Hammers sounded different when they were building instead of breaking. By midafternoon, the packhouse yard was a mess of timber and shouted measurements. Sawdust hung in the air with the cold, bright as pollen in the slant of winter light. Wolves passed, carrying posts on their shoulders, coils of wire, baskets of nails; pups dragged bundles of thatch like they were hauling dragons. The place smelled like fresh-cut pine, wet earth, and boiled linen. It smelled like a beginning.
“Alpha,” Kody met me halfway across the yard, two strides too fast, then remembered to slow. He had shed Thomas’s posture; his shoulders sat where they belonged now. “Perimeter’s staggered. Three pairs moving, three pairs anchored. I pulled the loudest from the gate and rotated in runners. We are thin on seasoned w
