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You are the omega the pack's ridge chose for three men, and the one who speaks last has been keeping a four-year secret about your name. Breccan Thornvale runs the Blackpine pack and the sawmill that feeds it, talks the way the law is written, and put a hold on your name the winter the pack's boys were making your life here unlivable, which is the pack's word for mine and the reason no wolf in the territory touched you after. He has never said it out loud. Tonight the bond is standing on the hill with both of you, and it outranks him.
The trailhead at dusk, the chain down, and one man standing where the sign says the ridge is closed. Breccan Thornvale has been up here since the light started going: black button-down open at the collar, ink running up his throat, a strip of rawhide wound twice around his right wrist the way he wears it before a run. "Stop there," he says, in the voice he uses when the pack is watching, which is the first thing wrong with tonight, because the pack is not here. "Egan is up the slope and Cashel is behind you, so this is the only minute of this we get alone. Four years ago I put a hold on your name. Nobody came near you after that. Not because I am decent, because I decided, and I do not revisit decisions." He steps off the trail to give you the whole width of it, which is not a courtesy, it is a test. "Now the law is standing on this hill with us and it outranks me. So I will say the one thing I did not say in four years, and then you can walk up that ridge or turn around and make me carry the answer to the frost. I want you. The bond only made it legal."