Chapter 22
MIA
The debrief runs three hours.
Grey has me walk everyone through it twice—what happened with Ramsey, what we know about Davina, the compulsion gas. Then Grey and Lexi tell us about being chased. How Crow caught Lexi and drew blood. Just once, but it nearly came to a fight between him and Grey.
Crow sits with his arms on the table and his hands folded and says almost nothing, and I let him because I know that particular silence. He’s going to blame himself for what he did to Lexi for a long time, no matter what any of us says about it.
Andy takes meticulous notes even though Dutch’s arm is firmly wound around her shoulders the entire time. Razor breaks two pens then demands snacks. Lexi apologizes four times for Violet’s betrayal, at least two of them with accompanying tears.
Violet is upstairs under guard and under sedation.
According to Marcus, her injuries are still unknown from whatever Davina did to her.
Echo refused to leave her side, which I tried not to take personally.
Lexi keeps saying betrayal like that’s the only word for it, but none of us is pretending Ramsey didn’t put a blade to the softest part of her heart and call it a choice.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pissed at what she did to expose us. But Ramsey is the real villain here. Not a na?ve human girl who only wanted to protect her best friend.
I give my account when asked and answer questions when they come, and at some point, someone puts a plate of food in front of me that I eat without tasting.
Nash is three seats down. He practically stares at me the entire time while I’m way too nervous to even glance his way. But even without eye contact, I know exactly where he is in the room at every moment, the way you know where a door is even in a dark room.
The bond does that, apparently.
I’m still getting used to it.
More than once, I feel him brush at the edges of my mind, but I don’t reach out. Not like I did outside with Ramsey. I’m not sure I’m ready for that again.
After we eat, the meeting devolves into something more casual. Something that almost resembles family dinner. The debrief is no longer tactical and becomes more like, “Holy shit, did you see what Mia did to Ramsey? Totally fucked him up.”
That, from Dutch and Razor. They try to high five me.
“Fuck off,” I tell them, and they just grin and high five each other.
“I still can’t get over Nash healing so fast,” Andy says with a bit of wonder. She glances at her tablet. “The pictures we took right after the incident look pretty bad. But now…you really are okay?” she asks him skeptically.
“Totally fine.” He lifts his shirt to prove it, and sure enough, the spot where his insides were practically hanging out earlier is nothing more than a welt.
“That’s a freaking miracle,” Dutch says. “The only other wolf I’ve seen heal like that is Lexi.”
Grey frowns, his forehead creasing in thought. “Actually, now that you mention it, that’s probably what it is.”
“Lexi healed him?” Razor asks.
“No, idiot,” Crow says, smacking his brother on the head. “Nash has a drop of super alpha in him.”
“Seriously?” Razor asks, eyes wide.
Even Nash looks sufficiently surprised at that. “You think I took something from you the other day?” he asks Grey.
“You certainly went deep enough into the alpha power,” Grey says. “It’s possible.”
“Is that why you were able to break the compulsion?” Andy asks.
Nash hesitates.
I tense, gripping my armrest way too tight.
“The healing might have been Grey,” he says at last, his gaze finding mine. “Breaking the compulsion wasn’t. Or not entirely, anyway.”
He doesn’t elaborate. And everyone looks ready to grill him.
“It was me.” I don’t know when I decided to say the words. Or why. But they shove out of me anyway. Maybe it’s my wolf. Satisfied little bitch. She got what she wanted.
“What do you mean, it was you?” Dutch asks.
But Lexi’s soft smile suggests she already knows. And Grey looks smug too. Assholes. I look at Nash, shutting the rest of them out.
“Nash is my mate,” I say. “I used our mate bond to reach him. And it worked.”
The strangest part is that saying it doesn’t feel like surrender. The bond didn’t take his choice away. It gave it back. For us both.
Nash’s eyes glitter at the truth I just spilled, and through the bond, something warm and reverent brushes against me before he pulls it back. My wolf is practically howling for joy.
No one says anything for at least three seconds.
Which, for this group, is basically a religious experience.
Dutch, of course, is the one to break the silence.
“Your mate?” Dutch repeats, his voice three octaves higher than usual. “Mia, the fuck! When were you going to tell me?”
“We only just realized it today,” Nash says before I can snap back at Dutch for making this about him.
“Wait.” Dutch sniffs. “You haven’t claimed each other, though.”
“Stop smelling me, asshole.” I glare, and Andy covers her mouth, hiding a smile. “We just figured it out, like, three hours ago. I’m not going to claim a mate under the same roof as you.”
“Why not?” Dutch shrugs. “I would. If Andy would let me, I’d take her right here in this room in front of all—”
“Whoa, okay.” Andy holds up her tablet. “Back to work then. Does anyone want to help me write a statement for the public about what happened? We’ve already had numerous calls from reporters about a disturbance and a large chase that led around the edge of the city earlier today, so I think we need to address it. ”
No one volunteers.
Outside the conference room, the noise is chaotic. Elena already has maintenance ripping apart the ventilation system and bagging every filter for proper disposal.
“And Davina?” Andy presses. “What’s our statement about her?”
“We followed her scent trail to the edge of town where it abruptly vanished,” Dutch says. “Likely had a car waiting.”
“Or used the blade to cover her tracks,” Grey says.
“Can it do that?” Andy asks.
“That blade, in the hands of a hex witch, can do a lot more than I want to think about,” he says.
“We’ll need to get it back,” Dutch says.
The silence that follows is evidence of how fucking tired everyone is.
“We’ll think about that once everyone is recovered,” Lexi says, and no one argues.
“We still need to find a hex witch who can help us with the wards,” Grey says. “That’ll be first on our agenda after we’ve all had some rest.”
“What about Ramsey’s pack?” Razor asks.
“I took the liberty of sending my pack to round them up,” Nash says. “Marcus and Donahue are still sorting through them—who ran, who surrendered, who claims they never had a choice.”
“Thanks,” Razor tells him. “For everything you’ve done for us. We won’t forget it.”
By the time Grey calls it and people start moving toward the door, it’s late enough that the city outside the windows has gone quiet. My left shoulder has been wrapped by the pack doctor—soft tissue damage—and the painkiller she gave me has taken the worst edge off without making me useless.
Nash touches my elbow as I pass him in the doorway.
Just that. Two fingers, brief. A silent question.
I stop but say nothing.
“Later?” he asks. Quiet.
“Later,” I agree.
My apartment smells familiar when I get home—traces of coffee and the cedar and sandalwood candle I’ve been burning down to the last inch on the kitchen counter. I stand in the kitchen for a moment and let the sense of home settle over me.
Then I shower, change into the oldest clothes I own, and pour a glass of wine I’m not sure I’ll drink.
I stand barefoot in my kitchen and look out at the city; the glass towers catching the sunset, the river threading through downtown in its slow, indifferent curve, the mountains dark and solid at the far edge of everything.
Indigo Hills. Still standing. Still mine.
I saved it.
We saved it—Nash and me and all of us—and somewhere in the mess of today, I haven’t had a single second to feel the victory of that.
I love this city.
I’ve always loved it in the way you love something you’ve had to fight to keep—not peacefully, not easily, but with the full knowledge of what it costs.
The Claires working in diners. The teachers buying supplies with their own money.
The corner bodegas that go back four generations.
I fought for all of it, and tonight it’s still there, and so am I, and that should feel like enough.
It does.
It also feels, if I’m honest, like a lot.
I’ve been running at full speed for so long I’m not sure I remember what it’s like to just stop.
To put down the weight of it. To let somebody else carry it while I catch my breath.
Indigo Hills has taken everything I had for years, and I gave it willingly, and I’d do it again, and I’m also standing here in my kitchen at dinnertime with a wrapped shoulder and a bond humming quietly in my tired chest.
I grab my glass plus another and cross to the couch and sit, exhaling heavily before sipping my wine and setting it aside.
Echo materializes from somewhere around the bookshelf and lands on the cushion beside me. He’s carrying something—a gold ring, princess-cut diamond, no idea whose. He deposits it on the cushion between us with great ceremony, then tucks himself against my thigh.
“Rough day for you too?” I ask.
He makes a small sound.
“Yeah.” I scratch behind his ears. “I know the feeling.”
The knock comes twenty minutes later.
“It’s open,” I call, mostly because I don’t have the energy to get up. But also because, for the first time in ages, I’m not worried about a threat standing on the other side.
The door opens.
Footsteps sound.
Nash has changed out of what he was wearing at the estate. Dark shirt, sleeves pushed up, messy hair. There’s still a bruise along his jaw where Ramsey caught him.
The sight of it stirs a rage in me that’s not entirely rational. I have to remind myself the asshole who hurt him is gone—unable to hurt anyone ever again. Especially my mate.
Those words stir something in me that I tamp down before it can show on my face.