Morning After #2
“Enforceable?”
“Not fully.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Explain that.”
I took a moment before answering, because this was the part she would understand too quickly.
“If you acknowledge the claim publicly, you become the legal center of the pair.”
Her brows drew together. “Meaning?”
“My obligations become enforceable through you.”
“What obligations?”
“Protection. Residence. Political allegiance. In some clans, voting proxy.” I held her gaze. “In older law, command rights.”
Her expression changed.
Calculation.
“You shouldn’t have told me that.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to use this.”
“I assumed you would.”
“And you’re comfortable with that?”
“No.”
That made her blink. Good. I had not intended to comfort her with the answer.
“I am not comfortable with the council using you,” I said. “I am not comfortable with your agency using you. I am not comfortable with Solberg’s clan using you. And I am not comfortable with the fact that the best protection I can offer you is a place inside another system.”
Her face went still as she took in the truth neither of us could make cleaner. She did not answer.
Then Catalina looked back at the mark on my shoulder, her thumb hovering just beside it. “So the question isn’t whether I’m claimed,” she said.
“No.”
“It’s who gets to define what that means.”
“Yes.”
Her mouth tightened. “Wonderful.”
It was not.
“But I would rather put the teeth where you can see them,” I said, “than smile while someone else closes them around you.”
Her mouth curved faintly. “That was good.”
“I know.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“I will try not to.”
“You’ll fail eventually.”
“Likely.”
She looked down at her hand on the sheet, her thumb tracing the fabric while the thought settled, harder now. “I haven’t decided whether I’ll make this public.”
“I know.”
“I’m not deciding today.”
“I know.”
“And you aren’t going to push for it.”
“No.”
Her gaze lifted back to mine. “And if I never do?”
The dragon hated the question.
“Then I remain privately claimed by you,” I said, “without asking you to stand in front of anyone and call it law.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was her breathing. “That sounds painful.”
“It will be.”
“You said that very calmly.”
“I have had several hours to dislike it.”
That almost got the laugh.
I would take almost.
“You’re very inconvenient, Dominic.” There was warmth in her voice, and the line between us answered it.
Her hand rested over my chest, and the mark she had left on my shoulder burned with quiet recognition.
I had been holding information because I thought that was protection.
Last night made that harder to defend.
She had claimed me back. I no longer had the right to decide alone what dangers she was ready to know. I had planned to wait until she had eaten, until the morning had become less bare and less new. The plan had been made before the bite.
“There’s something I haven’t told you.”
She did not lift her head. “Of course there is.”
I deserved that.
“Three staff rotations in the last two weeks have not matched the published schedule,” I said. “A man at the seventh-floor service door. A kitchen aide. A courier whose face I saw once, twenty-six years ago, at an American consulate desk.”
Her body went still under my hand.
“That isn’t a courier problem,” she said. “That’s a leak.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes sharpened. “Inside Ashenmere?”
“The courier is American.”
Her mouth flattened. “Dominic. I know how mail works.”
“The face is American,” I said. “The source is inside Yuki’s apparatus.”
That brought her head up.
I felt the shift before I saw it. The warmth between us banked, and the operative came forward fast enough that I understood, not for the first time, why people like Davis had trusted her in rooms full of knives.
“You’re sure.”
“The movement patterns are internal. The access is internal. Whoever is feeding the line knows the compound well enough to move through service rotations without drawing attention.”
She took that in quickly. “Who?”
“I have not confirmed it.”
“But you have been watching.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze moved past me as she started assembling. Staff routes. Doors. Rotations. Access points. People who carried trays and folders and keys without being seen as people who mattered.
Her eyes sharpened. “Why haven’t you surfaced it?”
“Because I needed to understand the depth of it first.”
Her gaze returned to mine. “Depth.”
“If Yuki’s people are compromised, then reporting the leak to the wrong person does not close it. It tells them I found it.”
The answer landed between us.
“You were mapping the risk.”
“Yes.”
“The risk to Yuki?”
“The risk to you.”
I held her gaze. “I needed to know where you would need me to be.”
The line between us warmed, but her face did not soften. Catalina did not soften when handed information. She sharpened around it.
“How long have you been thinking that way?”
“Longer than I should have waited to tell you.”
That was the truth.
She watched me for one breath. Then another. “You were going to tell me anyway.”
“Yes.”
“But later.”
“I was going to wait until you had eaten.”
“And then I claimed you back.”
“And then you claimed me back.”
She watched me for a long moment. “You should’ve told me sooner.”
“Yes.”
I did not qualify it. That mattered to her; I felt the small shift through the bond before I saw it in her face. “I was holding it until I knew you could use it,” I said. “Not receive it. Use it.”
Her hand returned to my chest, steady over my ribs.
“Now you can.”
The decision moved through her before she spoke, sharp and immediate. “We find them. Together.”
“Yes.”
She searched my face for the part I had not said yet. “There’s more. Tell me.”
I kept my hand at her back and made my voice careful. “Solberg’s father will move within forty-eight hours.”
“Martin.”
“Yes.”
“He can’t move on us directly,” she said.
“No. But he can move on his son’s claim.”
The personal heat in her banked so quickly I felt the operative come forward through the bond. “He’ll try to dissolve Rhain’s legal claim.”
“Yes,” I said. “Through council mechanism, through the Norwegian framework, or through whatever interpretation lets him pretend this is procedure instead of intervention.”
She went quiet for a moment, already building the map. Martin. Yuki. Rhain. The council. Norway. Every pressure point with a name attached.
“How would he pull it off?”
“Pressure on Yuki first. Then Rhain. Then political consequence to anyone willing to recognize the dual bond as valid.”
Her eyes stayed on mine. “How long do I have?”
“Forty-eight hours. Possibly seventy-two if Bjorn delays.”
That caught her attention. “Bjorn would delay?”
“He has stayed away when he did not have to,” I said. “More than once.”
“On whose side?”
“Not Martin’s. I do not yet know whether that means he is on Rhain’s.”
She grappled with that in silence, her focus turning inward as the pieces moved.
Martin could not attack the bond directly, not without making himself the aggressor.
He could attack the legal recognition around it.
He could isolate Rhain. He could make delay look like procedure until the bond became easier to separate than defend.
Then her eyes came back to mine. “If I claim both of you publicly,” she said, “what does that do for Rhain?”
The dragon in me went very still.
“Publicly accepting me makes you Ashenmere,” I said. “Not only my mate. Family on the clan ledger. And Ashenmere defends what is entered on its ledger.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“Every bond you carry becomes ours to defend,” I said. “Rhain’s included.”
“Even though Rhain is Norwegian.”
“Even though. The bond runs through you. To break it, Martin would have to go through Ashenmere first.”
“And he won’t bring his clan against Ashenmere for one son’s bond.”
“No. The price is too high.”
“So Rhain’s claim becomes protected through me.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m on the council record for the rest of my life. Bonded to both of you. Publicly. That’s the price.”
“Yes.”
Her face did not change, but the bond caught the weight of it. A door closing. Another opening. “And the alternative is Martin pulls his son away.”
“Probably.”
* * *
A deputy knocked at nine.
Catalina had fallen asleep again against my side. Not deeply. Enough that her body ignored the sound and mine did not.
A folded paper slid under the door.
I waited until the footsteps receded before I reached for it.
The message was written in Yuki’s hand.
Noon.
Nothing else.
Yuki had a gift for economy when the recipient already knew how much trouble he was in.
I set the note on the bedside table.
Catalina opened one eye. “Noon?”
“Yes.”
“Scolding?”
“Formal reprimand.”
Her eye opened just enough to be a question. “Worse?”
“Longer.”
She closed her eye again. “Tragic.”