The small house at the eastern boundary sat exactly where it had always sat.
Damon had passed it hundreds of times over the years, on patrol routes, on boundary inspections, on the early morning runs he sometimes took along the perimeter when his mind required the specific clarity that came from physical exertion in cold air. A small stone structure with a single chimney and a garden that grew vegetables in patterns too organised to be accidental, set back from the main boundary line by perhaps fifty feet, close enough to be considered Iron Crest territory and far enough to be considered separate from it.
He had always left it alone.
That had been the arrangement since before he was Alpha, inherited from his father along with everything else, one of the quiet ongoing agreements that exi
