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“I can walk.”

“I know you can.” He reached for her empty mug and set it in the sink. His fingers brushed hers, warm, human-warm, which was still strange after all these months. “But I’m driving.”

June didn’t argue. She went to the peg by the door and took down her jacket. The canvas was stiff from dried mud at the cuffs. She pulled it on and zipped it to her throat.

The wind pushed against the house. The trees below the ridge line moved in it, branches bending and straightening. Somewhere down there, four wolves were sick with something no one could name, and the town had the kind of quiet that comes when everyone’s already decided who to blame.

Luca picked up the car keys from the hook by the door. June pulled on her boots without scraping the mud. They went out together into the gray morning, and the door closed behind them with a sound that didn’t carry.

They parked Luca’s car behind Heller’s and walked the main drag toward the bakery. The street was busy for a Tuesday morning. A delivery truck idled outside the pharmacy. Two men in work boots crossed at the intersection, talking low, and stopped talking as June passed.

The shift came before the sound: the air changing, conversations pausing a beat too long and resuming a half-octave lower. Luca walked beside her, his shoulder close to hers, and his presence normally drew looks (the vampire, the one who looked twenty-three and wasn’t), but today the looks slid past him and landed on her, on the clinic logo on her jacket and on the scratches on her forearms from last week’s patrol work, the kind that hadn’t healed because she’d been too busy to tend them.

The bakery door swung open with a bell above it. The smell of yeast and sugar hit warmly. Two women at the small table by the window had their heads together over coffee. They looked up. Their conversation died. One of them reached for her mug and took a long drink without tasting it.

The counter girl stood behind the display case. She was twenty-six, maybe. Dark hair in a braid. June had known her for three years. They’d shared a table at the summer festival two years running. The girl had laughed at June’s stories about the clinic dog who ate a tennis ball.

Today the girl’s smile was tight and professional, the kind you gave a customer you were trying not to know.

“What can I get you?” she asked.

“Two coffees,” June said. “Black.”

The girl turned to the espresso machine. Her movements were quick and efficient. She filled two paper cups and set them on the counter. “That’s four even.”

June handed her a five. The girl made change and slid a single dollar bill across the counter without touching June’s hand. The bill stopped exactly at the edge of the laminate, as if an invisible line had been drawn there.

“Thanks,” June said.

The girl nodded. She was already wiping down the steam wand, her back half-turned.

June picked up the coffees. Luca took his without comment. They went back out onto the sidewalk. The door closed behind them with the same bell, cheerful and out of place.

“Next stop.” Luca’s voice was even, warm, the register he used when he was choosing not to react.

Heller’s Hardware sat two doors down. The front window displayed garden tools and coiled hose. The smell hit them before they reached the door: fresh-cut boards, linseed oil, the musk of a store that had been in the same family for fifty years. June pushed the door open.

The aisle was narrow. Shelves ran floor to ceiling on both sides, packed with hinges, screws and cans of paint labeled by number. A man stood at the far end with his back to the door. He was broad through the shoulders. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled. June recognized him from the pack barbecue last month, where he’d stood by the grill with a beer in one hand and told a story about a bear that made the children scream with delight.

He didn’t turn. He reached for a shelf of hinges and examined each one like he’d just discovered a sudden passion for cabinet hardware. His fingers moved along the row, brass, nickel, antique bronze, and he studied each label without looking up.

June walked past him. Luca followed. The hardware man behind the counter was different: older, gray at the temples, the owner’s son. He was sorting receipts at the register. He looked up when they approached.

“Morning.” His voice was casual, too casual, the kind of casual that had been rehearsed in the mirror. “What can I help you with today?”

“Just browsing,” June said.

The man nodded. He set the receipts down and folded his hands on the counter. “Heard you’ve been spending time up at the ridge lately.”

The question hung there, a statement dressed as one.

“Yes,” June said.

The man nodded again, slow and deliberate, like she’d confirmed something he’d been turning over in his mind for days. “Nice view up there. Quiet. Good place to think.”

“I suppose.”

“Must be. You’ve been up there a while.” He picked up a pen and tapped it against the counter. Once, twice. “How’s the pack doing? Heard some of them aren’t feeling too good.”