Page 27 of The Steel Beast’s Heart

The passenger's face drains. The driver's hands tighten on the wheel.

"You came to her land. You killed animals. You cut her tires and her fences, destroyed her cameras and left her stranded in a dead zone because you thought she had nobody." I don't raise my voice. "She has the Feral Sons. And a medic who knows where every bone in your body sits and how long each one takes to heal."

The sheriff's cruiser comes up the logging road behind them. Two deputies. The arrest takes four minutes. The men don't speak. They don't look at Isla. They don't look at me, either.

Isla watches them go. Her arms stay folded, she doesn't move until the cruiser disappears around the first bend. Then she turns to me.

"Forty pounds?"

"Thirty-two in someone with low bone density. I rounded up."

The corner of her mouth lifts. She turns back to the gate, and the club stands behind her in the dust, and she breathes.

Knox takes us east. The ride out follows a fire road that cuts through old-growth woodlands behind the compound. Douglas fir so tall the canopy closes over the gravel and the light comes through in strips. Isla's arms tighten around my waist on the curves. Her chin rests against my shoulder.

The thirty acres open up where the fire road crests the southern ridge. Creek access below, flat ground along the water, the ridge facing south. Morning light hits the clearing full on. Isla's grip loosens. She sits up behind me and looks.

I feel the moment she sees it. Her hands go still on my ribs, and her breathing changes. Spacing, drainage, where the mews would face, how the creek would feed the intake pens.

We ride the full perimeter. She doesn't say a word.

Back at the compound, Knox spreads a map across the table.

"The compound acreage runs thirty acres east into the woodlands." He traces the tree line with his index finger. "Old growth. Creek access along the southern ridge. Flat ground for construction." He looks at me. "Your woman's twelve acres are exposed and compromised. Ridgecrest's people know the layout, the fencing, the access roads. She rebuilds there, they'll watch her do it."

"She won't take protection."

"I'm not offering just protection." Knox taps the eastern acreage. "The club needs the land managed. Overgrowth is a fire risk, and the creek needs monitoring. Isla needs infrastructure she can defend. It works for everyone."

Isla runs her finger along the creek line on the map, the same creek she saw from the back of my bike twenty minutes ago. She asks about drainage gradients, raptor mew placement relative to the prevailing wind, road access for large-animal transport, and whether the creek runs year-round or goes seasonal in August. She asks a few questions. Knox answers all of them. By the end, both of them know she's going to say yes.

"Fine. But the mews face east. Non-negotiable."

The corner of Knox's mouth pulls. "It will be your land, to do with as you please."

Hunter's bike sits behind the garage, but his seat at Church stays empty. Seven days now, four past his usual departure.

"Where's Hunter?" I ask Finn after the meeting breaks.

Finn grins. "Where do you think? Claire's, of course. Dude needs to either mate her or leave the poor woman alone."

That evening, the map spreads between us on the compound table. Pencils and a straightedge and her feeding schedule weighted under my coffee mug. I sketch the raptor mews footprint on graph paper while she marks fawn pen placement along the creek.

"The pen needs distance from the road. Startle response in orphaned fawns can set rehab back weeks."

I measure the distance from the access road to the creek bank. "A hundred and fifty feet enough?"

"Two hundred. And the surgery station faces west, so Garrett needs to account for the rain when he frames the roof."

"I'll talk to him."

She reaches into the stack of paperwork she brought from her desk. Permits, facility specs, the intake logs she needs to reference for the new layout. A folder slides out from the middle of the pile. The tab reads Intake Records in her handwriting.

I've seen that handwriting on a thousand cage cards. I've never seen it on a folder with a bunch of notes inside, all in my handwriting, dating back two years.

She sees me looking. She doesn't move the folder.

"I kept every one," she says.