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He sighed. “Ben and Marcus.”

Mr. Fletcher looked toward the ceiling. “Of course.” He took several breaths before facing me. “I am so sorry.”

The apology came without defense. Without bargaining. Without mentioning what the wolf children had done first. He looked physically ill, sweat beading across his forehead. “This was not authorized by our family. It was not discussed with us. We would never permit retaliation of this kind.”

I nodded. “Of course. I believe you.”

Mrs. Fletcher pressed one hand to her forehead. “Were the children hurt?”

“They’re recovering.”

“And the adults?”

“Also recovering.”

Her eyes closed briefly. “We will cooperate with the council.”

Nick looked up. “Mom⁠—”

“No.”

Fear entered his face. “They’ll punish me.”

“You deserve it,” she said.

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“That’s the only reason we’re discussing consequences instead of funerals,” Mr. Fletcher growled.

The room fell quiet.

Aaron shifted beside me. His guilt had changed. Before this visit, he had viewed the smoke attack as an extreme reaction committed by older enemies. Now he was looking at Nick and seeing the chain between choices.

He cleared his throat. “We started it.”

Mr. Fletcher turned toward him.

Aaron lifted his chin with visible effort. “Not all of it. There were other things before. But we kept doing stuff because we thought they hated us anyway.”

Nick looked at him. “We did hate you. You put peanut butter on our gate.”

“That was supposed to attract squirrels.” Aaron’s ears turned red. “We shouldn’t have done any of it.”

One of the Kipner twins stepped forward. “We made jokes about bears because it was easy.”

The other nodded. “We didn’t think about you being people.”

Mrs. Fletcher’s gaze softened slightly. “Not people?”

“You know what he means,” Marissa said. “They saw us as bears first.”

The twin nodded. “Yes.”

Nick leaned back. “We saw you as wolves first.”

His father looked toward him. “That doesn’t justify attempted poisoning.”

“I know.”