Chapter 10 — What Bellamy lost

Austin returned to Bellamy Creek before sunrise.

The mate bond returned with him.

He had known it would.

Still, the first quiet pull beneath his ribs when he crossed the boundary felt like an accusation.

Hallie was married now.

Grant’s wife.

The words remained wrong in his head no matter how many times he repeated them.

Yet the bond had not changed. It reached toward Hallie exactly as it had before the rejection, before Cedar Draw, before she stood under moonlight and made another man her husband.

Austin had spent the drive back trying to make that fact mean something useful.

It meant Hallie was still his mate.

It meant fate had not changed its mind.

It meant—

Nothing about what she had chosen.

That was the part he could not get around.

He entered the main building expecting work to help.

Work had always helped.

Bellamy Creek was orderly because people knew what was expected of them. Austin had grown up inside that structure. He had prepared for years to inherit it.

He was Alpha now.

Bellamy Creek was his responsibility to run.

The thought had barely settled when one of the morning coordinators intercepted him in the hall.

“We have a problem.”

Austin kept walking. “What kind?”

“The north work crews and the grain unloading are both short.”

He stopped.

“How short?”

“Enough that one of them won’t finish on time.”

“That shouldn’t be possible. The rotation was approved three days ago.”

“It was.”

Austin held out his hand.

The coordinator gave him two sheets.

He scanned the first.

Nothing looked wrong.

Then the second.

Still nothing.

He read them again.

Six workers assigned to the north repairs were also listed for the unloading shift that began an hour later.

Austin frowned.

“Who approved both?”

“You did.”

His eyes lifted.

The coordinator looked uncomfortable but did not retreat.

Austin checked the signatures.

His.

Both of them.

One sheet had come through with the regular labor rotation. The other had been attached to the supply schedule.

Separately, each assignment made sense.

Together, they were impossible.

“Why wasn’t this caught yesterday?”

The coordinator hesitated.

Austin already disliked the answer.

“Hallie usually checked the overlap.”

Silence settled between them.

Austin looked back at the papers.

“No one else checks it?”

“Not as one job.”

The response irritated him immediately.

“It has to be someone’s job.”

The coordinator shifted his weight. “It wasn’t written down that way.”

Austin felt the first spark of anger.

At the system.

At the answer.

At Hallie for somehow being absent from a page that had never contained her name.

“What exactly did she do?”

The man glanced toward the papers in Austin’s hand.

“She looked at both lists before they went final. Sometimes the food stores. Sometimes transport too. If the same people were needed twice, she changed the order or brought it to whoever could.”

Austin stared at him.

That sounded minor.

It should have been minor.

A few names compared across a few sheets.

Anyone could do it.

“Fix the overlap,” he said.

“We can pull people from the south crew.”

“No. Then you create a third shortage.”

The answer came automatically.

The coordinator waited.

Austin looked down again.

Hallie would have seen this before the signatures.

He knew that suddenly, with humiliating certainty.

Not because she possessed some rare skill no one else could learn.

Because she paid attention before a problem became visible enough to reach him.

Austin had always thought of her training in larger terms.

Hosting.

Pack disputes.

Ceremonies.

Knowing families and customs.

Standing beside an Alpha and making the position look effortless.

He had not thought about duplicated names on work lists.

Why would he?

They had never become his problem.

Until today.

Austin forced himself back to the pages.

“Move the unloading start back. Use the first crew for the north repairs until midday, then rotate only the people who are actually needed for the heavy work. Check whether the remaining unloading can be covered from the afternoon list without breaking another assignment.”

The coordinator nodded.

“And before you change anything,” Austin added, “compare all three schedules.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

The man left.

Austin remained in the hall with the papers.

Problem solved.

Mostly.

Nothing had collapsed.

No one was starving.

Bellamy Creek’s territory remained secure.

This was not a crisis.

That should have made him feel better.

Instead it made the absence sharper.

Hallie had been gone only days.

The first thing Bellamy Creek had lost was not some grand ceremonial function.

It was a mistake no one used to make.

Austin went into his office.

More papers waited on the desk.

He sat and pulled the nearest stack toward him.

For years, Hallie had been available whenever something needed smoothing before it reached him. He had accepted that availability as naturally as he accepted the mate bond.

She was there.

Of course she was there.

She loved him.

She had been trained to become Luna.

Fate had tied them together.

He had taken three different truths and treated them as one entitlement.

Austin leaned back.

The bond pulsed faintly.

Hallie was still there at the other end.

But she was not available.

That distinction hurt more than it should have.

He had loved her when he rejected her.

He loved her now.

Neither fact had stopped him from choosing the alliance Bellamy Creek needed.

And neither fact had stopped Hallie from choosing Grant.

Austin looked again at the duplicated names.

He wanted to dismiss the mistake as bad timing.

A single oversight.

A morning made worse because everyone was adjusting.

That explanation lasted until he noticed a note clipped beneath the supply sheet.

Three routine deliveries had been assigned arrival windows that overlapped with the same limited unloading crew.

Austin went still.

A second small failure—the kind Hallie used to catch before it reached him.

He picked up the note.

For the first time since becoming Alpha, Austin wondered how many parts of Bellamy Creek had looked effortless only because Hallie had been doing the work before anyone thought to call it work.