He came to like a radio warming from static — bandage tight, room soft with lamplight, gravel voice stuck behind dry throat. The cabin smelled like pine and boiled cloth. Rime sat on the floor by the door, still as a stump. Holt was a mountain crouched at Thane’s bedside, ears high, eyes refusing to blink. When Thane moved, Holt leaned forward so fast the chair legs squealed.
“Alpha?”
Thane worked a breath. “Still here.”
Holt sagged, a sound escaping him that was too relieved to be called a sigh. Outside, boots hit the porch. Hank stepped in, hat in his fist, snow in his beard, urgency riding him like a second coat. Mark and Gabriel were on his heels.
“We got the two that ran,” Hank said without preamble. “My boys were—” he glanced down, jaw tightening, “—rougher than needed. They’re in the lockup. We’re starting questions now.”
Holt rose like a storm building. The growl that rolled out of him rattled the panes. “Holt go. Tear apart. Piece. By piece.”
“No.” Thane didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. It hit the room like a stop sign. Holt froze, everything in him pulling against the word.
Thane turned his head, found Rime. “Keep him here. With me.”
Rime dipped his chin. “He stays.”
Holt’s ears flattened. “Alpha—”
“Listen,” Thane said, bandage lifting with the breath. “No harm to them. Not a finger, not a tooth, until we talk.” His gaze slid to Hank, then to Mark and Gabriel. “You can scare them. Mercy first. Mercy defines us — not revenge.”
Gabriel’s eyes flicked to Holt, then back. “I’ll be there.”
“Me too,” Mark said. “We’ll keep it clean.”
Kira, who had come in silent behind them and now leaned on the doorframe like a shadow, lifted her muzzle. “I tell Sable,” she said, and was gone before anyone could say yes or don’t.
Holt stood shaking, caught between the door and the bed. Thane reached a paw out, rested it against Holt’s forearm. “Guard me,” he said. “That’s your job.”
It landed. Holt’s chest stilled. He sank back down onto his haunches at the head of the bed, one paw on the floor, one on the coverlet like he could hold the room together through a sheet. Rime settled beside him, a quiet hand ready to catch a shoulder if it surged.
Hank nodded once, relief and conflict sharing the line of his mouth. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s get this right.” He pulled the door closed behind them.
The lockup was a squat stone box behind the old feed store, iron bars gone dull with years and weather. Straw on the floor kept the cold off nothing. Two men sat against the back wall, wrists bound to the rail with rope that left angry marks. One was older, hard-eyed, jaw set like a dare. The other was young enough to still have boy in him, breath fast, a purple welt darkening along his cheekbone.
Marta stood to the side with her arms folded, making herself a calm people could borrow. Hank took the key from a nail and weighed it in his palm. “We’re opening that door,” he told the prisoners. “You will sit. You will talk. You will breathe when I say you can breathe. If you spit, we leave you in the cold.”
The older one grunted something meant to be contempt and came out with his shoulders squared anyway. Fear has posture. The younger stumbled and caught himself, eyes flicking to the window as if air might be safer than walls.
They sat at a scarred table under a single lantern that made everyone look older. Mark took a spot to the left out of habit even though Thane wasn’t there; Gabriel sat opposite, forearms set, hands steepled to keep them from making clawed fists.
The door creaked once more. Sable stepped in without sound, white fur drinking the lamplight, three of her wolves filling the doorway behind her like night crowded into a frame. No one had seen her arrive; no one had to. She leaned a shoulder against the wall and let the silence notice her. The older prisoner’s face changed in that small, unguarded way men’s faces do when a story they’ve told themselves stops working.
Hank hooked a thumb toward the raiders. “Names.”
The older man’s mouth went sideways. “Names don’t matter.”
“They do here,” Gabriel said, voice low and precise. “Everything matters here.”
A beat. “Jase,” the older said. He jerked a chin at the kid. “Cole.”
Hank nodded to Mark, who slid a battered notebook across the table. “Who sent you?”
Jase looked like a man calculating how much pain a lie might buy. He cut his eyes to Sable and looked away fast. “Glendive,” he said. “Garrick Voss.”
Marta’s jaw clenched. “Mayor?”
“Was,” Jase said. “Is something worse now. Calls it ‘Marshal’ these days. He’s got a council, too—men from the yards, one from the old grain co-op, couple of ex-security.” He swallowed. “They’re not rationing. They’re hoarding.”
Gabriel tipped his head. “And we got shot because…?”
“Because you’re a symbol,” Jase said. “Because wolves walking with people means other towns think they can tell Voss no.”
“And because we turned you around the last time you came sniffing,” Hank added, voice cold iron.
Jase didn’t argue.
Hank’s knuckles were still scraped raw. He clasped his hands to keep them quiet. “What’s the plan?”
Jase’s eyes went to the lantern, as if the story lived there. “Two weeks. They call it Black Winter.” He said it like he didn’t like the taste. “They mean to break the region in one sweep—cut power where they can, capture what they can’t. Take radios, take generators, take men with hands that fix things, women who can nurse, kids old enough to carry. Move them to what they call ‘hubs’ along the river. Troy. Glendive. Miles City. Set guards with long guns, control who eats. Rest starve or bend.”
Marta’s fingers curled slow around the edge of the table. “They’re going to kidnap entire towns.”
Jase flinched. “They’ll call it conscription. Say it’s for order. They’ve got code broadcasts to coordinate—like that loop in Plains. They’ll bait the helpers out, then take their trucks and track them back home.” He lifted his bound hands an inch and let them fall. “You can’t outrun radio. Voss figured that out.”
Mark’s eyes flicked, remembering racks of CDs and the transmitter at KLMR humming like a heartbeat. “Targets?”
“Any place with a voice,” Jase said. “KLMR. The Troy stick. Substation at Thompson Falls.” He licked cracked lips. “And Libby—because you’ve got power and wolves and people who’ll fight.”
The room changed shape without moving. Hank took a breath like he’d lifted something heavy. Gabriel’s mouth thinned, gaze unfocused a beat as he worked the math of patrols and perimeters. One of Sable’s wolves—Rime’s sister, Ari—leaned forward just enough to show teeth before going still again.
Sable stepped off the wall and came closer, bringing winter with her. She didn’t sit. She looked at Jase as if deciding which kind of thing he was. “You shot our Alpha,” she said softly. “You ran. You are here because mercy was chosen for you.” She tipped her head. “Do not mistake mercy for weakness.”
Cole stammered, words chasing each other. “We— I— I didn’t shoot. He did. We were told they’d pay double for wolf skulls. I’m sorry, I didn’t— I never—” He bit down on the rest and made a sound like the start of a sob he couldn’t afford.
Sable blinked once, slow. “You will be sorry for longer if you speak when you should be listening.”
Cole’s mouth shut like a hand had closed it. Jase nodded minutely, grateful and ashamed all at once.
“Black Winter,” Gabriel repeated, rolling the phrase in his mouth like a threat he intended to return to sender. “Two weeks.”
“Less,” Jase said. “Weather’s the knife. They want you cold and scared.”
Hank leaned back and stared at the ceiling like it might offer a map. “We’ll need double watches. Roving pairs outside the wall. Men at the substation round-the-clock. I’ll put two on the tower with spotters.”
Mark ticked items off in the air, the way he did when ideas came faster than he could stack them. “We isolate KLMR from the grid with a transfer switch so we can black the stick if needed. Secondary mast at the cabin for emergency bulletins. Powerhouse gets steel and sandbags. Hank, I’ll rig remote trip on the generator fuel so if they breach, we kill it from the square.”
Marta was already writing, letters quick and square. “Food stores split into three caches. Half the med stock moved to the church basement. No more single basket.”
Sable watched, measuring. “We run the tree lines,” she said. “No man crosses without us smelling him first. We take their scouts’ courage before their feet.”
Gabriel nodded. “And we make sure every person in town knows the drill. If the horn sounds, they go where we’ve told them. No heroes.”
Hank slid his eyes to the prisoners. “And them?”
Thane wasn’t in the room, but the rules he’d just laid down were. Gabriel answered in his place. “They live. They eat. They work, if they’ll work. If they won’t, they sit. We make an example of restraint.”
Jase stared at the table. “He won’t stop,” he said, meaning Voss. “He thinks winter makes him king.”
Marta’s voice was very calm. “Winter makes fools of kings.”
Back at the cabin, the door opened and closed with the soft courtesy of men who’ve learned how to carry bad news without spilling it. Holt was on his feet before Gabriel made it to the rug. Rime rose too, a palm already out just in case.
Gabriel knelt by the bed so his face would be level with Thane’s. “Glendive,” he said. “Garrick Voss. They’re planning a sweep in under two weeks. Code name Black Winter. Cut power where they can, seize what they can’t. Grab skilled people, force relocations to river hubs. KLMR and the substation are on the list.”
Thane listened the way he did when he was cataloging a fight — not for flourish, but for edges. He worked his jaw once, a shadow of pain crossing and gone. “So they’re coming,” he said. “Good. Let’s make sure they don’t like the welcome.”
Holt shifted closer, so close his shoulder touched the bed. “Holt go,” he said, hope and threat braided together. “Holt tear.”
“You’ll go when it’s time,” Thane said. “Until then, you guard here. You follow Rime. You do not wander. You do not hunt the men in the jail. Mercy first.”
Holt’s eyes squeezed shut like the word hurt. He nodded, a stiff, stubborn dip. “Mercy,” he said, tasting it. “Mercy… then teeth.”
Rime’s mouth twitched. “Good.”
Mark set a hand on the bedpost and gave the shortened version: “We’ll harden KLMR, split the stores, prep silent comms. Hank’s doubling watches. Sable’s running the line.”
“What about Sable?” Thane asked.
Gabriel’s grin was quick and feral. “She showed up at the jail. Said five words, scared a year off those two. She’s in.”
“Of course she is,” Thane murmured, and let his head settle back for a moment.
Marta appeared in the doorway with a clipboard and a blanket, the chaos of the square vibrating under her skin. “I’m posting shifts,” she said. “And a town meeting at sundown. We tell them enough to be ready, not enough to freeze them.”
Thane opened his eyes. “Tell them this,” he said. “We won’t start the killing. But we will not be moved.”
Marta’s mouth softened, the kind of look that remembers the boy in the man and the good in the hard. “I’ll say it better than that,” she said. “But yes.”
She left the blanket on the chair as if the room might need one more thing that kept people alive.
Gabriel squeezed Thane’s wrist, just once, thumb brushing the fur in a motion he could pretend was casual. “Rest,” he said. “We’ve got the day.” He stood and turned to Holt. “Come help me with the tower plans. If you can carry a guitar like it’s an egg, you can carry cables without nicking them.”
Holt blinked. “Holt carry.” He looked back at Thane, waited for the nod, got it, and followed Gabriel out with Rime in their wake, big clawed feet careful on the floorboards.
The cabin door clicked shut. Outside, Libby’s square had turned into a quiet storm of useful motion — sandbags stacking, lists forming, men heading to posts with purpose in their shoulders. Up on the ridge, Sable’s white shape slid into the trees, two ferals flanking her, heads low, moving like snow shadows along the line where forest becomes town.
Black Winter had a clock now, and so did they.
Thane let the hush fold around him. The pain was there, and the pulse of it, and beneath that the steadier beat of a town aligning like teeth in a gear. He closed his eyes because he trusted the hands he’d put on the work. Holt would sit the door like a statue until told otherwise. Rime would keep him on this side of wise. Gabriel and Mark would turn light into warning and wire into safety. Marta would turn fear into lists. Hank would turn anger into patrol.
Mercy first, he’d said. Mercy, then teeth.
He let that be the rule he fell asleep inside, while outside the wolves and the humans of Libby began the exacting work of making sure that when Garrick Voss came for their winter, it would be his that broke.