Chapter Eight
ISAAC
The board wanted a clean story.
This was not news. The board had always wanted a clean story — one alpha, one omega, a recognized bond that fit neatly into the succession documents and the press release and the shareholders' understanding of how high-functioning dynasty packs were supposed to work.
Micah and I had been managing this expectation for years, providing just enough of a professional partnership narrative to keep the board satisfied while maintaining the flexibility of our personal lives.
What the board could not have anticipated was a scent-match, because scent-matches were involuntary and therefore not something you could schedule for convenient board optics.
"Isaac Price and Dean Grant," Rowan said, in the board meeting that was not officially about this but was definitely about this.
"The match is documented. The succession requirements allow for a recognized alpha/omega bond as the primary pack structure.
This is — frankly, this is the simplest resolution we've had in two years of planning. "
Dean was sitting next to me in this meeting, which was a development that had happened because I'd invited him, which was a development that had happened because Dean had reached out three weeks after the fundraiser and said, with characteristic directness, I think we should talk.
I'm not good at not talking about things.
We'd talked. I liked him. The board meeting had been his idea, actually — he'd said he wanted to understand the structure he might be walking into.
"What does recognized look like, specifically?
" Dean asked Rowan now. His voice was professional, controlled.
Nothing in it gave away the conversation we'd had this morning over coffee, where he'd talked about Avery for thirty minutes and I'd listened and understood, with increasing clarity, that Dean Grant was not walking into any arrangement that left her out of it.
Rowan blinked. "Standard pack recognition. Primary alpha, primary omega, recognized bond. Housing protections, medical authority, the standard succession provisions—"
"And secondary partners?"
"Secondary partners can be maintained in a personal capacity—"
"But not recognized."
Rowan paused. Recalibrated. "Not in the succession structure, no. The law is fairly clear on approved—"
"The law is fairly clear on a lot of things that turn out to be political rather than scientific.
" Dean said it pleasantly. The particular pleasantness of someone who had been doing public advocacy work for years and knew exactly how to be clear without being aggressive.
"I'm asking about the specific legal framework. "
"Beta partners are not eligible for formal pack recognition under current succession law," Bastian Rook said from the side of the room, because of course he'd been waiting for a moment to deploy that sentence. "This is established. Any bond involving a beta in a formal capacity would require—"
"Thank you," Dean said, still pleasant. "I was asking Rowan."
Bastian Rook went quiet with the specific quiet of someone who would not forget this.
After the meeting, Micah stayed behind with Rowan. I walked out with Dean.
"Well," Dean said when we were in the corridor.
"Yes."
"They made the argument that Avery doesn't exist in their legal structure."
"They made it very efficiently."
"I don't like that." He said it simply, the way he said things he meant.
"I knew it was the framework. I've been fighting the framework for years.
But hearing it applied to someone specific — to her specifically—" He stopped walking for a moment.
"She was right that the law has an answer. I just keep hoping the law is wrong."
"It is wrong," I said. "Laws can be wrong and also be the law."
"That's the advocacy center's whole mission statement."
"I know. I've been funding it."
Dean looked at me.
"For three years," I added. "Anonymously. The financial trail is fairly buried but your legal team could find it if they looked."
He kept looking at me.
"I funded it because the work was right," I said. "That's all. I want to be clear that I didn't know you existed when I started the funding."
"I know," Dean said. "I'm not—" He shook his head. "I'm trying to figure out what to do with you, Isaac. You keep doing things that are unexpected."
"I'll try to be more predictable."
"Please don't." He almost smiled. "I've had a lot of people be predictable at me. It's exhausting."
We walked out into the afternoon and I thought about the board's clean story and the complicated reality that lived inside it: a scent-match that was real, a beta who'd been legally erased before she'd even been given a name in the structure, and two alphas who'd been circling the honest version of themselves for nine years.
Not clean.
True.
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