The drive back gave me too much time to think, which was exactly what I didn't need.
I kept going over what I'd seen, trying to make it line up into something that made sense. The armed men and how the entire property was heavily guarded. I had said it out loud, and Rhys hadn't given me any answer. He hadn't even tried.
Whatever was on that land, or whatever they were trying to keep out, they had armed men posted, not a few guards for show, around property that legally belonged to me.
Then there was the other part.
The ground.
I had felt something when I touched it. Not imagined. Not a trick of light or angle. Something moved, or pulled, or reacted. I didn't have any other explanation for it, but I tried to come up with one.
Low blood sugar. That was the explanation I'd settled on. I hadn't eaten properly. I'd been on edge. That was enough to make your body do strange things. That was where I left it.
Then there was the wolf. It was large and black. And it was standing at the tree line like it had every right to be there. It hadn't moved. Not when I saw it, not while I was looking straight at it. And then it was gone.
No sound. No shift in the trees. Just… not there anymore.
Rhys had walked toward the tree line and hadn't said anything when he got there. He hadn't said anything when he came back either.
His men had been ready, though. I'd seen that much.
"A rogue," one of them had said.
Like that explained it.
But that was not a rogue wolf. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't that.
I got back to my room, dropped my folder on the desk, and called my contact at the county assessor's office. Asked for anything further on the old filing. She put me on hold.
I looked up a name while I waited.
I got almost nothing. A few references were buried in what looked like local historical society records, the kind that had been digitized badly and were half-illegible. One newspaper clipping, forty years old, scanned sideways and a little blurry.
Property dispute. Regional land claim. The name I'd been searching for appeared as one party.
The other party was listed as Graymoor Pack, represented by Alpha C. Gray.
I stared at that for a second.
I was still on hold so I cancelled the call. Then I went through my recent calls and found Rhys' number. It rang four times before it clicked over to voicemail.
"You've reached Alpha Rhys Gray. Leave a message."
That was it. No, please. No, thank you. I hung up without leaving one.
I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about the property again. Then I thought about the way he'd kept a specific distance the entire time we were out there and then closed it without seeming to notice and then pulled back again. Like he was running a test.
My phone rang and I saw his number.
"You called me," he said, before I could get a word out.
"I did."
Somehow, I could hear him smiling from the other end. "Go ahead, I'm listening."
"It's about the filing. The old one." I pulled it toward me and found the line. "The property dispute from forty years ago. One of the parties is listed as Graymoor Pack, represented by Alpha C. Gray." I paused. "I have a guess, but I want you to confirm it. Is that your father?"
A pause on his end.
"Yes," he said. "Alpha Cain Gray."
I wrote it down even though I didn't need to. "Thank you. That's all I needed."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Hm." Another pause. "You know, you could have just driven over."
I looked at my phone. "And asked you a question that took fifteen seconds to answer?"
"It would have been my pleasure to answer it in person."
"You would have made me wait in the waiting room first."
"Twenty minutes, maybe. Nadia makes good cake."
"The cake was good," I admitted, which felt like a concession I shouldn't have made. "But driving for almost an hour round trip for a yes or no answer is not a reasonable use of my time."
"I would have made it worth the trip, Ms. Winters."
"How?"
"Come over and find out."
I laughed before I could stop it. "I have work to do."
"You're always working."
"That's because I have an actual job."
"So do I," he said. "I'm still talking to you."
"Oh, I have another question," I said. "The wolf, from earlier. Did you find anything?"
"No."
"Nothing at all?"
"Nothing I could explain."
I leaned back. "Could it have come from a neighboring pack? A lycan crossing into the territory?"
"Graymoor covers four towns to the west," he said, and there was something matter-of-fact about it. "Largest territory by landmass in the region. Top two in the country by total pack strength. The nearest neighboring pack is not close enough for one of theirs to be standing inside our inner territory without us knowing about it well before it got there."
"So it wasn't a lycan from another pack."
"No."
"Then what was it?"
He paused longer this time. "I still don't know yet."
I looked at the ceiling. "Okay. So, how about the text message that you said was sent from a burner phone? Any updates?"
"No updates yet."
"Someone sends me a mildly threatening text, you still don't know who. A wolf the size of a small car appears at the tree line and disappears without leaving tracks you still don't know what. Are you keeping a running list of things you don't know yet?"
"I'm working on it," he said, and he had the nerve to sound almost amused about it.
"Rhys..."
"Come to the estate next time," he said. "Don't call. I'd rather see you and talk some more."
I rolled my eyes and I told him I had to go, and he let me off the line without pushing it further.
I sat there for a moment with the phone in my hand. Then I opened his contact and typed in the name field.
Alpha Rhys Gray.
He's no longer just a number sitting unnamed in my recent calls anymore.
I wasn't sure why that felt like a decision. I put the phone down and pulled my folder back toward me.
But then my phone buzzed again. And it wasn't a call or a text. It was a photo.
I opened it and I saw myself, taken from a distance, slightly zoomed. Me, on the property, crouching near the northern edge with my hand on the grass.
Someone had been in the tree line the entire time.