The trail north was still soft with snow, packed only by wolf paws and the occasional truck tire. The forest had grown quiet with winter—branches bowed low under their weight, the sky a silver lid over the endless white. Libby was far behind now, its steady hum and warmth fading into memory as Thane’s truck wound up the ridge road toward the Northern Ferals’ camp.
Marta sat bundled in the passenger seat, chin on her gloved hand, watching frost etch the corners of the glass. “You know,” she said, “I’ve had a lot of invitations in my life. Not many written in claw marks on birch bark.”
Thane smirked. “Sable has a way with stationery.”
Hank’s voice crackled from the truck behind them over the CB handset wedged in the dash. “You sure this road’s meant for vehicles, Thane? I just heard my suspension cry for help.”
“She built that road herself,” Thane said, pressing the talk button. “Don’t insult her engineering.”
“Noted,” Hank said, though his voice came through with a good-natured huff. “Wouldn’t want to get on the lady’s bad side.”
“She doesn’t have a bad side,” Marta murmured. “She is the side.”
Thane grinned. “That’s accurate.”
The trees broke open into a clearing ringed with snow-coated pines. Smoke curled from a cluster of lean-to cabins and one long fire pit that burned steady even in the cold. Wolves moved through the light like living shadows, fur flashing white, gray, or brown in the flicker. Sable stood at the edge of the firelight, white fur ghost-bright against the dusk. She waited without moving, the way only she could—stillness that wasn’t stiffness, power without noise.
Rime’s eyes moved across the camp, watching, then back to Sable. “She wait.”
“She always does,” Thane said, and walked forward between them. The wolves parted to let him through, curious eyes following the human guests but no hostility behind them—just the quiet wonder of familiarity grown from battle, from shared blood and trust.
Sable’s gaze flicked over Holt and Rime’s protective stances. “You bring guards now?” she asked, her tone even, a hint of humor hidden under the frost.
“They came with the truck,” Thane chuckled.
Her eyes softened by a fraction. “It appears they came for you.”
“Old habits,” he said.
Her muzzle tilted slightly, the faintest smirk pulling at one corner of her mouth—a rare sight. “Holt. Rime.”
Both straightened instinctively.
She looked them over, head tilting. “You forget who you guard?”
They froze. Holt blinked, caught between confusion and horror. “We—no—”
Rime’s ears flattened halfway. “We protect—Libby Alpha,” he said carefully, but it sounded defensive even to him.
Sable’s gaze lingered. Then, unexpectedly, she chuckled—an actual sound, light and low, the kind of laugh no one had ever heard from her before. Every wolf in the clearing went still.
Sable stepped closer to Thane and folded her arms. “You two like pups who swallowed rocks.” Her voice carried a note of dry amusement now. “It suits you. Perhaps I give you as gift.”
Rime’s head snapped up, startled. Holt blinked, then grinned wide. “Gift? We gift?”
“Given,” Sable corrected, almost indulgent.
Thane tried not to laugh. “That’s a dangerous thing to offer.”
“Then take good care,” Sable said. “They are strong wolves. Loyal. Slightly stupid.”
Rime gave a quiet exhale somewhere between relief and embarrassment. Holt nudged him with an elbow. “Told you she like us.”
“She tolerate us,” Rime said.
“Close enough.”
The laughter that rolled through the wolves around them wasn’t cruel—it was warm, alive, the kind that could only exist when a pack was whole.
Marta stepped forward with Hank beside her. “Mayor Sable,” she said, inclining her head in respectful imitation of wolf custom.
Sable gave a shallow bow. “Mayor Marta.”
Hank grinned. “Nice to formally meet the infamous northern Alpha.”
“You live,” she said. “Then rumors fail.”
He blinked. “I—well, yes, ma’am, I live.”
“Then rumor says you talk too much,” she said, tone bone-dry.
Marta’s laugh rang clear as the firelight flickered higher. “She’s got you pegged already, Hank.”
Sable’s faintest smile returned, and she gestured to the long pit fire. “Come. Warm. Eat.”
The evening opened slowly, like old friends easing back into conversation after a long silence. Logs cracked and sent sparks up to join the stars. The ferals had laid out their meal on a line of flat stones—thick cuts of elk, venison, and mountain goat sizzling near the edges of the fire, all served rare as instinct demanded. The smell was wild and rich, smoke and blood and pine resin.
Marta accepted her portion with polite hesitation before giving in completely. “I’ve had worse,” she said through a smile, wiping her mouth.
Hank nodded appreciatively. “Tastes better than the MREs we used to get on patrol.”
Gabriel chuckled. “That’s because it’s not freeze-dried death.”
Rime tore into his cut of meat beside Thane, then looked over. “Not death,” he said, serious. “Life.”
“Exactly,” Thane said. “You understand.”
Sable sat across the fire, quiet as always, but her gaze softened as she watched the circle—wolves and humans eating together, no walls, no ranks, no tension. Even the hardest of her pack, the ones who had once hissed at Libby’s name, seemed at peace.
She finally spoke, low and even. “Strange night. No fear. No walls. Packs share fire.”
“That’s how it should be,” Marta said gently.
“Was not always,” Sable said. “But now… maybe always again.”
Thane nodded slowly. “You’ve built something worth keeping. So have we.” He poked at the fire with a stick, the sparks dancing up like copper stars. “And maybe now we build together.”
Rime leaned close, voice just above the fire’s crackle. “She trust you more now.”
“I trust her too,” Thane said.
After they ate, the fire settled into its low, rhythmic pulse, painting every muzzle in shades of amber and gold. The wolves stretched out, comfortable, bellies full. Marta sat wrapped in a blanket that one of the ferals had wordlessly draped around her shoulders. She looked at Thane. “You mentioned wanting to talk to her about something?”
Thane nodded, eyes catching the flames. “A phone line.”
Sable’s ears turned toward him. “Explain.”
“We’ve reconnected the valley,” Thane said. “Libby to Spokane, Eureka, Kalispell, Whitefish. I want to put a line up here, too. For safety. If anything ever happens, or if you ever need help.”
She considered that, silent long enough for the fire to snap twice. “Phones. Your wires. Human talk in metal.”
“Yes. But this one’s for wolves too.”
Sable tilted her head, measuring the words. “How?”
“I’ll bring a small system,” Thane said. “Powered by solar, like the others. Just one phone. It doesn’t have to ring often. But when it does, it will mean something important. A way to reach us—no runners, no days of waiting.”
Sable’s eyes reflected the firelight like molten glass. “Good idea,” she said simply. “Do it.”
Marta smiled. “You’ll be part of the network, Sable. Part of the valley’s voice.”
Sable’s gaze softened slightly. “We already voice,” she said. “Now we also listen.”
Hank raised his mug. “Cheers to that.”
Even Sable gave a small nod of amusement at the strange human ritual, though she didn’t imitate it.
Thane stood after a moment, brushing snow from his fur. Around the fire, twenty-three wolves turned their eyes toward him, each one a survivor of something that should’ve ended them. “I wanted to say something,” he said, his voice carrying easily through the night. “Libby is alive because of you. The people there, my pack, my friends—they breathe today because you fought beside us. You didn’t have to. You could’ve stayed hidden. But you came.”
He looked around at them—faces he knew, some he didn’t, all part of the same pulse. “You bled with us, hunted with us, and trusted us. There’s no greater gift than that. You’ve earned your peace, every one of you.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was reverent. Even the fire seemed to quiet itself.
Thane tipped his muzzle up and howled. It wasn’t a battle cry this time—it was gratitude, pride, belonging. The note carried across the camp, low and rising, until it caught in the throats of every wolf there. Sable joined in second, her tone fierce and clear. Holt followed, then Rime, then the rest.
The sound rolled through the trees and across the frozen river, deep enough to shake snow from the branches. Marta and Hank stood close together, eyes wide at the sheer power of it. The howl wasn’t just noise; it was language, pure and ancient, spoken by something older than words.
When it faded, the forest listened for a long time afterward, as if it had been waiting for that sound all along.
Sable looked at Thane through the settling quiet. “World hears that,” she said softly. “Knows peace again.”
He nodded. “That’s the point.”
The night stretched easy from there, the conversation flowing like a slow river. Wolves traded stories of hunts and strange finds in the old world’s ruins. Gabriel laughed until he choked when Holt tried to explain the human concept of “movie popcorn” based entirely on a bag he’d once seen explode in a store’s microwave section before the Fall.
Marta and Sable sat together near the fire, talking about leadership. “You lead from instinct,” Marta said. “I lead from reason. But maybe they’re the same thing, if you listen hard enough.”
Sable’s eyes glimmered faintly. “Different roads. Same hunt.”
Rime lay near Thane, silent but content. His eyes half-closed, his breathing deep and slow. Holt, sprawled across a log like a bear cub, muttered something about needing “bigger logs for big wolves,” earning a snort of laughter from nearby ferals.
By the time the moon lifted over the treeline, the camp had gone quiet again. The fire burned low, its coals red as heartbeats. Thane looked around the circle—Sable’s wolves resting in peace, his own pack beside him, humans asleep near the warmth.
The world wasn’t fixed. It never would be. But for one night, it didn’t need fixing. It just needed to exist exactly as it was—whole, scarred, alive, and together.
Sable caught his gaze from across the fire. She didn’t smile, not exactly, but her eyes said everything words couldn’t.
For once, Thane didn’t need to answer aloud.
The night carried the sound of steady breath and distant embers cracking—small, ordinary miracles that meant survival.
Tomorrow would bring roads to patch, wires to test, food to gather. But tonight, the fire between packs burned bright enough for them all.
And in that light, the valley finally felt like home.