12. Norah
Chapter twelve
Norah
Ipull away from the curb and ease into traffic, my hands light on the wheel, while my brain immediately convenes a small internal committee to review the decision I have made.
Now that I’m alone in the car, the decision feels considerably less simple.
Norah v.1 has concerns. She’d like to note that I’m driving across a city to find a wolf at his place of business, which I know is definitely on the wolf side of Larkin.
That I have no guarantee he is there, no guarantee he will come out if he is, and no guarantee that whatever I’m planning to say will be received how I intend it to rather than some other, awkward way.
Norah v.1 wants to know what the plan is.
The plan, I tell her, is to show up.
She’s not satisfied with this answer.
I stop at a red light and tap my fingers once against the wheel. Norah v.1 can suck it.
The light changes.
I go south.
The change in the neighborhood unfolds gradually, and then all at once.
The cafés and boutiques thin out first, giving way to buildings with fewer windows and wider footprints, the kind built for function rather than foot traffic.
The sidewalks stay clean and the roads stay maintained, but there are fewer pedestrians and more delivery trucks with their back doors open at the curb.
I roll the window down a few inches.
The air is different here. Less coffee and sugar, more metal and motor oil, the warmth of sun hitting brick that has been absorbing it for decades. I pass another few blocks and start noticing the people.
Delivery vans where the family cars used to be.
Pedestrians moving with the focus of people who are going somewhere rather than looking for somewhere to go.
They carry themselves differently, that physical presence I have been learning to read over the past several weeks because I’ve started paying attention.
Wolves.
I don’t need anyone to tell me. The recognition has gotten easier, more instinctive, like a frequency I’ve tuned into and can’t unhear. I recognize the broad builds and the easy physical confidence now. It’s how they move through space.
I find the street Silas mentioned their corporate office, warehouse, and family apartments are on, and slow the car.
The buildings here are larger, set farther apart, brick warehouses and converted industrial spaces running the length of the block with their loading docks open to the street. A few trucks sit backed up to the bays, workers moving racks and crates between them in a practiced rhythm.
Then I see it.
Coulter Cleaners. Simple blue lettering painted across the side of the building, repeated on the delivery vans lined up to the dock.
The three-story building stretches nearly half the block.
It’s solid and unpretentious. Nothing about it looks temporary or uncertain.
The Coulters have clearly been here a long time.
A low mechanical hum comes from inside, steady, punctuated by the occasional metallic rattle of a cart rolling across concrete.
I pull into the gravel lot and cut the engine.
I stare at the blue Coulter Cleaners lettering on the nearest van, like the letters might rearrange themselves into clearer instructions. It offers no advice whatsoever.
The steering wheel is cool under my forehead when I lean against it.
Okay. So. This had felt noticeably more straightforward thirty minutes ago.
I sit back up, blow out a slow breath, and look at the warehouse.
By the time I’ve closed the car door, the activity at the loading dock has already processed my arrival. I can feel the attention before I see it.
Four men are working around the loading dock when I get out of the car. By the time I close the door, all four have noticed me.
Wolves, all of them, with the builds and stances I’m now fluent enough in to read on sight. They move around each other with a silent instinctive coordination, one stepping aside before the other reaches him, no words exchanged, no negotiation.
For a moment none of them acknowledge me directly.
Then the one with the clipboard looks up.
His gaze finds me and holds. Not hostile, only assessing. The attention of someone deciding what category of thing they’re looking at before they determine how to respond to it.
Briefly, I consider getting back in the car.
Too late. I’ve been seen, and retreating now would be worse than walking over there.
I square my shoulders and walk toward the dock.
The conversation between two of the men trails off as I get closer. They don’t look threatening. If anything, they look curious. And surprised.
I stop at the loading platform and look up at them.
Up close, the details resolve. They’re all built solidly—dense rather than large. Their attention sharpening in small increments, focused without aggression.
One of them steps forward.
“You lost?” The question is conversational, genuinely curious rather than dismissive, but my face warms slightly anyway because the answer to you lost is supposed to be yes and mine isn’t.
“No,” I say. “I’m looking for someone.”
“That so?” His gaze flicks briefly to my car and back. “The front office is on the side. You make a habit of walking onto loading docks looking for people?”
“Only when necessary,” I say.
The man beside him lets out a short laugh. “Give her a second, Matt.”
“I’m asking reasonable questions,” Matt says mildly.
The second man leans one shoulder against the dock railing and studies me with the open curiosity of someone who finds this development genuinely interesting. “Who are you looking for?”
Matt straightens slightly. The man at the railing looks at him, then back at me. Even one of the men farther down the dock glances over.
“Silas Coulter,” I say.
That hits differently than the rest of the conversation has. It’s subtle. A small straightening from the man at the railing, a change in Matt’s expression I can’t quite read, a stilling in the background activity I feel more than see.
“Silas,” Matt repeats.
“Yes.”
“You got business with him?”
“Something like that.”
The second man tilts his head. “Customer?”
“No.”
“Supplier?”
“No.”
Matt folds his arms. “Friend of the family?”
I consider that for a half second longer than I should. “I’m not sure that’s the right word.”
They exchange a look, the quick loaded kind that passes between people who share a context I don’t have access to.
“Well,” the second man says slowly, “now you’ve made us curious.” He gestures vaguely toward the open warehouse. “Not exactly a common occurrence, someone like you showing up asking for Silas by name.”
“Is that a problem?” I ask. “You know, someone like me showing up?”
The back of my neck prickles. I’m not afraid, but I am very aware that I’m the only human standing on this loading dock and everyone else knows it.
“Depends,” Matt says.
“On what?”
“On who’s asking.”
The prickling at the back of my neck intensifies. Not fear, I decide, cataloguing it as honestly as I can. Awareness. The physical awareness of being in a space where I’m the only human and everyone else knows it.
They’ve all stopped working and are staring openly at me now.
“My name is Norah,” I say.
The man at the railing lifts his eyebrows.
Nothing happens for a moment.
Then the man at the railing lifts his eyebrows, his face moving — not surprise exactly, more the expression of a piece of information arriving in a place where it was expected.
“Well,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else.
Matt glances at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, although the grin he is trying to suppress says otherwise. He leans toward Matt and says something I can’t hear, his voice dropping below the ambient noise of the dock.
Matt looks back at me dangerously close to smiling. “Is that right?”
I fold my arms. “Anything funny you’d like to share with the class?”
“Not funny,” the second man says quickly. “Unexpected.” He straightens slightly. “What do you want with Silas?”
“That’s between me and Silas,” I say.
Matt makes a sound that is technically not a laugh. “You hear that?” he says to the second man. “Between her and Silas.”
“I heard it,” the second man says. He looks at me for another moment. “You sure you want us to get him?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because once we call him out here,” Matt says, “you’re committed.”
His voice carries through the open bay. The men around me stop pretending they aren’t interested.
I meet his gaze without looking away. My tone is tight, bordering on anger. “Then I guess you’d better call him.”
He holds my gaze for a beat, and I think he sees the human version of a she-wolf about to pop. His expression looks like he’s running a quick calculation. He turns toward the open warehouse.
“Silas.”
The name goes into the building, and the dock goes quiet around it, the human activity on the platform pausing, waiting to see what comes next.
I stand in the open space with every eye still on me, and finally admit why I drove across Larkin this morning.
It wasn’t, if I’m being fully honest with myself, only to tell him I’m not afraid of him.
It wasn’t purely, or even primarily, to clear the air.
I needed to see him again. I need to see his face when he realizes I came after him instead of walking away.
And I need to know what happens when we’re standing in front of each other again, because whatever this is between us stopped feeling casual several days ago.
Silas has skipped several steps, and somehow I’m the one who drove across town to find him.
My stomach tightens. This is what I came for—the honest accounting of it. Terrifying, but honest.
I’ve been in relationships. Two that lasted longer than a year. None of them felt like this, this fast, this completely. With the others there was a reasonable progression: interest, then time, then actually knowing the man.
A relationship doesn’t build with Silas. It just arrives.
I don’t have an explanation for that, and I’ve stopped looking for one.
Footsteps start somewhere deeper in the warehouse, steady against concrete. Nothing casual about it.
I don’t move.