The Race to Blackwood Ridge

Blake’s SUVs were still pulling out of the parking lot when Magistrate Thorne closed his case and turned to me.

“Your inheritance is confirmed, Lady Silvermere. The trust’s money and assets are yours as of today. But the court needs seven days to register the valley’s stewardship in your name.”

“And until then?”

“Alpha Westwood can still manage the valley’s roads, boundary markers, and surveys.” He handed me a stamped page. “He filed a survey order for the northern ridges before he left. It is legal. But it does not give him one coin, one deed, or one dollar of yours.”

Seven days. For a week, Blake’s scouts could walk any ridge they wanted, and Blake did not like losing things. He would not stop at one search.

“Alder, what else does the trust hold besides coins?”

He had the list ready. Rental houses in Oakhaven, shares in the Harlow mill and a grain freight line, deposits in three banks, and a quarry lease.

“Liquidate everything by the end of the week. Sell the properties and shares, withdraw the deposits, and deal with the quarry lease.”

“All of it?” Thorne said. “Selling that fast, you will get forty cents on the dollar, maybe less. The mill alone is worth three times that in a normal year.”

“Paper only has value while the world works,” I said. “I would rather own things that still work when it stops.”

He studied me for a moment, then signed the order.

“I also need a house with thick walls and its own water supply, away from the pack roads.”

Alder pulled a listing from his drawer: Hartwell Lodge, an old stone hunting lodge on the lower slope west of the ridge, with two-foot walls and a private spring. It was part of an estate sale. I bought it through my private account and asked the seller to forget my name. Right now it was bare stone and old wooden doors. It needed work before it could protect anyone.

So I called the only person I trusted with part of the truth.

Tessa Marlow had been my friend since we were children. She had shared her bread with me when I had none. Now she ran her late father’s masonry crew in Harlow.

“Iris? Pack gossip says you walked out on the Westwoods.”

“I did. I need your crew to reinforce an old lodge. Strong doors, a sealed cellar, and a way to protect the spring. I will pay cash, starting Thursday.”

“That is a lot of wall for a hunting lodge.”

“Call it insurance against a hard winter.”

She was quiet for a moment. “You sound different.”

“I am.”

“I’ll bring the crew on Thursday,” she said. She did not ask more questions, and I did not offer answers. I had learned the hard way what trust could cost.

My phone buzzed before I reached my car. It was Blake’s lawyer, sounding tired. Mrs. Westwood wanted her gifts returned: the emerald earrings, the silver brush set, the winter furs, and everything in my wardrobe.

“She needs them by Friday,” he said. “The pack account is under review.”

Under review meant Catherine needed things she could sell.

“The earrings are on the bedroom carpet where I dropped them,” I said. “Everything else in that wardrobe was paid for by five years of my work. If she disagrees, she can take it to the court.”

I hung up.

The ruined Silvermere keep stood at the head of the valley, a burned shell of black stone two miles east of Blackwood Ridge. The trust ledger said a royal treasury had once sat in its great hall, raided two hundred years ago. Blake had read the same ledger. Every steward before him had searched those ruins for leftover gold. That made it the first place his scouts would look, and I wanted them there.

I climbed into the collapsed cellar at dusk. A raided treasury would surprise no one, so I kept it simple. I pushed three royal coins into the rubble under a fallen beam, rubbed soot across the cellar door, and left the stones looking picked over, as if thieves had missed a few coins in the dark.

Good scouts would dig, then doubt it. But doubt would still cost them days. That left me two coins, which I would keep as proof of my line.

It was full dark when I reached the foot of Blackwood Ridge. First I climbed to the cliff to check the vault door. It was closed, exactly as I had left it. The crescent in the rock shimmered when I stepped close, the way it had that morning, then went dark again when I backed away.

Then I tested my realm. A slab of fallen granite lay beside the path, as big as a door. I pressed my palm to it and thought, come.

The slab vanished. My legs gave out and I fell to my knees. Blood ran from my nose, my head pounded, and I breathed hard, as if I had carried the stone uphill on my back. It took ten minutes before I could stand. I let the slab out again, slowly, and it thudded onto the ground where it had been.

One slab, ten minutes of shaking. The realm worked, but it was not free.

At dawn I ran the forest road toward the ridge. Fifty-nine days. I counted them with every step. I made it to the second bend before my lungs burned and my legs shook, and I had to stop with my hands on my knees. In my last life I had healed a whole pack and never learned to hold a rifle steady. Knowing about the Frost did not make my legs stronger. I ran again, stopped again, then climbed the loose rocks below the cliffs, scraping both palms. By the time the sun cleared the pines, I could run a little farther than at the first bend. It was a start.

I came around the last switchback with sweat in my eyes, and stopped.

The dew on the path was broken. Fresh boot prints led off the main trail toward the cliff. Blake’s survey order covered every northern ridge, so his men would be working in teams. The main team would still be digging at the keep. One man had walked the ridge instead.

He stood at the cliff face with his back to me, a radio in one hand, staring at the rock. The crescent was glowing, soft and silver. It had only ever glowed when I stood close, and I was thirty paces away. The ring on my finger had started to warm.

I dropped behind a boulder. He raised the radio to his mouth.

“Alpha,” he said quietly. “I think you need to hear this.”