The route I'd built for the short-range patrol ran the long way around Miller's Hollow for a reason.
Celeste's first solo run as lead was supposed to follow it exactly. I'd put the map in her hands myself that afternoon, the loop traced in red marker, the hollow circled twice with a note beside it: Stay west. Old den site. Scent pools here.
So when my team crested the ridge half an hour into our own sweep and I caught four familiar trails cutting straight through the hollow instead of around it, my stomach dropped.
"Isn't that Celeste's group?" Marcus asked, sniffing the air beside me.
"Yeah." I was already moving. "And they're not supposed to be there."
We came down through the pines in human form, fast and quiet. The wind shifted, and then I smelled it too, thick and sour under the wet leaves. Strange wolf. Male. Recent enough that it still clung to the bark.
Rogue.
A scream cracked through the trees, followed by the ugly snap of bone that meant a shift. A forced one.
"Tessa!" Celeste's voice, high and panicked. "Tessa, come back!"
I broke into a sprint.
They were bunched in a clearing at the bottom of the hollow, three of them in patrol jackets, staring at a torn pile of clothes. Celeste spun toward me, face white.
"She just changed," she said. "She smelled something and she just changed, and she ran, and I didn't know which way she went, Ava, I swear I tried."
"Which direction?"
"I don't know!"
One of the other kids pointed east. Toward the scent. Toward the quarry.
"Marcus, get everyone back to the west trail and stay together," I said. "Nobody follows me."
Tessa had turned eighteen in August. She'd only shifted a handful of times, always with someone beside her, and never with the stink of a stranger flooding her nose. A young wolf that spooked didn't think. She just ran until something stopped her.
I didn't bother shifting. My human nose was worse, but my human voice was what she knew.
Her trail zigzagged through the brush like she couldn't decide what she was running from. Branches whipped at me. One caught my forearm and tore through my sleeve, and I felt the warm slide of blood but kept going.
I found her past the creek, a skinny gray wolf pressed against a boulder, ears flat, shaking so hard her whole body rattled. She was facing the wrong way. Home was behind her, and she had no idea.
"Hey, Tess." I slowed down and crouched, palms open. "It's me. It's Ava."
She snarled, then whined, then snarled again.
"I know it smells bad out here. I know. But you're okay." I kept my voice low and even. "You went through the hollow, and that's not your fault. Come here. Smell me. Just me."
It took a long minute. Then she crept forward and shoved her face into my bleeding arm, and I felt her shudder all the way down.
"Good girl," I whispered. "Let's go home."
On the way back, I passed the old boundary post at the edge of the hollow. The paint I'd put on it in spring had flaked almost completely off. Celeste's team had walked right by it. I pulled the marker kit from my belt, scrubbed my scent into the wood, and drew a fresh line of red across the top.
Anyone coming through here next would know exactly where our territory ended.
---
By the time I led Tessa into the clearing near the trailhead, Marcus had everyone accounted for. Tessa's mother was there, crying into her daughter's fur. The others stood around in shocked little clusters.
Then headlights swept across the trees, and Logan's truck skidded to a stop in the gravel.
He was out before the engine died. His eyes moved over all of us, over Tessa, over me with my shredded sleeve and my arm dripping onto my boots.
He went straight to Celeste.
He pulled her into his chest and held on, one hand cupped around the back of her head. "Hey. Hey, I've got you. Are you hurt?"
"No," she sobbed into his jacket. "No, I'm okay."
"Thank God."
He didn't ask where Tessa had been found. He didn't ask why the patrol had been in the hollow. He didn't ask anything.
Celeste lifted her head, eyes red and swimming. "I just wanted to try a faster way. The loop takes forever, and I thought if I could cut through, I'd show everyone I could run it better." Her voice cracked. "But Ava's never believed in me. She's been waiting for me to mess up since the ceremony."
I stared at her.
Logan's arm tightened around her. Then he turned to me, and his face went hard.
"You knew she was inexperienced," he said. "Why weren't you watching her?"
The clearing got very quiet. Marcus shifted his weight. Tessa's mother stopped crying long enough to look up.
My arm throbbed. I could feel the blood drying stiff between my fingers.
I looked at my brother for a long moment. At his hand still resting on Celeste's back. At the way he hadn't once glanced at the wolf I'd just carried out of the woods.
"Because she's the patrol lead," I said.
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
For a second, I thought he might actually hear it. His eyes dropped to my arm, and something flickered there, a hesitation.
Then Celeste sniffled, and he looked back down at her.
"We'll talk about this at home," he said.
"Sure."
I walked past them to check on Tessa. Over my shoulder, I caught Celeste watching me from inside Logan's arms. Her tears were already drying. Her chin had lifted a little, and there was something settled in her expression, almost relieved.
She'd gotten her answer. He'd stepped in for her again, in front of everyone, and I hadn't fought back.
---
That night, I went to the equipment building to restock my kit.
The little room at the end of the hall had been mine for five years. It wasn't officially anybody's. I'd just claimed it when the patrol gear started piling up, put in the shelves, labeled the bins, and hung my maps on the wall.
The door was open. Celeste was inside, stacking her new jacket and a box of brand-new flashlights on my shelf.
Ruth, who ran the supply desk, hovered in the hallway looking uncomfortable. "Ava. Sorry, honey. She said Logan okayed it. The lead should have the lead's room, that kind of thing."
"Did he," I said.
Celeste turned around with a flashlight in her hand. "He did. I texted him on the way over." She smiled carefully. "You don't mind, right? It just makes sense."
I waited for the anger to hit. It didn't. I just felt tired, and strangely clear.
"No," I said. "I don't mind."
Her smile faltered, like she'd expected more of a fight.
I stepped past her and started pulling my things down. My boots. My spare jackets. The marker kits I'd filled myself. The first-aid bag with my initials in permanent marker. The topographic maps off the wall, rolled and rubber-banded. My compass, my scent vials, my backup radio.
Ruth brought me an empty crate without a word. I filled it, then another.
Celeste stood in the corner, arms folded, watching the shelves empty. "You don't have to take everything tonight."
"It's mine," I said. "You'll want the space."
I hauled the last crate to my truck and slid it into the bed beside the others. I was turning the key when I heard footsteps pounding across the gravel.
Celeste appeared in my headlights, breathing hard, her face drained of color.
"Where's the notebook?"
I rolled down the window.
"The green one," she said. "The one that's always on the top shelf. With all the marker locations and the scent logs and the..." She swallowed. "It's not there. Ava, where is it?"
It was on the passenger seat next to me. Five years of every boundary post, every den site, every rogue sighting, every route I'd ever walked, in my handwriting.
She saw it. Her eyes locked onto the worn cover, and for the first time since the board went up outside the pack hall, she looked truly scared.
