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I don't move. I've had thirty-eight years of practice at not moving.

The issue with Ansel is that he isn't lying. Some part of me, the part that runs on four legs and has no interest in ethics, went cold and ugly at the words behind those gates and stayed there.

Ours. Not theirs. Ours.

"Say the rest of it," I tell him.

"I don't need to say the rest of it. You just did."

Tobin clears his throat. "Ansel."

"Sundown," Ansel says. "The barn. All of us. This gets asked out loud, in front of everyone, and answered the same way." He opens his truck door. "You can be there, or it can be decided while you're standing in this yard."

He gets in.

Then he leans out the window, and for one second there's nothing fake in his face at all, and that's the part I'll be reflecting on.

"I've buried nine of ours in thirty years," he says. "I've never once had to bury a child. I'd like to keep that streak."

The truck backs down the road.

Maren's on the porch in my shirt and her own boots, arms crossed, and she's been there long enough.

"How much did you hear?"

"Enough."

"Maren."

"Go."

"I'm not leaving you tonight."

"You are." She comes down two steps. "If you skip it, they decide without you, and then in five days I'm the reason forty people and Marcy's ghost twins are on the wrong side of a war. I'd rather be scared for four hours."

"Cass stays. And two others."

"Fine."

"Doors bolted. Nothing gets opened, by anybody, including you."

"Gage."

"Say it back."

"Nothing gets opened." She grabs a fistful of my shirt and pulls me down and kisses me hard enough to hurt, in front of six of my wolves, which I’ll definitely hear something about later but it’s so worth it now. Then, into my mouth: "You said to ask you tonight."

"I did."

"I'm holding you to it."

The sun goes down at six eleven.

I take the truck out at ten to, with the jacket on the passenger seat and the envelope in it, and I've got the whole drive to figure out how to lay it in her hands without wrecking the only friendship she has left.

Headlights come up the road toward me.

I slow. She slows.