CHAPTER 7: The Dead Don't Stay Dead

The second whiskey went down smoother than the first.

Sara set the glass down and looked at the man across from her, the werewolf across from her, she corrected, because precision mattered and she was going to be precise about this even if it killed her, and said:

"Explain the mate bond. All of it. From the beginning."

Roman refilled her glass without being asked.

She appreciated that.

He sat across from her this time. Forearms on the desk, hands loose, close enough that she was aware of the heat coming off him and far enough that she could think clearly. He had pulled on jeans and a shirt somewhere between the shift and the second pour and she was not going to examine how relieved she was about that.

"The bond is instinct before it's anything else," he said. "Your wolf recognizes its mate the way you recognize your own heartbeat. You don't decide it. You don't choose it. It's already done before your conscious mind catches up."

"And it's permanent."

"Completely."

"What does it feel like?"

Something moved through his expression. Private and complicated and there for only a second before he managed it away.

"Like finding something you didn't know was missing. Like a door opening in a wall you thought was solid." He paused. "Like certainty. The specific kind you can't argue with."

Sara absorbed this. "And when your first mate died."

"The bond broke." His voice was even. Practiced even, she thought. The evenness of someone who had said a difficult thing enough times that they had learned to say it without bleeding. "It's described as the worst pain our kind can experience. Worse than any physical injury. Some wolves don't survive it."

"But you did."

"I had a pack to run."

She looked at him for a moment. There was a whole story in that sentence and he wasn't telling it and she wasn't going to push it. Not tonight.

"The bond between us," she said carefully.

"What does it mean practically? What

does it require?"

"Nothing. Not yet." He met her eyes. "The full bond requires a mating ceremony. That's a choice. Completely yours." Something flickered in his expression. "I want to be clear about that. Whatever the bond is doing, whatever my wolf wants, your choice is your own. I will not push you toward something you don't want."

Sara studied him.

He meant it. She could read sincerity the way other people read text, and this man was entirely, uncomplicatedly sincere about this specific thing.

Which was either deeply reassuring or deeply inconvenient, depending on how you looked at it.

She looked away.

"The Wendigo," she said. "You mentioned footage. From a trail camera."

"Yes."

"Show me."

Roman opened his laptop. Turned it to face her. Pulled up a file, trail camera footage, timestamp three days ago, the eastern perimeter of the Thornridge property. The image was grainy and dark but the motion detection had caught it clearly enough.

The creature moved across the frame from left to right.

Sara watched it.

She had seen it in person less than seventy-two hours ago and seeing it on a screen was not easier. If anything it was worse because the screen made it containable, reduced it to something that fit inside a rectangle, and that containment was a lie she could see through.

She watched the way it moved. The particular rhythm of it. The head tilt as it passed the camera, as if it sensed the lens, as if it was aware of being watched and didn't care.

Her stomach dropped through the floor.

She knew that head tilt.

She had seen it across briefing room tables and crime scene perimeters and bad diner booths in three different states. She had seen it when he was thinking, when he was suspicious, when he was about to say something that would either crack a case open or get them both yelled at by their supervisor.

Marcus Webb had always tilted his head exactly like that when he was paying attention to something.

"Stop it there," she said.

Roman paused the footage.

Sara leaned forward. Looked at the frozen frame. The creature mid-stride, head turned slightly toward the camera, those lightless eyes aimed at the lens with an awareness that was not animal.

"That thing," she said. Her voice was very controlled. "I need you to tell me everything you know about how a person becomes a Wendigo."

"Sara…"

"Everything. Roman."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "It requires a ritual. Deliberate consumption of human flesh. The choice has to be conscious, the person has to know what they're doing and do it anyway. After that the transformation begins. It takes weeks.

It's…" He paused. "It's not painless."

"And the person who was there before.

Are they gone?"

"Not entirely. Not the strong ones." He watched her face carefully. "The stronger the person was before, the more of them survives inside the Wendigo. Memories. Personality. Recognition." He paused.

"Enough to use a name. Enough to remember faces."

Sara sat back.

She looked at the ceiling for exactly three seconds. Then she looked back at the screen.

"His name was Marcus Webb," she said.

"He was my partner for three years. We worked Behavioral Analysis together. He went missing on an undercover assignment two years ago. Six weeks later his body was recovered from a ravine outside Billings." She stopped. "I identified him. I signed the paperwork. I went to the funeral."

Roman said nothing.

"I need you to tell me," Sara said quietly,

"whether it is possible that the body I identified was not Marcus Webb."

Roman held her gaze.

"Yes," he said. "It's possible."

"And the thing on that footage…"

"Could be him. Yes."

The room was very quiet.

Sara pressed her hands flat on the desk. Looked at them. Looked at the paused footage. Looked at the impossible, ruined, inhuman thing frozen on the screen that moved with Marcus Webb's rhythm and tilted its head with Marcus Webb's curiosity and had said her name in a voice that still lived underneath all that horror like a frequency she couldn't stop hearing.

"He chose this," she said. Not a question.

"If what you're telling me is accurate, becoming a Wendigo is a choice. He would have had to…"

"Yes."

"Marcus." The name came out quiet.

Almost wondering. "Marcus Webb who used to bring coffee to victims' families and coached little league on weekends and once talked me out of quitting after the Harmon case." She shook her head slowly.

"That Marcus Webb chose to become a monster."

"People change," Roman said carefully.

"Especially when something breaks them.

Do you know what happened on the assignment he disappeared on?"

"It was classified. Need to know." She paused. "I didn't need to know."

"Whatever happened," Roman said, "it was enough."

Sara was quiet for a long moment.

Then she looked up. Her eyes were dry.

Her jaw was set. The grief was there, he could see it, compressed and managed and temporarily contained, but it wasn't stopping her. Wasn't even slowing her down.

"He said my name," she said. "In the clearing. Which means he knows I'm here." She looked at Roman directly. "Which means he came here specifically for me."

"Yes."

"Why."

Roman leaned forward slightly. "What do you know about Wendigo behavior? Pack dynamics?"

"They're largely solitary in folklore."

"In reality they're solitary until they're not. The powerful ones eventually want a partner. Someone who can hunt with them in both worlds, human environments and supernatural ones." He held her gaze. "A trained FBI profiler who already operates in morally complex territory would be…"

"An ideal hunting partner," Sara said flatly.

"Yes."

She absorbed this with the stillness of someone receiving information they had already half-known and were now confirming.

"He's not going to stop," she said.

"No."

"He'll keep coming."

"Yes."

"And right now he's circling this property."

"Yes."

Sara looked at the frozen footage one more time. At the thing that used to be her partner, moving through the dark with patient, terrible purpose. Then she closed the laptop with a quiet, final click.

"Alright," she said.

She looked at Roman across the desk.

"Tell me how we kill it.”