Chapter 76 — They Asked For Her

The request arrived before noon. Caleb found Hallie near the work board and handed her a folded page.

“This came from Bellamy Creek.”

Hallie stopped with one finger still beside a stores note. For a second, the old pull under her ribs sharpened. Austin.

She hated that her body could reach the conclusion before her mind did.

“Grant?” she asked.

Caleb shook his head.

“It’s addressed to you.”

Hallie looked down. Her name sat alone on the outside. Hallie.

She opened it. The first lines were formal enough to make her shoulders tighten. Bellamy Creek requested her temporary assistance.

Hallie read that sentence twice.

There had been no attack. No threat at the boundary. Nothing military.

The problem was messier.

Work rotations had stopped matching the needs they were supposed to cover. Supply changes were being approved in one place and missed in another. Disputes that once would have been settled before they reached leadership were accumulating because different people held different pieces of the same problem.

Meetings solved one issue and created another because no one carried decisions from one function into the next. Hallie’s grip tightened on the page. She knew this pattern because she had spent years preventing it.

She had been the person who noticed when two schedules contradicted each other. The one who knew which disagreement needed an Alpha and which only needed the right two people in the same room. The one who carried decisions forward so they did not have to be remade days later.

Future Luna work, everyone had called it then. Useful training for the place she would hold beside Austin. Hallie read the final paragraph.

Bellamy Creek was asking her to return temporarily and help stabilize the pack’s internal coordination. Not Grant. Her.

Caleb had not moved.

“Do they expect an answer today?”

“No deadline in the message.”

Hallie looked at him.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think they expect one today.”

Good. Hallie folded the page once.

“Where’s Grant?”

“In his room, last I saw.”

She nodded and walked away. Grant looked up when Hallie entered. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with one boot unlaced.

Hallie closed the door behind her. His attention went immediately to the paper in her hand.

“What happened?”

“Bellamy Creek asked me to come back.”

Grant’s hands stopped. Hallie crossed the room and sat beside him. Close.

Their thighs touched. She did not hand him the letter yet, and Grant gave her the time.

“They’re having problems,” she said. “Not one problem. A lot of small ones stacked together.”

“What kind?”

“Work coordination. Disputes. Changes that aren’t reaching everyone they affect.”

Grant’s face stayed still. Hallie looked at the folded page.

“They said functions have been split between different people and nobody is keeping the pieces together.”

Grant understood.

“You used to.”

Hallie swallowed.

“Yes.”

The answer felt stranger than it should have. Bellamy Creek had treated what she did as preparation for becoming Luna. Then Austin rejected her, and the future attached to that work disappeared.

Apparently the work had not. Grant looked at the letter.

“Do you want me to read it?”

Hallie handed it over. He read without comment. When he finished, he gave it back.

“They asked for you.”

“Yes.”

“Not Cedar Draw.”

“No.”

“Not me.”

“No.”

Hallie rubbed her thumb along the fold. Part of her had expected Grant to say absolutely not. Another part had expected him to tell her she should go because Bellamy Creek needed her.

Both would have been easier than his silence.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Grant looked at her.

“I think they have a problem you know how to solve.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only part that’s mine.”

Hallie frowned.

“You don’t have an opinion about whether I should go back?”

“I have several.”

“Helpful.”

His mouth moved faintly. Grant looked down at his unlaced boot, then back at her.

“I don’t like the idea of you walking back into a place that hurt you.”

Her chest tightened.

“I also know you may want to see what they’re asking from you now.”

Hallie kept the answer to herself.

“If I tell you not to go, you’ll have to decide whether you’re staying because you want to or because I made the choice easier.”

“And if you tell me to go?”

“Same problem.”

She hated how accurately he understood it. Grant shifted his hand onto the bed between them. Not reaching.

Available. Hallie looked at it. Then leaned sideways until her shoulder rested against his.

Grant stayed still. She did not take his hand. She only sat with the letter in her lap and his body warm against hers.

For several minutes, neither spoke. Hallie let herself think about Bellamy Creek as a place instead of a wound. The rooms she knew.

The people who had once brought her problems because she remembered what everyone else had agreed to. The work she had done so routinely that no one had measured what happened without it. Going back would mean seeing Austin.

The mate bond made that impossible to pretend otherwise. It would mean entering the pack that had watched her future disappear and then continued without her. Hallie’s stomach tightened.

Grant did not fill the silence. That helped more than advice would have. Eventually Hallie sat upright.

“I’m not answering today.”

Grant nodded.

“Okay.”

“You really aren’t going to tell me what to do.”

“No.”

She looked at him.

“I might hate you for that.”

“Temporary?”

“Probably.”

“Then I’ll risk it.”

Hallie almost smiled. She unfolded the letter again. This time, the request looked different.

Bellamy Creek was not asking for Austin’s rejected mate. It was not asking Grant to loan them his wife.

The pack had listed failures. It had looked at the gaps between them. Somewhere inside Bellamy Creek, people had recognized the work that used to keep those gaps from widening.

Then they had written Hallie’s name. She still did not know whether she would go, but Bellamy Creek was finally asking instead of telling her where she belonged.

It was asking her to come back because it needed what she knew how to do.