Mom left on a Wednesday.
The sky was that washed-out blue that meant rain later, the clouds thin and high. The Ridge felt…twitchy. Like a dog that kept pricking its ears at sounds no one else heard.
She stood by her rental car in the grocery store lot again, arms folded tight. The same spot she’d stepped out all bright curiosity and bristling suspicion days ago.
Now, her shoulders slumped.
Her eyes were red, but she’d blame that on the dry mountain air if I called it out.
“You have your inhaler?” she asked, absurdly.
“I don’t have asthma,” I said.
“Right,” she muttered. “That was your cousin. I’m old. Leave me alone.”
I smiled weakly.
Theo hovered a respectful distance away, leaning against his truck, pretending to listen to Jordan explain some new security feature for the clinic’s WiFi. His gaze flicked to us every few seconds, though, like a tongue checking a sore tooth.
Rufus sat between me and Mom, big head swaying as he tried to monitor both our moods at once.
Mom reached down and scratched behind his ears.
“You take care of her,” she told him. “Bark if the wolves get uppity.”
Rufus grunted, as if to say *obviously.*
She straightened and turned to me.
“You’ll call,” she said. “Or text. Or send a carrier pigeon. Whatever the magical mountain reception allows. Regularly. I want…updates. Vet gossip. Pack drama. Weird dreams. All of it.”
“I will,” I promised.
“You’ll come down,” she said. “For holidays. For random Tuesdays. For…when you need to see cornfields instead of pines for a while.”
“I will,” I said again.
“And you’ll…” Her mouth twisted. “You’ll remember you can leave. That this place isn’t a…mouth that closes behind you.”
Emotion clogged my throat.
“I know,” I said softly. “I’ll…remember.”
She hesitated.
“I’m…proud of you,” she said abruptly. “For…doing this. Facing it. Trying to…fix what we fucked up. It’s…more than I did. More than she did.”
Tears stung my eyes.
“I learned it from you,” I said hoarsely. “The part where you…do the hard thing. Even when you’re…terrified.”
She snorted. “I always knew teaching you ‘no’ would come back to bite me.”
We crashed into each other then.
Hugged tight, hard enough my ribs ached.
“I love you,” I said into her shoulder.
She squeezed.
“I love you more,” she said fiercely. “Don’t argue.”
We pulled back.
She wiped her cheeks, annoyed.
“God,” she muttered. “This altitude. Making my eyes leak.”
“Right,” I said.
She glanced past me.
At Theo.
“Come here, plumbing,” she called.
He pushed off the truck, crossed the lot.
“Yes, ma’am?” he said warily.
She studied him a second.
Then, to my utter shock, she stepped in and hugged him.
He froze.
Then, gingerly, he folded his arms around her shoulders.
“Take care of her,” she said into his chest. “Not just from…guns and teeth. From…this place. From herself. From you.”
“I will,” he said quietly. “As much as she lets me.”
“Good answer,” she said, pulling back.
She cupped his cheek suddenly, making him flinch.
“If you hurt her,” she said calmly, “I will drive back up here and tear your ears off. I don’t care how big your wolf is.”
His lips twitched.
“Understood,” he said.
She nodded once.
“Okay,” she said briskly. “Enough feelings. I have a six-hour drive and a playlist full of seventies rock waiting.”
She slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, rolled down the window one last time.
“Text me when the hunters show up,” she called. “I want to say ‘I told you so’ in real time.”
“Mom,” I groaned.
She winked.
Then she was gone, taillights disappearing down the road.
Something in my chest stretched thin, like pulled taffy, as I watched her leave.
Theo came to stand beside me.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“No,” I said. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
He nodded.
“Same,” he said.
Rufus whined, leaning his weight against my leg.
I scratched his neck, staring at the empty road.
“I feel like I just…sent my anchor away,” I said quietly. “The person who…reminds me who I am when everything else tries to…rewrite me.”
Theo was quiet a long moment.
Then he said, “You know you can…have more than one anchor, right?”
Heat pricked my eyes again.
“Trying to recruit for the position?” I asked thickly.
“Maybe,” he said.
I laughed, choked.
“Slow burn, my ass,” I muttered.
He huffed a laugh.
“Come on,” he said, bumping my shoulder with his. “We’ve got hunter maps to draw and a goat with an abscess waiting. If we stand here staring at the road any longer, Ivy’s going to start writing poetry about it.”
“God forbid,” I said.
We turned back toward town.
As we walked, the Ridge hummed.
Not in words.
In feelings.
Loss.
Hope.
A thousand tiny threads tying me to a thousand things.
Home wasn’t just Belleview anymore.
It wasn’t just this mountain.
It was…people.
My mother, driving east.
Theo, at my side.
Jordan and Ivy and Patty and Vera and Hayes and the whole infuriating, endearing Pack.
I was tethered in more than one direction now.
It was terrifying.
It was…stabilizing.
“Let’s go check on that goat,” I said.
“Doc’s orders,” Theo said.
***
The goat tried to bite me.
Which, honestly, felt right.
“Jim,” I said, wiping my hands on a towel. “You need to trim his hooves more often. This abscess didn’t appear overnight.”
“I tried,” Jim protested, grizzled brows beetling. “He kicks like a mule. ‘Sides, I thought he was just being dramatic.”
“You said that last time,” I said. “And the time before. He’s not dramatic, he’s in pain. Would you walk on an ingrown toenail for weeks and just call it a day?”
“I fought at Khe Sanh,” he muttered. “I’ve walked on worse.”
“Great,” I said. “You can teach him your coping skills when he’s not screaming every time he steps on a rock.”
Theo leaned against the barn door, watching, amused.
He’d changed his bandage that morning.
The wound looked…good. Pink. Angry, but not infected.
Silver left a deeper echo in shifter flesh than in human, though.
I could see it in the way he moved that arm a little differently, how he flexed his fingers when he thought no one was looking.
“You going to help or just stand there looking pretty?” I called.
He grinned.
“Yes,” he said.
We worked in an easy rhythm.
Me cleaning and packing the abscess, explaining aftercare to Jim in increasingly pointed terms. Theo holding the goat’s head, murmuring to it in low, soothing nonsense that somehow worked better than any sedative.
After, as we walked back to the truck, dirt on our boots and goat hair on our pants, he nudged my shoulder.
“You were good with your mom,” he said.
I sighed.
“I felt like I was twelve half the time,” I admitted. “But…yeah. We got…somewhere. I think.”
He smiled softly.
“She likes you,” I said, glancing at him. “Which is…annoying, frankly. I had plans to pit you against each other for sport.”
“Please don’t weaponize your mother,” he said. “I barely survived her lasagna interrogation.”
“She fed you three helpings,” I said. “You’ll live.”
He rubbed his stomach.
“Barely,” he said.
We climbed into the truck.
The engine rumbled to life.
“How’s your head?” he asked as we pulled onto the road.
“Fine,” I said automatically.
He shot me a look.
“Lies,” he said. “You’ve flinched every time someone slammed a door for two days.”
“I’ve had…a lot of loud noises,” I said defensively. “Guns. Howls. My mother’s voice when she found out I’d kissed you.”
He chuckled.
“I heard that from the porch,” he said. “Impressive projection.”
“You enjoyed it,” I accused.
“A bit,” he admitted. “It’s nice to know someone else is invested in keeping me from being an idiot.”
I smiled despite myself.
“The…pull,” he said after a moment, more serious. “Since the field. It’s louder. For you?”
I hesitated.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Like…the bond got…wider. Before it was…mostly you. Pack. Now it’s…everything. Stones. Trees. Water. It’s…loud.”
He nodded.
“Same,” he said. “It’s like we punched a hole in the Ridge and stuck our hands in. It…noticed. It keeps…tickling.”
I snorted.
“Tickling?” I said. “That’s your mystical description?”
“It’s accurate,” he said. “Annoying. Persistent. Hard to ignore.”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
“We should…test it,” he said. “See what else you can do. Safely. Controlled. Before we’re in another field with guns.”
“That sounds like the setup to a training montage,” I said.
“I look good in sweat,” he said.
Heat shot through me at the image of Theo training shirtless, muscles flexing as he shifted.
“Not…helping,” I muttered.
He laughed.
“You in?” he asked. “Ridge 101?”
“I’m not…eager to fry my synapses again,” I said. “But…yeah. If this…thing…in me is going to keep poking, I’d rather know where the edges are.”
He glanced at me.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Sunrise. At the ledge.”
“Training with a view,” I said. “Fancy.”
“I’m wooing you with geography,” he said.
I snorted.
“Slow burn,” I muttered.
He grinned.
***