I pointed toward a thicker limb below his feet. “I need you to move your right foot down about six inches.”
“I can’t,” he whimpered.
“You don’t have to let go.”
“I’ll fall.”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Because I wouldn’t let him. Because every person below us would throw themselves under him before allowing him to hit the ground. Because being part of a pack meant there was almost always somebody standing under the tree, even when that person irritated you on most days.
I decided to keep the explanation simple.
“I’m going to put my hand around your ankle, then you’re going to move your foot until it touches the branch.”
Levi was breathing heavily now.
“Your mom is here,” I continued. “My mom is here. Caldwell is helping Uncle Dave hold the ladder. Nobody is going to let anything bad happen to you.”
His gaze moved toward Caldwell, who raised both thumbs. After another few seconds, Levi nodded.
I reached out carefully until my fingertips touched his shoe first, then closed around his ankle.
“There you go,” I said. “Move it slowly.”
He lowered his foot by an inch, stopped, then kept going until the sole reached the branch. “I found it.”
“Good. Put some weight on it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know, but do it anyway.”
He obeyed. The branch held.
Getting him down the rest of the way took a lot of coaxing and a promise that no one would tell his older sister he had cried. The promise was clearly unenforceable because his older sister was among the crowd, recording it on her phone, but the spirit of it helped.
Once Levi reached the ladder, I climbed down behind him, keeping one hand near his back. His mother grabbed him the moment his feet touched the ground. He buried his face against her shoulder, then became embarrassed by the hug and immediately claimed he had only climbed the tree to retrieve a kite.
There was no kite, but nobody mentioned that.
Caldwell came to stand beside me as the crowd dispersed. He slipped his hand into mine again. I looked down and found him studying the scrape across my forearm.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. It’s technically something, but it doesn’t require medical intervention.”
He pulled a bandage from his pocket.
I stared at it. “Do you carry those now?”
He nodded.
“Because of me?”
Another nod.
That was both touching and mildly accusatory. I accepted the bandage. “Thank you.”
Caldwell smiled. When Julie called across the yard, telling him he needed to come home, he didn’t turn around immediately.
“Be more careful,” he said softly. His voice was slightly rough from disuse, but crystal clear.
My heart gave a fierce double-thump. I kept my tone completely normal so I wouldn’t startle him, though I wanted to pull him into a bear hug. He reserved his words for those closest to him.
“I will, buddy. Promise.”
He squeezed my wrist, then ran back to the house.
I was in the process of peeling the paper from the bandage when my phone rang.
Aunt Karen.
I considered letting it go to voicemail, but she lived close enough to walk to my house in two minutes and possessed both excellent hearing and no hesitation about locating me in person.
I answered. “Hello, Aunt Karen.”
“Have you seen the article?” As usual, she didn’t bother to give a greeting. Karen didn’t believe in wasting time on social conventions when indignation was available.
“Which article?”
“The one about the wildlife corridor.”
I pressed the bandage over my scrape. “I have not.”
“Of course you haven’t.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
She sighed. “The county is rolling back buffer protections around Millstone Wildlife Park.”
That got my attention.
Millstone sat several miles north of us, covering hundreds of acres of forest, wetlands, and protected migration land. To humans, it was just another park. For local shifter packs, it provided enough isolated space to run without ending up photographed by a trail camera or struck by somebody’s SUV.
“What protections?” I asked.
“The development setbacks along the western boundary. They want to reduce them to allow commercial construction.”
I looked out at the ridge. “How close?”
“Close enough that we’ll have parking lots beside the lower trail within five years. They’re calling it economic revitalization.” Her disgust was clear.
“That sounds bad.”
“It is bad. The runoff alone could damage the wetlands. Increased lighting will disrupt nocturnal animals, the access road cuts through deer movement routes, and more people will mean more cameras.”
“It’s not just about wetland runoff,” Aunt Karen added. “The human commercial development on the west side is squeezing the Fletchers out of their foraging grounds. It’s pushing the bear shifters right up against our northern boundary. That’s why the Fletcher boys have been roaming so close to our property lines lately.”
Aunt Karen was wrong so often that I hesitated to agree with her. She objected to new library hours, outdoor concerts, people wearing hats indoors, and most foods created after 1985.
As the sister of the alpha, Aunt Karen always tried to assert power wherever she could, even if she wasn’t in the right.
Unfortunately, she had a point now.
“Send me the article,” I said.
“I already did.”
I checked my notifications. She’d sent it seven times. “Ah. I see that.”
“You need to speak to your mother.”
“I will.”
“And the council liaison.”
“I’ll contact her,” I said.
“And the planning board.”
“That will have to come from residents inside the affected district.”
“We are affected.”
“Legally affected.”
Karen made an impatient sound. “This is the problem with younger leadership. Everything has to be phrased correctly before anyone will act.”
“I’m not leading yet.”
“You will be soon.”
“Mom isn’t retiring tomorrow,” I pointed out.
I was determined to do it right when my time came. Leadership wasn’t a title you used to puff up your ego and dump the hard parts onto everyone else when things got uncomfortable. Real leadership meant staying when things got tough. It meant being the anchor when the tide tried to pull everyone under.
“She won’t retire at all if everyone allows her to keep running around solving every problem on her own.”
The criticism was uncomfortably close to something I already worried about, though I refused to tell Karen about that. “I said I’ll look into it.”
She huffed. “You always say that.”
“And then I do.”
She paused. It was hard to argue with my follow-through. Karen found a way anyway. “You don’t always do it fast enough.”
“I’m still standing under the tree I just got Levi out of.”
“What was he doing in a tree?”
“Being an eleven-year-old boy.”
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