Tom stepped out, wiping his hands on a rag. His hair looked a little less gray in the early light, and he’d stopped jumping every time Tarrik walked into a room. Progress.
“You keep treating my pump house like it’s a holy altar, and I might start letting you order parts without supervision,” Tom said.
“That would be a mistake,” Tarrik replied, deadpan. “I would order three of everything. In case raiders shoot the first two.”
Tom snorted. “The way things are going, raiders are more afraid of the valley than we are of them.” He nodded toward the town. “I’m due back at City Hall for the morning meeting. You want to—”
He broke off. His eyes flicked past Tarrik, narrowing.
Tarrik smelled it a heartbeat later. Human. Sweat, blood, fear. Not the sharp, clean fear of a man in a fight; this was sour, long-brewed, lived-in terror sunk into cloth and skin.
He turned.
A man stood at the edge of the trees, just beyond the gravel road. He looked like he had walked a long way and then gotten lost for another lifetime. Mid-forties, maybe. Face hollowed out, beard overgrown but patchy. His coat was in tatters. A strip of dirty cloth was knotted around his left forearm, dark and stiff with old blood.
He saw the wolf by the pump house.
He froze.
Tarrik did not move. He had learned that in Libby and Eureka both: sudden movement around a frightened stranger only made things worse.
“Hello,” Tarrik said, voice low, careful. “You are hurt. We have a clinic. You can—”
The man’s knees gave out as if someone had kicked them from behind. He dropped onto the gravel, hands shaking, eyes locked on Tarrik.
“You,” the man whispered. The sound was soft, but it carried. “You.”
Tarrik’s ears tipped forward. Something cold and old crawled up from the back of his mind, a shape he had tried to leave behind in the snow.
“I know you,” the man said. His voice rose, rough and broken. “It’s you.”
Tarrik did not recognize his face. But there were hundreds of faces he had seen only once, under winter skies and torchlight. That was the problem.
Tom stepped forward slowly, hands open. “Hey now. You’re in Eureka. You’re safe. My name’s Tom. Let’s get you inside—”
The man’s gaze flicked to Tom and back to Tarrik, wild and furious.
“He owes me,” the man rasped. His teeth bared in something that wasn’t quite a snarl. “He owes me blood.”
Tom’s jaw tightened. The breeze shifted, carrying the sour fear smell against Tarrik’s tongue. He swallowed around it.
“What is your name?” Tarrik asked.
The man’s eyes rimmed with tears, sudden and hot. “Joss,” he said. “Joss Talven. And you—” His voice broke. He pointed a shaking finger, arm trembling under the bandage. “You’re the wolf who killed my family.”
The wrench slipped from Tarrik’s left hand. It hit the concrete with a ringing clatter he barely heard.
He did not say no.
Tom looked between them, frown swallowing his face. “Let’s get him to City Hall,” Tom said quietly to Tarrik. “We’re not having this conversation in the road.”
Tarrik nodded once. He bent, picked up the wrench with hands that suddenly felt wrong on the tool, and set it carefully by the door. Then he walked toward the kneeling man, claws clicking on gravel.
Joss flinched but did not run. His eyes burned holes straight through the fur on Tarrik’s chest.
Tarrik stopped a few steps away and dipped his head a fraction. “I will walk ahead of you,” he said. “You can follow me or walk with Tom. No one here will hurt you.”
“You hurt me,” Joss hissed.
“Yes,” Tarrik said. “I did.” His voice came out hoarse. “Once.”
Tom watched him for a long second, like a man trying to read a weather front. Then he offered Joss a hand. “Come on. We’ll get you water, food, a place to sit. You can tell your story where everybody can hear it.”
Joss stared at Tarrik another heartbeat, then took Tom’s hand.
Tarrik walked ahead of them up the gravel road, feeling the weight of every step like chains.
The cabin smelled like coffee and Holt’s stew, and someone had left a half-read map of patrol routes spread across the kitchen table. Kade and Varro’s careful notes looped up the margins. Outside, children’s laughter drifted faintly from the direction of the schoolhouse.
Thane sat with the handset cradled in clawed fingers, listening to Marta go over bank schedules for the week. Her voice was crisp and tired in that way that meant things were actually going well.
“…and Hal’s sending another truck down from Spokane on Thursday with more small bills,” she was saying. “We’ll need—”
Late morning light slanted through the cabin windows, catching the steam from Mark’s stew pot and the pile of patrol maps spread across the table. Thane had just finished a cup of coffee when the landline on the desk rang — sharp, urgent, not part of their usual morning cadence.
Mark looked up. “That’s Eureka’s line.”
Thane crossed the room and lifted the receiver.
“Libby cabin. Thane.”
Tom Anderson’s voice came through tight and uneven.
“Thane. I hate to drop this in your lap, but we’ve got a situation out here. I need you in Eureka as soon as you can manage it.”
Thane’s ears angled forward. “What happened?”
“A man walked out of the trees,” Tom said. “Forties, half-starved, arm’s a mess. Says he knows Tarrik. Says Tarrik destroyed his settlement and killed his family.”
The room went very still.
Mark froze mid-ladle.
Kade stopped in the doorway.
Rime straightened where he stood, eyes narrowing.
Thane pulled in a breath. “Is anyone hurt? Are people panicking?”
“Not yet,” Tom said. “I’ve got him in City Hall with a few council members. Tarrik’s here too. Thane… he’s not denying any of it.”
“I’m on my way,” Thane said, and hung up the receiver.
Thane sighed. “Rime,” he called.
The gray wolf stepped in from the porch. He must have heard enough through the open door; his ears were flat against his skull, eyes already serious. “Yes, Alpha.”
“Eureka,” Thane said. “We have to help keep something from turning into something else.”
Rime nodded once. “I will ride with you.”
Varro pushed off the doorframe. “You want me along?” he asked.
Thane shook his head. “Keep Libby steady. If anything… spills over, we will need you here more than there.”
Over the gravel road that had seen too many stories already. Thane drove with his usual calm, hands easy on the wheel, eyes flicking between the road and the instruments out of long habit. Rime sat in the passenger seat, braced, claws hooked lightly on the frame.
For a while, no one spoke. Trees slid by outside, green and patient.
“What you thinking?” Rime asked at last, eyes still on the road.
Thane watched the line where the hood met the horizon. “I am thinking about mercy,” he said. “And about how long it actually takes to finish.”
Rime exhaled through his nose. “Something from Tarrik’s life going to surface,” he said quietly. “You don’t lead pack like that, for that long, without ghosts.”
“Yes,” Thane said. “The question is whether the wolf he is now can stand in front of them.”
“He got you,” Rime said. “That helps.”
Thane’s claws tapped a slow rhythm on his knee. “It also paints a target on my back.”
Rime leaned over. “We carry it with you,” he said.
Thane’s mouth twitched. “I know.”
Eureka came into view under a sky so painfully blue it felt like an accusation. Smoke curled from chimneys. Children ran in the street with something like real carelessness. Men were checking hoses in front of the firehouse, laughing with their sleeves rolled up.
Normal life.
Thane would never get used to how fragile it looked.
Tom met them outside City Hall, jaw tight, hands jammed into the pockets of his vest. He watched the Humvee roll to a stop, studied Thane’s face as the big brown-gray wolf stepped down onto the street with his usual solid, unhurried weight.
“Appreciate the quick response,” Tom said.
“When my name is on the line, I like to show up in person,” Thane replied. “Where are they?”
“Inside,” Tom said. “I’ve kept it small. Me, Joss, Tarrik, two of my council, and Dr. Henley. A couple folks are milling around outside, but no crowd yet.” His gaze flicked to Rime as the gray wolf came around the Humvee. “That your shadow for today?”
“Yes,” Thane said. “We do not bring all our teeth into someone else’s house unless we have to.”
Tom snorted. “Fair enough.” He hesitated. “I’ll give it to you straight: Joss is a mess. Arm’s half-healed wrong, he’s been walking wounded a long time, and he’s held that anger even longer. He sees Tarrik and doesn’t see the wolf who fixed our pump house. He sees… well. You know.”
“I do,” Thane said.
“And Tarrik?” Tom asked.
Thane’s jaw tightened. “I will see for myself.”
Inside, City Hall smelled like paper, coffee, and nerves. The big room’s long table was scarred from decades of use, its surface now cluttered with maps and ledgers instead of emergency ration lists. Sunlight came in through scrubbed windows.
Joss Talven sat at the far end, a blanket around his shoulders, fingers clenched white-knuckled around a tin cup of water. His eyes went to Thane as soon as the wolf entered, flicked to Rime behind him, then snagged hard on Tarrik.
Tarrik stood against the wall opposite, arms at his sides, claws bare. He looked like he had deliberately removed anything that could be mistaken for armor. No tools, no gear. Just a wolf in a plain work shirt and worn pants, fur ruffled from the river wind, shoulders slumped but squared to the room.
He had never looked so much like a soldier waiting for a verdict.
“Thane,” Tom said, stepping in. “You know Tarrik. This is Joss Talven.”
Thane nodded once to Joss, then to Tarrik. “Tarrik,” he said.
Thane took in the set of his jaw, the way his tail hung low but not tucked, his eyes open and unshielded. He smelled of river water, machine oil, and a twisted underside of old fear aimed inward.
Thane moved to the table. He did not sit yet. “Tom says there is a story that needs to be told,” he said. “I would like to hear it from the beginning. Joss.”
Joss’s fingers tightened around the cup until it shook. “I already told it,” he muttered.
“Tell it again,” Thane said, voice gentle but flat. “So I can put my word on it with both eyes open.”
Joss looked at him properly then, measuring this new wolf against the one who had marched an army to his door years ago. He swallowed.
“My name is Joss Talven,” he said. “I had a settlement… had a town. North and east of here. We called it Three Pines. Twenty families. We had greenhouses, livestock, a well. We kept our heads down, did our work. Heard stories of wolves, sure. Packs taking what they wanted. But they were far away.”
His eyes slid back to Tarrik, venom and grief tangled in one tight knot.
“Then this one showed up,” Joss went on. “Snowstorm night. Twenty-one wolves behind him, all teeth and claws. He said… he said we owed them tribute for using ‘his’ hunting ground. We didn’t even hunt. We grew things. We tried to talk. Didn’t matter.”
His voice cracked. He stared at the tabletop, breathing hard.
“He took our winter stores,” Joss said. “Food we’d put away for months. Medicine. Half the blankets. Said anyone who argued would lose more. He… he broke my arm when I tried to stop them loading the last truck.”
“He told his wolves to throw me outside the gate,” Joss whispered. “Said if I could crawl home, I could keep breathing. If not, I’d fed the snow. My wife… she carried our daughter out after them. Begged. He said if she wanted to join me in the snow, that was her choice.”
The room was dead silent.
“They left,” Joss said. Tears tracked clean lines down the grime on his cheeks. “Storm hit full after that. Whiteout. I crawled. She tried to carry the girl. We didn’t make it. I woke up in a ditch two days later, under two feet of drift. Arm… wrong. Head wrong. Everything… wrong. A scavenger crew dug me out. I never saw my family again.”
He lifted his head and stared straight at Tarrik, eyes burning like coals. “I know your face,” he snarled. “I’ve seen it in my sleep every night since. You owe me blood.”
Thane let the words hang in the air.
Then he turned slowly to Tarrik. “Is any part of this untrue?” he asked.
Tarrik’s throat worked. His claws flexed, scraping faintly against the floor through the thin soles he’d bothered to wear earlier.
“No,” he said. His voice was low but steady. “It is all true.”
Joss surged to his feet, the chair screeching back. “Then why is he here?” he shouted. “Why is he walking free in some nice little town with power and water and kids on the street? Why does he get a second chance when my whole life is under a snowdrift?”
Tom took a step, but Thane lifted a hand. Rime shifted his weight closer to the wall, stance ready but nonthreatening.
“Because we gave him one,” Thane said. “And because he chose to take it.”
Joss rounded on him. “You think that makes it right?”
“No,” Thane said simply. “Nothing makes what he did right.”
He walked to the center of the room, claws clicking on the wooden floor, and turned so he faced both men.
“When Tarrik came to my town with his pack,” Thane said, “he tried to do the same thing. Take what he wanted. Rule by fear. Make other people pay for his hunger.”
He remembered the gate, the snow, the line of wolves behind Tarrik, all deadly and sure. He remembered the feel of the bullet in his side, the heat of his own blood, the way mercy had tasted like rust in his mouth and still been right.
“I stopped him,” Thane said. “It cost blood. I had the chance to end him, right there in the snow. No questions, no arguments. He had earned it a hundred times over.”
He looked at Tarrik. The other wolf’s eyes met his and held.
“I did not,” Thane said. “I chose to break the chain instead of his neck.”
Joss barked an ugly laugh. “And look how that turned out,” he spat. “He’s got a job and a town and friends. I’ve got ghosts.”
“Yes,” Thane said. “You do. And that is the part that matters today.”
He moved a little closer to Joss, slow, no sudden movements. He set his claws on the back of an empty chair, grounding himself.
“Mercy is not a gift we give to the people they hurt,” Thane said. “It does not erase what was done. It does not balance some invisible scale. Your pain is real. Your family is gone. Nothing I say here will change that.”
Joss trembled, rage and grief fighting for space.
“But there is another truth,” Thane went on. “The wolf who did that to you”—he nodded toward Tarrik—“is not the one who has been living here the last months. That one is gone. What stands here is what we made after he lost. We pointed him at broken things instead of people. He chose to fix them. He chose to stand beside us instead of on our backs. He did not earn forgiveness. He earned work.”
Tarrik’s eyes closed for a breath. His hands fisted at his sides.
“You want blood,” Thane said quietly to Joss. “Part of you will always want that. I cannot blame you. If someone had done that to my pack, I would have wanted it too.”
He took his hand off the chair and stepped closer to Tarrik, until he stood almost shoulder to shoulder with him, facing Joss across the room.
“But understand this,” Thane said. “By sparing him then and building this now, I put my own name on everything he did. I tied his future to mine. When you say he owes you, you are also saying I do. If you want a debt collected, you are collecting from me as well.”
Joss stared at him, stunned. “Why in hell would you… why would you take that on?”
“Because someone had to,” Thane said. “Because if every monster we ever made dies the day we catch them, nothing better ever gets built out of the wreckage. Because if Tarrik had died in the snow, no Canadian raiders would have died north of this town, and some child in Eureka might be telling this story instead of you.”
He let that settle.
“And because mercy is only real if you keep paying for it,” Thane finished. “Day after day, choice after choice. Not just once in the snow.”
Joss’s shoulders shook. He looked at Tarrik. The wolf had not moved, but tears had tracked silently through the fur along his cheekbones.
Tarrik’s voice cracked as he forced the words out.
“I am sorry,” he said, and it hit like gravel in his throat. “I… I know what I did. I know the damage. I cannot fix it. I cannot give you back anything I broke.”
He swallowed hard, eyes low.
“But I can stand in front of you now. I can fight for you. I can make sure no one ever feels what I made you feel. If you allow it… I spend the rest of my life proving that.”
He swallowed. “If you want me gone, I will go,” he said. “If you want me dead, I will kneel. If you want me to work for you until I fall over, I will do that gladly. But whatever you choose, understand: without him”—he nodded at Thane—“I would still be the thing you remember. He broke me on purpose. And then put me back together.”
The room breathed in and out. Outside, a dog barked once, far down the street.
Joss wiped his face with the heel of his hand, angry at his own tears. He looked down at his twisted arm, then back up at the two wolves standing in front of him. One, brown-gray, calm, steady as a mountain. The other, tan-gray, shoulders bowed under a weight he did not try to shrug off.
“You trust him,” Joss said to Thane. It wasn’t quite a question.
“I do,” Thane said.
“You trust him after… that?” Joss asked, gesturing at his own ruined history.
“I trust the wolf he is now,” Thane said. “Because I watched him choose to be that wolf when it would have been easier to stay the other one. I watched him stand between this town and claws that used to answer to his voice. I watched him take orders instead of give them. I watched him bleed for people he once would have used. That does not erase what he did to you. But it tells me what he is likely to do tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.”
Joss’s throat worked. “And if he… slips?” he asked roughly. “If he goes back?”
Thane’s eyes were very clear, very cold for a moment. “Then I end it,” he said. “Myself. Because my word is what keeps him here. If he breaks it, I pay. That is the bargain.”
Silence again. The kind that weighed.
Tom shifted behind them, but stayed quiet. This was not his call, and he knew it.
Finally, Joss swayed and dropped back into his chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He buried his face in his hands, breathing raggedly.
“I want them back,” he whispered. “I want my wife. My little girl. I want that night not to have happened. Can you do that?”
“No,” Thane said softly. “I cannot.”
Joss’s hands fell away. He looked up at Thane, eyes raw and red. “Then what the hell can you do for me?” he demanded.
Thane thought for a moment. He did not rush the answer.
“I can make sure you are never alone like that again,” he said. “I can make sure you have a bed, food, people who know your name when you walk down the street. I can make sure that if anyone ever comes for you again, they find a wall of wolves and humans standing between you and them. And I can make sure that every day Tarrik draws breath, he spends it paying into the world you lost, not taking from it.”
He stepped aside, leaving Tarrik visible, fully exposed.
“If you stay in Eureka,” Thane said, “you will see him working. You will see him hauling hoses, fixing pipes, standing night watch. You will see what your story did to him. That does not heal your pain. But it might turn it into something that builds instead of something that eats you alive.”
Joss stared at Tarrik for a long time. Long enough that the wolf’s shoulders began to shake, just a little. He clenched his jaw to still it.
“I hate you,” Joss said to him. The words were flat, tired. “I don’t know if that’s ever going to change.”
“I know,” Tarrik whispered.
“But…” Joss went on. He scrubbed his face again, then looked back at Thane. “If you trust him with your life… maybe… maybe I can trust him with mine. A little.” He coughed a dry laugh. “Not my heart. That’s gone. But my back, maybe. On a bad day. If there’s a fire.”
Tarrik’s knees buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the table, claws biting into wood.
“You do not owe him that,” Thane said gently. “You owe him nothing.”
“I know,” Joss said. He looked exhausted, as if some dam inside him had finally cracked and let years of frozen, stagnant water out. “That’s why it’s worth something.”
He pushed the cup away and looked at Tom. “You got room in this town for one more broken body?” he asked.
Tom huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “We specialize in them,” he said. “You stick around, we’ll put you to work, same as anybody.”
Joss’s gaze slid back to Tarrik. “You so much as raise your voice to a kid in the street,” he said, voice low, steady, “I’ll take this arm and beat you with it.”
“You will not be alone,” Rime murmured from the wall. “We will help.”
Tarrik let out a sound that might have been a laugh and a sob tangled together. “I will not,” he said. “Ever again.”
Thane stepped back, letting the air in the room ease a little. His chest felt tight, like he’d been holding a weight there since the phone call.
Tom blew out a breath. “Well,” he said. “I’d expected yelling. Maybe a broken chair. I’ll take this over a riot any day.”
“Riot would have been simpler,” Thane said dryly. “You just hit the loudest one and the rest decide how much they actually care.”
Tom shook his head. “You have a way of making the hard road sound like the only road, you know that?”
“That is because it usually is,” Thane said.
He turned to Joss. “If at any point you decide you cannot bear to see him,” he said, “you tell Tom. We find you a place elsewhere in the valley. Not as exile—” he looked at Tarrik “—as accommodation. Your pain is not a problem. It is a fact. We work around facts.”
Joss nodded slowly. “I’ll… try here, first,” he said. “Feels like this is where the ghosts are, anyway. Maybe seeing him suffer a little hauling pump parts will do me good.”
“It will hurt,” Tarrik said quietly.
“Good,” Joss replied.
They held each other’s gaze for one long, unsteady moment. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But something had shifted, almost imperceptibly, from pure hatred to a jagged, working truce.
Later, after Tom walked Joss down to the clinic and Dr. Henley looked over his arm, after Tarrik had been sent back to the pump house with a list of chores long enough to keep his mind busy and his guilt honest, Thane and Rime stepped out into the spring sunlight.
The town looked the same as it had when they arrived. Kids still chased each other between buildings. Someone hammered something onto the side of a shop. Power lines hummed quietly overhead.
Rime came to stand beside Thane on the City Hall steps, folding his arms, claws resting lightly on his elbows.
“You bent heavy branch today,” Rime said. “Did not let it break.”
Thane watched Joss’s small, hunched figure moving slowly down the street between Tom and the doctor. “We will see,” he said. “Sometimes wood hides cracks you do not see until the next storm.”
“We stand under it,” Rime said simply. “If it falls, we take weight.”
Thane huffed. “You were not this poetic when I met you.”
“You were not this tired,” Rime replied.
Thane’s mouth twitched. “Fair enough.”
Tarrik emerged from the side of the building a few minutes later, having looped around to avoid walking directly past the clinic. He approached the steps and stopped at the bottom, head bowed.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” Thane asked.
“For not letting me run,” Tarrik said. “I would have. If you had not come, if Tom had not called, I would have taken any pack from my old life—” his mouth twisted on the phrase “—and run into the hills and never shown my face to this man.”
“Yes,” Thane said. “You would have. That is why I told Tom to call me the first day I told you to go here.”
Tarrik blinked. “You… told him?”
“I told him that one day, someone from your past would crawl out of the forest and come here with a story like Joss’s,” Thane said. “And that when that happened, I needed to be standing between you and the door.”
Tarrik stared at him. “You planned for this?”
“I planned for the day your debts started walking on two legs,” Thane said. “Mercy does not erase the ledger. It just changes the currency.”
“How many more?” Tarrik asked quietly. “How many more Joss Talvens are out there with my name clawed into their grief?”
“Too many,” Thane said. “But that isn’t a surprise. Not to me.”
Tarrik looked up, startled.
Thane stepped down one stair so they were closer to eye level. “Tarrik… I didn’t save you because I thought your past was clean. I saved you knowing exactly what kind of weight would eventually walk out of the trees.” His claws tapped once against the railing, thoughtful. “This was never an ‘if.’ It was always a ‘when.’ And you made it through the first one without running. That matters.”
Tarrik’s throat tightened. “You… don’t hate me for it?”
“No,” Thane said. “I knew history like this existed before you ever set foot in Eureka. I am not swayed by ghosts I already accounted for. When I choose to help someone become better…” He exhaled, slow and steady. “I buy in one hundred and twenty percent. That means I expect these days to come. And when they do, I’m not shocked. I’m not shaken. I’m right where I planned to be — standing beside you until you stand on your own.”
Tarrik blinked hard, shoulders trembling under the weight of it. “I don’t know how to deserve that.”
“You don’t,” Thane said simply. “You live it. That’s the difference.”
He put a heavy paw on Tarrik’s shoulder — not dominance, not restraint, just grounding. “This was the first ghost. Not the last. But you faced him. You told the truth. You didn’t run. That tells me more about you than anything Joss brought through the door.”
Tarrik bowed his head. “I won’t make you a liar.”
“I know,” Thane said. “That’s why this works.”
Rime approached then, quiet as snowfall. “You softened storm,” he murmured to Thane. “Turned into rain.”
“Rain grows things,” Thane said. “Let’s go home.”
Tarrik watched them go, standing alone in the sunlight outside City Hall — but not abandoned, not cast out. Just a wolf learning how to carry a different kind of weight.
As Thane climbed into the Humvee and turned the key, the engine catching with a familiar growl. The valley opened ahead, green and steady.
Rime tilted his head. “Alpha.”
“Yes?” Thane said.
“You buy in,” Rime said. “You mean it.”
“I do,” Thane replied.
“Is heavy for one wolf.”
Thane watched the road. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not carrying it alone.”
The town of Eureka faded behind them, but not the lesson, and not the bond.
Tarrik had been tested by the past — and Thane had made sure it didn’t bury him.
“Why do they all end up owing you?” Rime asked. “Tarrik. Varro. Kade. Joss, maybe, one day. Even towns. Even rivers.”
“They do not owe me,” he said. “They owe the chance. I am just the one handing it out.”
Rime considered that. “Still feels like debt,” he said.
“Maybe,” Thane said. He rested his elbow on the window frame, claws drumming a slow, thoughtful rhythm. “If they pay it in kindness, I am content to be very rich.”
They drove on, the engine’s low growl steady, the valley stretching open before them like a ledger with more blank pages than bloodstains now.
Behind them, in Eureka, a man with a ruined arm sat at a clean window and watched a wolf who had once destroyed his life carry hoses for his new town.
Ahead of them, Libby waited, warm and noisy and alive.
Mercy did not erase the past.
But for another day, in another town, it had been enough to keep the future from breaking.