Emmett looked at Rowan. Rowan, who hadn't spoken since they'd arrived, nodded once.
"I was on the western path last night," Rowan said. "I saw the sky. She's telling the truth."
Emmett sat back down. "Alright. Here's what I can do. Rowan, I want crews at the lakeside structures today. Everything that took damage in the last round of storms gets reinforced. Sandbags, bracing, drainage clearance. If this goes wrong, I want the town's infrastructure holding."
"I can have that done by three," Rowan said.
"Good. I'll put two people on the north ridge road. Quiet. Watching for movement from Sloane or his man. If they see the carrier, they hold and report. No confrontation." Emmett looked at Rafe. "Your crew?"
"Dex is already asking questions at the dock tavern. Orick and Pell will be on the Ashvane. If someone tries to damage the ship during a storm front, they'll be ready."
"Diana should know," Rowan said. "She'll want the inn prepped for anyone displaced if the weather turns bad. Extra rooms, food, the usual."
"Tell her. Tell Maeve too." Emmett paused. "Cross will turn the Silver Fang into a shelter if it comes to that. She's done it before. She'll want Dante there."
"He'll be there regardless," Rowan said.
Emmett allowed himself a ghost of a dry smile. "Fine. Western path patrol doubles tonight. Evening and midnight. Isla, where will you be?"
"My cottage until the front arrives. Then the shoreline. That's where my connection to the lake is strongest."
"I'll have someone at the cottage path. If anything moves toward you that shouldn't, you'll have warning."
"I appreciate that."
"Don't appreciate it yet. If Sloane manages to trigger what he's planning, the town takes the hit regardless of your control. I'm not gambling Hollow Oak on one person's ability to hold a storm." He held her gaze. "But I'm also not going to sit here and pretend you haven't earned the chance to prove it."
The meeting broke twenty minutes later. Rowan left first, already pulling his work gloves from his belt, heading for the lakeside structures. Emmett stayed at his desk making notes. Rafe walked out of the council building with Isla beside him, the morning sun warm on the cobblestones, the square waking up around them.
"Diana first," Isla said. "Then the dock. I want to check the hull plank treatment before tonight."
"You're giving me a schedule."
"Someone has to." She looked at him sideways. The lightness was back. Faint, guarded, but present. "You're a good captain, Rafe. But your planning stops at the waterline."
"That's because everything worth planning for is on the water."
"Not everything."
They walked through the square together, side by side, and Rafe felt something that wasn't just his wolf pulling west. It was steadier than that. Quieter. The particular feeling of a man who'd stopped arguing about whether to stay and started figuring out what staying looked like.
Diana was behind the inn's front desk when they came through the door, blonde hair up, ledger open, three things going at once. She looked up, saw both of them, and her eyes moved between their faces with the quick comprehension of a woman who missed nothing.
"Storm prep?" she asked.
"How'd you guess?" Rafe said.
"Rowan called ahead. I've got six rooms cleared and the kitchen stocked. If people need a dry place tonight, they've got one." She narrowed her eyes at Isla. "You okay?"
"Getting there."
Diana nodded. She pulled a key from the desk drawer and handed it to Rafe. "Side entrance. If your crew needs access after hours, that opens it."
They spent the rest of the morning moving through town. Isla checked the hull plank at the dock while Rafe reviewed the rigging mount with Dex. She walked the lakeside structures where Rowan's crew was stacking fresh sandbags, checking water levels, reinforcing the same southeast section she'd worked days ago. He watched her move through the town, talking to Rowan about drainage angles, stopping at the Mercantile for salt, then picking up something from Freya's apothecary that she slipped into her jacket pocket.
She was part of this, working alongside the people who were preparing for a storm that might be partly hers to hold. The town moved around her without the watchful hesitation he'd seen earlier in the week. Something had shifted. She was here, helping again and that counted.
By afternoon the sky had started to change. The clouds from the northern range were visible over the ridge, stacking the way late-spring storms stacked, and the air carried the particular charge that preceded a front.
