Page 18 of Warded By His Wolf

“I have a journal. Three years. Most of it untranslated.”

“Good. Start there.”

The call moved into logistics, protocols, secure transmission, the formats Gideon’s analysis required. I took notes. I asked questions. I did not preface a single observation with it’s probably nothing.

Then, when he had everything he needed, Gideon’s voice changed. The evenness stayed. Something underneath it tightened.

“Miss Bennett. One additional detail before I end this call.” A pause. “The corridor movement we can now plot with your index as anchor: it matches an operational window.”

I set my pen down.

“Not a possible window. An open one. It opens in four days.”

The kitchen went very quiet. I could hear Maddox’s breathing. The wind outside the glass.

“Elias Thorne is not waiting for a better opportunity,” Gideon said. “He is not approaching. He is already inside one.”

The call ended.

I looked at the card in my hand. My handwriting. My translated image. The thing I’d spent three years trying to make someone take seriously.

The map I’d been building in good faith was also the map that told us exactly how much time was left.

Four days.

Maddox pushed off the wall and crossed to stand beside me. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to. But when I looked up, something red-gold moved at the edge of his dark eyes and stayed there, the wolf, closer to the surface than he usually let him come, doing math of his own.

“We knew the timeline was closing,” he said. “Now we know how fast.”

“Four days isn’t very long.”

“No.” He looked at the cards spread across the table. “It’s long enough.”

Three years of learned caution said I should question that. Ask for evidence. Demand a softer version of the truth so I could pretend the danger was further away.

I didn’t. I looked at the cards (my cards, my visions, my map) and I believed him.

Not because I trusted him, though I did.

Because for the first time in three years, what I saw and what it meant were the same thing.

Night came down hard and early at the mountain house. By nine the windows had gone black, and the wind picked up outside, pushing at the glass like it wanted in.

I couldn’t sleep. Four days sat in my chest like a stone.

I found Maddox on the porch, arms braced on the rail, watching the tree line the way he always watched it. Waiting for a threat that hadn’t shown itself yet.

“You should be resting,” he said without turning.

“So should you.”

He almost smiled. Almost. “Someone has to watch the dark.”

I stood beside him. The cold bit through my sweater, but I didn’t go back for a coat. I didn’t want to lose this, him, close, the quiet between us that didn’t need filling.

“Four days,” I said.

“I know.”