Chapter 8 The Fourth Meeting
The first man arrives seven minutes late and spends the first three minutes explaining why, which tells me most of what I need to know.
He's from a territory two hours east, well-dressed, steady eye contact. I'd almost revised my expectations upward. Then we got into numbers.
His pack's current obligations, the way he described them — phased, managed, restructured — had a quality to them, the quality of a story that's been practiced.
I asked two follow-up questions. By the second answer I had a clear enough picture: not restructured. Underwater. My father had been handed a polished surface and hadn't looked beneath it.
I thanked him for his time.
The second candidate sat down before the chair had fully stopped moving. Young, the kind of young that still expected rooms to arrange themselves around him. He lasted less than a minute.
"I have a fated mate," he said, directly, like he was disclosing a scheduling conflict. "My father doesn't approve of her. I can marry you, but you stay out of my business."
I looked at him for a moment.
"Thank you for coming."
The third man was closer to my father's age. That alone wasn't the problem. He was composed, organized, and had clearly done his research on Silverpine's position. I was running the numbers in my head when he put his hands flat on the table.
"I can shore up your pack," he said. "I need an heir."
I thanked him for his time, too.
Now I'm sitting with a cold cup of coffee and a problem. Three candidates, two hours, nothing workable.
If this last conversation doesn't go anywhere, I need a contingency. There are two smaller packs on the eastern border worth approaching, and there's the slower route of going through the asset dispute legally, which would take the better part of a year and cost more than it recovered.
A knuckle raps the table, once.
I look up.
Lachlan is standing at the edge of the table, one hand resting on the back of the chair across from me.
His hair is combed back in a way it never was at university. The jacket fits like it was made to, which it probably was. The face above all of it is exactly as I remember.
I'd prepared an opening. Something neutral, meeting-appropriate.
What comes out instead is, "Sorry — what would you like to drink?"
"Do you need a break?" He pulls the chair out and sits down. "Three people in two hours. You've been at this since ten." A pause. "Shall we go straight to the fourth?"
The back of my neck goes warm. He came early enough to see all of them. Early enough to watch me work through my list with the same expression I'd use reviewing quarterly reports.
I straighten. "I apologize. I needed to move through the options quickly. It's more efficient."
He doesn't react to that. Just looks at me with the same patient attention he'd apparently been directing at this table for the past two hours. "What kind of arrangement are you looking for?"
No preamble. No positioning. I recalibrate.
"I need access to the assets my mother left me," I say. "They're currently sitting inside Silverpine's holdings. I want them separated and transferred within the next year."
He doesn't write anything down. Doesn't ask for the asset list or the valuation. "Done. I'll come to your house tomorrow. We can go through the pack cooperation terms and settle on a timeline for the mating ceremony."
I study him. That was too fast, and I don't do agreements I don't understand. "What do you want? Why?"
He's quiet for a moment. Not uncomfortable, just the silence of someone selecting words with care.
"The northern ore vein your mother left you," he says. "I need that."
I search my memory. It takes a second. Small footprint, unremarkable grade, extraction costs that never quite justified the return. It's been sitting idle since before my mother died, flagged as low priority in every review I've seen. I'd honestly forgotten it was in the portfolio.
"Why?"
"It holds a particular significance to me." His tone doesn't change.
I sit with that. Run the exchange.
He gets a depressed-yield ore vein that's been producing nothing. I get the assets my mother spent years building inside a pack that swallowed them when she died.
The imbalance is obvious and entirely in my favor, which means either he's made a serious miscalculation or there's something about that vein I'm not aware of.
Neither scenario closes the deal for me on its own. But I've done enough due diligence this morning to know that workable is rare, and this is workable.
I hold his gaze across the table. "Deal."
We stand at the same time. He's taller than I'd registered in the old photos — close to a full head above me, which means I have to adjust my line of sight in a way I hadn't prepared for.
This near, I can see the details that group photographs flatten out: the exact set of his jaw, the small scar at the edge of his left brow I don't remember from before. He looks at me the way people look at things they've already decided about.
His hand comes up. I take it.
The handshake is brief and entirely professional.
"Tomorrow," he says.
"Tomorrow," I confirm.