13. Chapter 13 #3
“Alpha succession complications requiring ritual intervention. A vulnerability in the bloodline they cannot solve internally. Some forgotten rite tied to land claim, pack hierarchy, or inheritance that needs reconstruction from older magical records. It could be an issue with mating law. It could be an issue with lineage purity. It could be a territorial custom so old none of the living wolves remember the mechanics of it, and they need witches to recover or interpret whatever survived.”
Her gaze sharpened on me.
“It could be any number of things. That is the problem. I do not know.”
Bohdan set his glass down with great care. “And not knowing is dangerous. And you dislike dangerous things.”
“I like it even less when the people withholding the answer are a wolf pack built on polite separatism and two covens famous for dying before they become cooperative.”
My hand had flattened against the carved wood of the chair arm at some point during her report. I noticed it only when the grain pressed half-moons into my palm. My jaw hurt faintly. I had locked it without realizing.
Maddie’s name did not enter the room.
It did not need to.
Ironwood’s interest in witches. Ironwood’s attention to mixed-species spaces they should by all rights disdain. Ironwood’s alpha looking at the woman fate had tied to me as if she were a strategic opening.
None of it arranged itself into comfort.
I said, “How long has this been in motion?”
“Long enough to be deliberate,” Amelia replied. “Not long enough for anyone to grow careless about it, apparently.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Ironwood hasn’t been throwing money around publicly or using obvious intermediaries. They’ve approached through old channels, private introductions, favors owed. Quietly. Expensively. With restraint.” Her mouth tightened. “I hate restraint. It usually means intelligence.”
Bohdan folded his hands loosely on the desk. “They’ve only held full Council recognition for three years. Their history alone makes secrecy an indulgence they should be too cautious to exercise unless the matter is serious.”
“Exactly,” Amelia said. “A newly sanctioned outlier pack with a reputation for keeping to its own kind does not start courting ancient covens for novelty. If they were after spectacle, they’d fund a museum wing.
If they were after ordinary counsel, they’d stay within wolf channels.
This—she flicked the token once, metal flashing—is something else. ”
I heard the bass through the wall again, dim and steady. It made a strange counterpoint to the conversation, as if below us desire still obeyed simpler laws, while in this room three people sat tracing shadows across an unseen board.
“Could it concern Sloan?” I asked.
Amelia shrugged one shoulder. “Anything could concern anybody until proven otherwise. But if you’re asking whether I think the younger sister’s employment here was random, the answer remains no.”
Bohdan’s gaze shifted to her. “No, because you have evidence?”
“No, because I have instincts, and they have kept me alive this long.”
“Reassuring.”
“It should be. My instincts are usually expensive.”
Despite the line, her expression did not soften.
I said, “Do you think they are looking for a ritual involving interspecies bonds?”
That was as close as I came to saying Maddie. It felt too close already.
Amelia did not answer immediately. She considered, which for her counted as caution of the highest order.
“I think,” she said at last, “that if a pack built around bloodline ideology discovered a complication involving mating, inheritance, or species contamination—as they would call it—they might seek solutions very quietly before the wider world got wind of the problem.”
My vision narrowed fractionally.
Problem.
She had not meant Maddie with the word. Perhaps she had meant some hypothetical line of inquiry. Perhaps she had meant only what Ironwood might call such a thing. It did not matter. The shape of it struck, anyway.
Bohdan saw something in my face then, because his voice came lower when he said, “Nikolay.”
I looked at him.
“We do not know that this touches her,” he said.
No, we did not.
But ignorance had ceased feeling like relief.
Amelia leaned forward, forearms on her knees now, token trapped in her fist. “Listen carefully. I am not saying they have targeted Maddie. I am saying Ironwood is moving pieces I cannot yet map, and one of those pieces may be your little Texas wolf because Sage Lynch has shown more interest in her than I enjoy.”
There it was, plain as she ever made anything.
I sat with it in silence a moment. Then I asked the only useful question left.
“What do you need?”
A flash of approval crossed her face. “Time. Access. And no one doing anything theatrical before I know more.”
Bohdan snorted softly. “So, not a family show of strength, then.”
“Try to astonish me.”
She rose before either of us could say more, all restless utility again. The satchel went over her shoulder. The token resumed its turn between her fingers.
“I’ll keep digging,” she said. “If Ironwood has paid for witchcraft, I want to know what shape they purchased.”
At the door she paused and looked back at me. For once her rapid-fire manner gentled by a shade.
“Do not do anything stupid tonight, prince.”
I might have found the instruction insulting in another mood.
“Your faith wounds me,” I said.
“It should motivate you.”
Then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.
For a while neither Bohdan nor I spoke.
At last, I stood.
He did not stop me. He knew, I think, that conversation had reached the point beyond which words only multiplied helplessness. I crossed to the window set into the far wall of his office.
Obsidian moved beneath us in its usual composed indecency. Purple light pooled over black leather. Servers drifted through the aisles with practiced grace.
And all I could see was Sage Lynch’s face the last time he had watched Maddie on that floor.
Not lust alone.
Something worse.
The possessive stillness of a man unused to being denied what interested him.
My hand went into my pocket. I drew out my phone and opened her message again. The screen lit my palm in pale blue-white.
The gift is beautiful.
Thank you.
I’d like to speak with you about something important when I get back. I may stay a couple of days depending on how the pack handles the run festivities, but I want to talk.
When I get back.
Those four words had not comforted me before. They did now, a little. Not enough. But a little.
The bond had been with me all evening, a low, constant pressure behind my sternum, so steady I had nearly ceased distinguishing it from my own pulse.
I had spent too long pretending such things could be ignored into irrelevance.
They could not. What stretched between us was real.
Divine, if one preferred the larger vocabulary.
Merciless, certainly. It pulled now not with panic, but with awareness.
She lived. She moved. She remained somewhere under the same moon, beyond my sight and not beyond my reach forever.
I could have messaged her:
Be careful.
Do not trust him.
Come home.
All of them would have been true to some degree. None of them would have been fair.
Maddie had gone to the wolves because she needed wolves. I had known that when I let her go. Loved her enough to know it still.
Slowly, I locked the screen.
Then I set the phone face-down on the glass shelf beneath the window and left it there.
Trust, I discovered, felt very little like peace. It felt more like standing unarmed in a room where one could easily have reached for steel and choosing not to.
Behind me, Bohdan said nothing.
I was grateful.
I remained at the window, looking down over the club, while somewhere in the administrative wing my office sat waiting with its unread dossiers, its cycling monitors, and the untouched glass of blood-wine gone cold on the desk.