13. The Pack Compliance Notice #4
He gestures mildly.
"Because I count considerably more men in this room than women. Unless a number of you bend in more directions than your questions suggest, which I don't judge and don't consider my business, it seems unwise to assume that standing near a woman constitutes a household."
Juniper chokes on a laugh to my right. Marlowe addresses a brief prayer to the ceiling.
"That was annoyingly good," Cade mutters.
"Miss Whitlock came here to file professional compliance documents," Sawyer finishes, still perfectly pleasant. "She is not required to hand this town a diagram of her private life before she's permitted to earn a living."
That closes most of the room's mouth for it.
One reporter won't quit.
He pushes to the front and asks me directly — do I confirm it? Do I confirm what Mr. Devereaux just said?
Here's the part I don't expect.
Sawyer doesn't answer for me. He turns his head and looks back at me instead, and his hand stays down at his side, palm open, not reaching.
"May I?" he asks.
He's asking to walk me through the crowd. Nothing more, and he's asking, in front of every camera in the county, for permission to touch my hand.
I look at the open hand.
Yesterday, this man asked me for a drink instead of steering me into one. An hour ago, he offered his name and his license to a stranger's crisis and never once itemized what he expected back.
Now he's standing between me and a room that has decided my independence is public property, and he is still, willingly, waiting for me to say yes.
How can I keep rejecting him when he’s doing all the right things I thought only happened in cozy romance novels?
I put my hand in his.
"Yes."
His fingers close around mine — warm, firm, careful.
He doesn't crush it to make a point. He doesn't pull before I've set my own weight. His thumb rests still against the side of my hand, a held thing, not a leash.
He turns back to the room.
All he has to do is lift our joined hands, and that seems to be the answer to this reporter’s interrogation, or anyone else’s inquiries, to say the least.
"If we're finished being bothered, we have careers to preserve."
Then he leads me toward the clerk's office, and the other three fold in around me without being asked.
I don't have to look at the map to map them.
Beckett is off my left shoulder. August has put himself between me and the thickest bank of strange Alpha scent. Cade walks at my back, keeping the followers a body-length off. My old pack closes around me on pure instinct, the way water closes over a stone.
Sawyer, though, is the one holding my hand.
The contrast is not lost on me.
My body eases under the layered cover of all of them — not all the way, not safe, not enough to forget where I'm standing. Still, the panic lets go of my throat one finger at a time, and in the release, my heart does a small bright thing that has nothing to do with fear.
Was this what rescue was supposed to feel like — when the man remembered to ask first and effortlessly protects you from anything that dares wish to see you crack and crumble?
I glance at his profile.
The calm jaw. The dark curls. The infuriating composure. Cream sleeves rolled over strong forearms in a building that is currently trying to end me.
Have I just met my knight in shining armor?
I consider the linen.
Fine. My knight in aggressively expensive tailoring.
The clerk's door shuts behind the five of us, and the noise of the lobby cuts to a hum. For one breath, I think we've made it.
Then Mayor Florence sets her back against the door and does not look relieved.
"That bought you credibility," she says. "It also bought you an obligation, effective the second he said it out loud in a public building."
She lays it out flat because Florence has never once softened a thing in her life.
Sawyer named me his Omega and named the other three as our coordinated unit, in the record, on camera.
The department can now accept a five-person unit for preliminary review.
But it will accept nothing on a drawl. All four men have to sign sworn temporary-pack declarations.
I have to confirm the relationship in writing, under penalty of professional fraud.
Any pack already attached to Sawyer's registration must consent, formally release him, or appear in person — before the deadline.
Every head in the room turns to Sawyer.
For the first time since he walked into my office, his composure slips. Just at the edges.
Just enough.
I haven't been with them in five years.
Florence sets four blank forms on the desk and squares them with two fingers.
"You have until 8:17 tomorrow morning."
I'm still holding Sawyer's hand.
I feel the exact moment he understands what I've already understood — that our clever, improvised, career-saving little miracle has just reached across a locked door of his own and dragged his missing pack straight into my fire.
Apparently, my knight in shining armor came with three runaway grooms, an estranged pack, and paperwork due before breakfast.