Page 36 of Blood & Ash

She stopped just inside the door. Her coat was still on. The night cold clung to the wool. She reached into the inside pocket and pulled out the folded scrap of paper. She set it on the edge of the table without handing it to him. The paper sat between them, creased and covered in her handwriting.

“I’ve been checking the coven’s supply ledgers.” Her voice was flat and clipped, the voice she used when she was keeping herself on track. “The withdrawals don’t match warding-stone recipes. Not even close.”

Marcus set his pen down. He turned around. His hazel eyes moved from her face to the scrap of paper and back. He picked up the paper and unfolded it. His thumb rubbed the edge where she had torn it from the order form. He read down the list. Oak gall: 120g. Iron filings: 80g. Birch bark: 200g. Valerian root: 210g. January. February. March. Every month for two years.

“How long?” he asked.

“Two years.” Del’s hands were at her sides. Her fingers curled against her palms. “I supplied the base components for two years. I was told they were for warding stones. The coven voted, and I lost.”

Marcus held the paper. His expression didn’t change. He listened like a doctor triaging a chart.

“I didn’t ask enough questions,” Del said. The words came out faster than she meant them to. “I knew the ratios were wrong. Warding stones don’t use valerian. They don’t use iron at eighty grams. The birch proportion was doubled. I knew that. I kept grinding.”

Her voice caught. She forced it level. “I know now what they were actually for. I’ve known since I walked that shifter to your door and watched his blood fill those vials. I’ve known since you showed me the cells under the scope. The membranes coming apart. The border between human tissue and shifter cells. Knife-sharp. No transition.”

She stopped. Her jaw was tight. She looked at a point on the wall past Marcus’s shoulder where a reagent bottle caught the lamplight. The glass was green. She counted to five in her head, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, her mother’s old trick.

Marcus set the scrap of paper back on the table. He didn’t move toward her. He didn’t move away. His hands rested on the examination table on either side of the paper. The wood was scarred there from years of elbows and forearms.

“Is Rosalind still pulling from the same stock?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Del’s throat was dry. “I didn’t confront her.”

Marcus nodded once. The nod was matter of fact and reasonable, the kind of nod that said he understood why she hadn’t confronted Rosalind and wasn’t going to waste time judging her for it.

He picked up his pen. The gesture was preparatory, not dismissive. The next question was already forming. He tapped the pen once against the logbook’s margin. The sound was soft in the quiet clinic.

Del stood in the doorway. Her coat hung heavy on her shoulders. The scrap of paper lay on the table between them, covered in numbers she had written in her own hand, evidence of something she had participated in for two years without asking why. The first true thing she had told anyone in two years was already out of her mouth. She couldn’t take it back. She didn’t want to.

Marcus capped his pen. He set it beside the logbook and looked at her. His hazel eyes were steady. They were country doctor eyes, the kind that had seen worse and were still looking.

“We need to talk to Cole,” he said.

Chapter 10

June stood by the back door with her hands in her jacket pockets and her shoulders against the wall. The packhouse main hall smelled of wood smoke and coffee gone cold. Amber lanterns hung from the ceiling beams, their light flickering across the long oak table where Gabriel Andrews stood with both hands flat on the scarred surface.

She hadn’t been inside the lodge in two weeks. The ridge house had been easier. Up there she could treat the wolves who could make the climb and pretend the rest didn’t exist. Down here, it pressed in from all sides. Four wolves were sick. Denny Alcott had died last night. The town had gone quiet, the kind of quiet that meant blame had been assigned and was waiting to be spoken.

Gabriel hadn’t called the meeting. Not officially. The pack had gathered because word traveled and the word tonight was that something was happening, a briefing or a decision or both. The long table filled the center of the hall. Chairs were pulled up on both sides, but nobody sat. They stood along the walls instead, arms crossed, voices low. The room held twenty-five people. June was the only human.

Ramsey Tucker shifted his weight against the far wall. His boot scraped the plank floor. He’d been doing that for ten minutes, shifting, scraping, running one hand through his silver-streaked hair and leaving it wild. His eyes kept finding the door, then Gabriel and then the door again. He wanted to be somewhere else. He wanted to be doing something. June understood the feeling. She’d been living in it for weeks.

Her canvas jacket was zipped to her throat. The clinic logo on the left breast was faded from too many washes. Her forearms bore the scratches from last week’s patrol work, thin red lines that hadn’t healed because she’d been too busy to tend them. She’d washed her hands before coming in, an old habit from the clinic.

A woman near the fireplace said something about Richmond. Cole was there with Gabriel’s specialist, stable but not improving. The woman’s voice dropped. The words became shapes without sound.

Gabriel’s hands didn’t move on the table. His blue eyes were fixed on the middle distance, on nothing, the look they always wore when he was listening to something nobody else could hear. The hellforged scar that ran from his temple to his collar caught the lantern light. It would never heal. Neither would the ones on his arm and thigh. They were reminders of the demon war that had taken his first mate and his children and left him standing here with both hands flat on oak and a room full of wolves waiting for him to speak.

He didn’t speak. The briefing hadn’t started. Something was holding it back.

The front door opened without a knock.

Two men came through first. They wore dark jackets that fit their shoulders without a crease. Their faces were blank. They moved to either side of the doorway and stood with their hands at their sides and their weight balanced. They were attendants, guards, men who made themselves furniture, and June had seen the type before.

Arrow came through third. He wore the same dark jacket as his men, but his was tailored. His reddish-brown hair was neat. His pale eyes moved across the hall in a single sweep, taking in the table, the lanterns, the wolves along the walls, and finding Gabriel at the head without apparent effort. He didn’t look at June. She was glad for it.

Every voice in the room cut off in the same instant, like a switch had been thrown.