10. Chapter 10 #3
“I usually am,” I said, and then realized I had said it exactly as I used to say it to younger AUSAs who came into my office with half-built theories and too much confidence.
The familiarity hurt. Just for a second. Then it steadied me.
Remy leaned forward, her bracelets whispering softly at her wrists.
“There are protocols. If you are presented as his mate, no vampire with sense touches you without understanding it as a strike against Maksym directly. If you are presented as a witness under crown protection, Council law comes into play. If you are presented as both—”
“Then Lucian has to decide whether his appetite is worth declaring war on multiple fronts,” I finished.
“Exactly.”
Taras’s mouth tightened. “He may still decide yes.”
“Then we make sure he decides in front of witnesses,” I said.
Maksym’s eyes remained on mine.
I hated how much I liked that he was not trying to soften the facts for me.
“There is risk,” he said.
“There is always risk.”
“This risk is yours.”
“It has been mine since the parking garage.”
The words struck him. I saw it. His face did not show much, but I was learning that much with Maksym was not nothing. A slight tightening near the eyes. A line at the jaw.
“I will not use you as bait,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “You will use me as counsel, witness, and problem.”
Remy smiled slowly. “Problem?”
“A legal term of art,” I said.
“It is not,” Taras said.
“It is when I use it.”
Maksym looked at me for a long moment.
Then he sat, and I felt the shift in him. Not retreat. Calculation. The king accepting that the woman beside him was not a relic to place behind glass, no matter how loudly his instincts objected.
“Public emergence,” he said. “Controlled setting. High political cost for interference. We force Lucian to understand that reaching for you now means placing his hand inside a trap.”
“Preferably one with cameras,” I said.
“No electronic recording in many Council spaces,” Remy said. “Too easy to manipulate with magic. But there are sworn records. Witness scribes. Binding testimony under oath. Memory seals in some proceedings.”
I closed my eyes briefly. “Of course, there are magical depositions.”
Remy’s grin returned. “Baby, you have no idea.”
“That sentence should worry me more than it does.”
Maksym’s fingers tapped once against the table. “There may be an opportunity sooner than expected.”
I turned my head toward him. “That sounded ominous.”
“It was practical.”
“Those are often the same thing when spoken by powerful men.”
Maksym accepted the hit without flinching. “My younger brother Nikolay, has been involved in an incident that will require review before the Supernatural Council.”
I waited. He did not continue fast enough.
“Maksym.”
He inclined his head. “Nikolay killed a wolf shifter Alpha during the rescue of his fated mate.”
I stared at him.
“A wolf shifter Alpha,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“During the rescue of his fated mate.”
“Yes. Who is also a wolf shifter.”
“She is also a wolf shifter?”
“Yes. Her name is Maddie.”
I held up a hand. “No. Stop. Pause the supernatural soap opera for one second.”
Remy made a strangled sound.
I turned fully toward Maksym. “You’re fucking kidding me. You don’t sparkle, but people shift into wolves? So there is a whole Jacob situation?”
Taras looked briefly toward the ceiling as if requesting patience from whatever systems he trusted.
Remy laughed so hard she had to brace one hand on the table.
Maksym stared at me.
Not offended. Not quite confused. More like a man who had led armies, governed ancient bloodlines, and negotiated with creatures that wore human shapes as a courtesy, only to find himself entirely unprepared for a woman from Appalachia referencing popular paranormal romance as legal taxonomy.
“Jacob situation,” he repeated.
“Yes,” I said. “Wolves. Shifting. Abs. Territorial drama. I don’t know. I only absorbed the cultural bullet points. I was busy with law school.”
Remy had tears in her eyes. Actual tears. She wiped one away with the back of one elegant finger. “Lord, I have waited decades for a situation like this.”
“This is not a joke,” Maksym said.
“I assure you, I am not laughing because I think any of this is funny.” I put both hands over my face. “I am laughing because if I don’t, I may start screaming and never stop.”
“Vampires are real,” I muttered. “Witches are real. Werewolves are real. There is a Supernatural Council. I died. I drank blood from a vampire king’s wrist and had an orgasm about it.
Now I may be defending a vampire prince in wolf court or monster Congress or whatever because he killed an Alpha rescuing a woman named Maddie.
I have clearly gone insane. That is the cleanest explanation.
Vanderbilt should revoke my degree posthumously. ”
Cool fingers closed around my wrists. Firm. Not harsh. Maksym pulled my hands away from my face.
I should have jerked back. I did not. His grip was careful, but not tentative. There was something grounding in the strength of it, something that said the world might be absurd, but the hands holding mine were real enough to push against.
His amber eyes held mine.
“It is real,” he said. “All of it.”
“That is not better.”
“No.”
“I wanted you to lie a little.”
“I do not think you did.”
I glared at him.
He held my wrists a second longer, then turned my hands over and placed them palms down on the table in front of me. Like returning evidence to its proper position. Like saying: Here. Begin here. This much is solid.
“Nikolay needs a good lawyer,” he said.
I went still. The sentence entered differently from the rest.
Not as madness. Not as lore. Not as another revelation added to the pile already crushing the human framework of my mind.
Needs a good lawyer. That was a door. A familiar one.
My fingers pressed against the table.
“What happened?” I asked.
Maksym watched the change in me. He saw it; I knew he did, because his own expression altered with something like relief and something like pride, both carefully contained and neither successfully hidden.
“I was there and was a part of it,” he said.
“The broad shape is this: an Alpha wolf shifter died. Nikolay was involved. Maddie is Nikolay’s fated mate.
The circumstances surrounding her rescue and the Alpha’s subsequent death will be brought before the Supernatural Council.
The Council maintains order across species.
Vampires, wolves, witches, demons, angels, and others, when necessary.
Its authority is political, ancient, and occasionally absurd. ”
“Court, then,” I said.
“In a manner.”
“Rules of evidence?”
“Different rules.”
“Advocacy permitted?”
“Yes.”
“Counsel?”
“Yes.”
“Precedent?”
“Extensive, inconsistent, often old enough to be irritating.”
For the first time since waking in the dark, I felt something like professional hunger.
Not blood hunger. Cleaner. Sharper. Mine before fangs, before chains, before Lucian.
I sat back.
“I’m clearly taking crazy pills,” I said. “But you think this will be a good place for me to pop out of a cake?”
Maksym stared at me. The silence stretched.
Remy’s smile spread with delighted anticipation.
Taras looked down at his notebook, but I saw his mouth twitch.
He looked at me as if he had never encountered a woman like me in all his long life.
Good. Maybe he had not.
Maybe he had known queens, duchesses, witches, vampire nobles, demons in designer suits, and whatever else walked through the back doors of the world. But he had not known a girl raised in the foothills of Appalachia by a grandmother who could stretch a dollar until it begged for mercy.
He had found me dying. That was not the same as knowing what had survived.
“No cake,” he said at last.
“Shame.”
“The Council would take it poorly.”
“I assume monster Congress has no sense of theater.”
Remy pointed at me. “Do not assume that. Some of them have far too much.”
“Noted.”
I looked down at the papers on the table.
“When is the Council hearing?” I asked.
“Not yet set,” Maksym said. “But Father will be involved.”
“Your father?”
“Get ready to meet the King of Kings, mate.”