Chapter 2 The Alpha Who Fired Me

The base office had one window and a coffee machine that had not been cleaned since the last century. Dex sat behind a metal desk with a stack of incident reports on it and a pen he kept turning between his fingers. I stood in front of the desk because he had not offered me a chair.

"You're fired," he said.

I had been expecting it since the water truck. That did not make it land any softer.

"For what?"

"Failing to follow the drop order."

"The drop order was wrong. The north line was already dead when I got out of the plane. You saw the wind shift same as I did."

"I saw a jumper decide her own line without clearing it with the crew on the ground." He set the pen down. "That's how people die."

"Nobody died. Fire me for it and the next crew chief who reads this report is going to laugh at you."

He leaned back. The office lamp caught the side of his face and made the grey of his eyes look almost silver. Bright golden blond hair, swept back from his forehead and still damp at the edges. The second thing you noticed was how still he could get.

"You were on my line for one fire," he said. "One. And in that one fire you touched me."

My ears went hot.

"I pushed you out of the way of a wall of flame. That's not touching. That's doing my job."

"You know what I mean." He came around the desk and stopped a foot away, close enough that I could smell the soap on his skin, and under it that cedar scent, and my wolf rolled over inside me like a dog showing its belly. "It doesn't happen here. I told you that on the ridge. You don't get to come onto my base and pull something out of me that I've spent six years keeping down."

"I didn't pull anything. It was there before I landed."

He flinched. Just a small thing, a tightening around the mouth, but I saw it.

"Get your gear," he said. "Ruth will drive you down to the highway. There's a bus in Hamilton at six."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I said no." I crossed my arms because my hands had started to shake. "You want to fire me because I made you feel something you didn't plan for, that's your business. But I am not getting on a bus because you're scared of your own skin."

The office went quiet. Out in the yard a saw coughed and died, and someone laughed, and I could hear the crew muttering around the burn barrels.

"You think I'm scared," he said.

"I think you're a man who runs a fire base on a wolf pack's land and lies to the council about how many wolves are on it. You tell me what that is if it isn't scared."

I do not know why I said it. It came out of me the way the wind shift had, sudden and sure, and the moment it was in the air I knew I had made a mistake.

Dex went white around the eyes. He stepped in, and his hand came up and stopped before it touched me.

"Who told you that," he said.

"Nobody told me anything. I've been on three bases in four years. Your numbers don't add up and your pack is twice the size you tell the council it is. I don't care about your silver or your politics or which Alpha's boots you stepped into. I care about jumping. Ruth says you're short two."

He stared at me. The muscle in his jaw moved once.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, and it was not a denial. It was a warning.

"Then fire me for the drop order and not for the rest of it. Put it in the file and I'll sign it. But you look me in the eye and tell me the real reason first."

He walked to the window. His back was straight and the tension in his neck was plain to see.

"You smelled like cedar," he said. "On the ridge. Before you landed. I smelled you from sixty feet up in the air with the whole valley on fire and I couldn't hear my own radio for three seconds." He turned his head just enough to look at me. "You know what that means."

I did know. Every wolf knows. There is a story they tell you when you are small, about the one scent in the world that will find you no matter how far you run. I had spent my whole life telling myself it was a story.

"It means nothing," I said. "It's a smell. It's a fire season with the worst burn in a decade coming at us. It means nothing."

"It means you're my mate."

The word sat in the room between us. My wolf howled, long and low, because she had known it since the ridge and I had been shoving her down. I clenched my fists until my nails bit.

"I'm not your anything. You fired me, remember."

"I fired you because I can't have a mate on this base. Not with the council sniffing around and the pack half starved. You think I want to send you away? I have never had to look at a woman I just met and tell her to get on a bus."

"Then don't."

"Get your gear, Ivy."

I did not move.

He came back around the desk, picked up the pen, wrote something on a form and signed it, then held it out. His hand was steady. Mine was not.

"That's a seasonal contract," he said. "Three months. Probation. You jump what I tell you to jump and you keep whatever is going on inside your chest where I can't see it. You break one rule, one, and you're gone before the plane lands. Do you understand me?"

I took the paper. His fingers brushed mine and the spark went up my arm again and we both pretended it had not happened.

"Why?" I said.

"Because I need a jumper. And because if I put you on that bus I'll spend the whole season wondering where you went."

He turned away before I could answer. The door opened behind me and Cora stepped in, short black hair wet from the shower, a towel over her shoulder, and she looked from me to Dex and back again and her eyes narrowed.

"Everything settled?" she said.

"Everything's settled," Dex said. "Ivy's on probation. Put her on the north rotation."

Cora did not like that. I could see it in the way she folded her arms and in the long slow look she gave me.

"North rotation's full," she said. "I had Wren on it."

"Then move Wren. Ivy jumps north."

Cora held my gaze one second too long. Then she smiled, and it was not a warm smile.

"Sure," she said. "Welcome to the Ravagers, Ivy. Try not to get anybody killed."

She walked out, and the door swung shut behind her, and I stood there with a contract in my hand and the mark on my wrist prickling like a fresh burn.

Dex had not asked about the mark again. That was the thing I could not stop thinking about. An Alpha who wanted rid of me had asked one question on the ridge and then let it go.

The door opened a second time. Cora stuck her head back in.

"One thing," she said. "The council's man is coming up from Denver day after tomorrow. He wants to inspect the base."

Dex did not turn around. "Which council man?"

"Marcus." Cora said the name the way you say the name of a storm that has already taken your roof off. "He says it's routine. He says he's bringing his own people."

Dex's hand closed slowly around the edge of the windowsill. I saw his knuckles go white, and I heard the change in his breath, and I knew, the way I knew the fire was going to roll, that whatever was coming up that highway was not routine and not a surprise.

Cora pulled the door shut. The office clock ticked. Dex stood at the window for a long time without saying anything, and then he spoke without looking at me.

"Go get some sleep," he said. "And Ivy. If Marcus asks you anything about that mark on your wrist, you tell him it's a burn from a cookstove."

I looked down at the mark. It had been warm all evening, and now, in the lamplight, I could swear I saw the thin line of it glowing faintly under my skin, like silver wire holding a fire inside a lantern.