My Brother Chose His Foster Sister, So I Chose the Rival Alpha

The window was still down, and Celeste's hand was already reaching through it.

I caught her wrist before her fingers got to the notebook. "No."

"Ava, come on." She tried to pull free, and when I didn't let go, her voice went high and reasonable, the voice she used when she wanted Logan to overhear her. "It's not like it's private. It's routes. It's literally about the pack."

"It's my handwriting."

She yanked her arm back and stood there in my headlights, breathing hard. Then she did something I didn't expect. She leaned in past me through the open window, grabbed the notebook off the passenger seat, and flipped it open.

I let her. Maybe I wanted her to see.

She turned pages fast at first, then slower. The scent drift logs from March, when the rogue trails started shifting east. The quarry line, marked in three colors by season. The den sites for four pup families, with the mothers' due dates written in the margins. A page listing which of our own people couldn't hold a full shift within three nights of the full moon, and which ones got jumpy after midnight on the ridge. Then Harlan's name, with a note beside it in red: Do not send past the creek within three nights of a full moon. Two years running.

Celeste's mouth had gone slack.

"You keep records on the patrol team," she said. "On Harlan."

"I keep records on everyone I've ever taken out there. That's how you bring them all home."

"This is—" She looked up. "You didn't put any of this in the binders."

"No. The binders are pack records. That's the pack's business." I held my hand out. "This is mine."

She closed the notebook against her chest. "If I don't have this, I'm going in blind on Saturday."

"Then ask me. Call me. I'll be at the trailhead at six like always."

"It's a full moon. Everyone will be watching me run it." Her voice cracked, and it wasn't fake this time. "You want me to stand in front of the whole team and ask permission from you?"

I took the notebook back. She let it go, which surprised me more than the grab had.

"Goodnight, Celeste."

---

She went to Logan before I got the truck in park behind the house.

I heard it through the wall between my room and his study, which had never been well insulated. Her crying. His low voice. My name, twice.

Later, he knocked on my door and didn't wait for an answer.

"She says you're setting her up to fail."

"Did you ask what's in the notebook?"

He leaned on the frame with his arms crossed. "She says it's maps."

"It's five years of everything I know about that border. The scent patterns. The marks that only show up three nights a month. Which of our own people can't be trusted past the creek on a full moon." I turned from my pack, where I'd been rolling a spare jacket. "If I hand it over, I'm handing over every wolf on that team."

Logan's jaw worked. For one second, I thought he might actually ask to see it.

Then he said, "She's got one night to run this right. Just let her have the notebook."

"No."

He left without slamming the door, which was somehow worse.

---

Saturday. The full moon came up fat and orange over the ridge, and the whole team assembled at the trailhead at seven.

Eleven of us. Harlan with his arms folded. Marcus already stretching. The younger ones standing a little too close together, talking too fast. Celeste at the front in her new jacket, reading off the route from a page she'd printed out at the house. She'd gone west. At least she'd taken that much.

Then Logan's truck came up the gravel and stopped short, and I knew.

He walked into the middle of the group like he had something to announce, which he did.

"Ava. A word."

"Say it here."

His eyes flicked around the team, then settled. Whatever. He'd already made up his mind. "I need you to give her the notebook."

Nobody spoke. Harlan turned his head.

"I did my handover Thursday," I said. "Route files, training schedules, boundary records, all of it. Ruth signed for it."

"I know. This is the other thing."

"The private thing."

"Yes," Logan said. "The private thing. She's leading tonight, and she needs it. You've had five years with it. She's had two days."

"And if a stranger walked up to me and asked for my personal notes on our own people, what would you say?"

"You're not a stranger. You're her sister."

"Right. I forgot." I looked at Celeste, who had gone very still at the front of the line. "Celeste. You want to tell them what's on Harlan's page?"

She didn't answer.

"Then hold on," I said, turning back to Logan. "A full moon is the worst night of the month to send a wolf out blind. You know that. You've run it. So if a patrol lead can't take this team across the creek without my private handwriting in her pocket—" I let it sit for a second. "—why does she have the position?"

The clearing went dead quiet. Someone near the back coughed and then stopped.

Celeste's face twisted. She looked young and mean all at once, and for a second I saw the real thing under the wet eyes. "You've been waiting for this since the ceremony."

"Since a lot longer than that," I said.

"Ava." Logan stepped closer, low and tired, and I knew the next words before he said them, because he'd said them my whole life. "You're my sister. Why can't you do this one thing for me?"

I laughed. It came up out of me before I could stop it, loud enough that Harlan shifted his weight.

"Exactly," I said. "I'm your sister." I reached up to my collar. "Not the spare part you keep taking from whenever Celeste needs something."

The pin came loose. Silver Creek, worn smooth where I'd rubbed my thumb across it for five years. I held it out flat on my palm, and Logan just stared at it.

"Here." I pushed it into his hand. "Take it. I'm done being the lead you put in the room and never on the board."

"Ava—"

"Run your team, Logan." I stepped back out of the group. "I'm off at eight."

I walked to my truck with eleven people watching me, and I didn't look at any of them, not even when Celeste called my name in that small, sorry voice she saved for when she'd already won.

---

The notice was on the pack hall board Monday morning. Joint border survey, opened last week between us and one other pack. Six weeks, paid, mixed crews. Two slots left.

I took a form from the stack and filled it out at the desk.

Name. Rank, which I left blank. Current assignment, which I crossed out and wrote None. Under preferred crew, I put the only thing that mattered.

It's a joint survey. You go where they send you.

Logan was in his office with the door open when I walked in and laid the form on his desk. He read it the way he read everything, top down, and I watched his face as he got to the partner line.

Blackridge Pack.

He stopped reading. His hand flattened over the paper.

"No."

"You sign the cross-pack requests," I said. "That's the whole process. Signature, then it goes to the Alpha."

"You're not working with him."

Blackridge. Ronan Hale. Two years ago there'd been a boundary dispute at the far north line, and Logan had met him in front of both packs, and by the end of it the two of them were standing three feet apart in the mud with Hale's people pulling him back. I'd heard the story a hundred times. I'd never once heard Logan admit he'd lost the ground.

"I heard he's fair," I said.

"He's a liability."

"He's an Alpha, Logan. He's leading the survey crew."

"Which is exactly why you're not going."

He still hadn't signed. He still had his hand on the paper like he could hold the whole thing down.

I reached over, slid the form out from under his palm, and folded it once.

"You just gave my job away," I said. "You don't get to choose my next one."

"Ava." His voice cracked on it, sharp enough that people in the hall outside turned. "Ava, don't—"

I was already through the door.

I took the form straight to the Alpha. He read it, signed it himself, and sent it through.