dragon good. Warm,” he said, making dragon sound like a friend he hadn’t met yet.

Kade glanced between them, caught between surprise at the casual ownership of a world and a quiet hunger to be useful in it. “I can carry and I can fix,” he said simply. “Put me where you need hands.”

“South window first,” Mark said, like a judge issuing sentence that was actually mercy. “Then we’ll see if we can trust you with a hammer.”

Gabriel clicked his tongue. “We trust him with knives, but the hammer is the real test.”

Thane stood and the room stood with him. Bowls clinked into a stack. Gabriel wiped the table with a practiced circle. Rime gathered coats from pegs. Holt opened the door and let a ribbon of cold slice through the room. The day waited outside, clear and bright and full of jobs.

Before they split, Thane looked back to Kade. “One last for breakfast,” he said. “House rules.”

Kade straightened a fraction, like a soldier at inspection.

“Rule one,” Thane said. “You leave this den, you tell someone where your paws plan to go. You do not make us hunt your ghost.”

“Rule two,” Mark added, because Mark kept rules like other men kept tools. “If you don’t know, ask. The only stupid mistake is the one you were afraid to prevent.”

“Rule three,” Gabriel said, mouth curving, “if Holt says it is ‘not coffee,’ it is not coffee. Even if it’s coffee.”

“Rule four,” Holt said gravely, “if small humans run at you and hug legs, you do not fall on them. They think that game. Not game.”

Rime, last, tapped his chest twice. “Rule five. We close. We guard. Pack.”

Kade took them in with the same seriousness he gave a map. “Understood,” he said. “All of it.”

“Good.” Thane’s gravel softened half a note. “Welcome to the pack.”

They broke like a squad. Holt and Mark shouldered axes and went out under the trees. Rime moved ahead on the trail to read the snow, posture easy but eyes on. Thane shrugged into his coat, checked the tool roll in his bag, and looked over his shoulder just long enough to catch Kade’s gaze. A wordless we’re not done talking lived in it, and Kade nodded once in return: I know.

Gabriel clapped Kade’s shoulder on the way to the pump. “South window first, Pathfinder. Then we’ll see about earning you a tour of the ‘dragon’.”

Kade followed him out into the cold. The yard wore frost like lace. Their breath made small ghosts. The pump handle stuck half-down until Gabriel leaned his weight into it and the first cough of water came—brown at the edges, then clear as truth.

They hauled together. It was good work—heavy, honest, senseless to anyone who had never loved a den and therefore vital. The south window latch was a simple fix: a screw swollen loose under cold, the wood shrunk a hair. Kade took the screwdriver when Gabriel handed it to him and seated the hardware with a precision that would have made any carpenter nod. He did not grandstand; he set it right, tested it twice, then looked to Gabriel for the next thing.

“Dragon?” Gabriel offered, grinning.

“Dragon,” Kade agreed, and the word sat in his mouth like a new kind of hope.

Inside, Thane paused with his hand on the door, listening to the sound of his den at work. Rime’s distant hey-up to signal he’d found nothing dangerous. Holt laughing at something Mark had said in a dry tone nobody else would have heard as a joke. The kettle starting its fussy talk again as it rolled toward a boil all on its own. The little radio on the shelf popping once as the temperature shifted—a domestic creature settling in its skin.

He let the morning sit on him like a cloak: weight, warmth.

Then he stepped out into the day.

By midmorning, the den had stretched itself into the town. Mark and Holt returned once with wood, once with more. Rime circled twice and came back satisfied and breathing open. Gabriel and Kade visited the transmitter hut—where Kade stood in the doorway for a long second and let the hum slide into him like a balm—and Gabriel taught him the names of every switch and meter as if it were a ritual. Thane checked batteries, looked in on Marta, left with three notes and a list of parts to root out from the salvage shed.

They met again at the cabin just as the sun rounded toward the ridge.

Lunch was less chaotic, more quiet. Soup warmed on the stove, ladled with unspoken agreement into the same bowls breakfast had occupied. There was less talking and more looking that meant we see you.

But there was one thing left of the morning.

When the bowls were set aside and the stove had been fed, Thane turned that steady attention on Kade again. “Tonight,” he said, “we will talk longer. Lines. Where you sleep if you choose to stay. The truth you have not told yet and the truth we will not ask for unless it matters.” He paused. “You are not a prisoner here. You are not a guest. You are under my oath. There is a difference.”

Kade met his eyes, and gratitude was not the weak thing it used to be. “I know the difference,” he said. “And I won’t make you regret teaching it to me.”

Holt, satisfied, thumped the table once. “Good,” he said with paternal finality, then leaned toward Gabriel and stage-whispered, “Now we tell him about no shoes rule, yes?”

Gabriel snorted. “Look at his clawed feet, Holt. He’s clearly in compliance.”

Rime, from the door, smiled the small, rare smile that meant an afternoon would be good. “Pack,” he said simply, and it landed like a benediction.

Outside, the trees kept their counsel. Inside, six wolves moved around each other like the notes of a song that had learned its chorus.

Breakfast had begun the day. The day, in turn, wrote its own rules.

And for the first time in a long time, Kade believed he might be able to live under them.