8. Idris #2
The floor shifts beneath me. I don't move, because if I move wrong, the chair in my hands will break and then Zana will be right about every danger I brought into this building.
“Garrett left the house that afternoon,” I say, and the memory opens with sickening clarity.
His calm face. The phone in his hand. Callie needs help.
I will handle it. “He said Callie needed him. He said he was going to the campus.”
Grayson’s pen stills. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.” The word comes out scraped raw. “She would have been there right around when he went to help her. There is no way he would not have known what was being put in front of her.”
Grayson leans back slowly. “I can look into the filing path. I can flag concern with the service timeline and the named complainant. Your attorney needs to make a formal challenge tonight, and I would recommend she move quickly on anything involving Theo’s placement authority.”
“Can you tell me where Callie is?”
Something in his face flickers, and it is the first almost-softness I have seen from him. “No location is listed beyond the removal from the residence and the campus service. If someone here knows more, it isn’t in this report where I can give it to you.”
My control frays around the edges. I taste black tea turned bitter, rain turned sharp enough to storm through the room. “Someone made her believe Sloane used the law to reject her during Theo’s heat.”
Grayson closes the file on his screen and turns fully toward me. “Yes.”
“She would have shut the bond after that.”
“Yes,” he says again, and this time the word carries understanding instead of procedure.
He stands before I can ask him how a man in his position knows that tone, how many lives he has watched get rewritten by a report.
“I will look into it, all right? But listen to me very carefully. This paperwork exists tonight. It was delivered to her. It has officer entries attached to it. You walking into your house and acting like the truth alone can tear it out of the system will make things worse for her and for Theo.”
“I know.” I say it because I do know, even though my body wants to reject every part of the knowledge.
I pull my phone from my pocket and send Zana the case number Grayson writes for me, then the short note my hand can manage.
Real in system. Served at sister campus.
Sloane named. House removal report. Calling after home.
Grayson walks me back through the station without another word. At the door, he stops beside me, low enough that the desk doesn't get to participate. “Tell Kade to call me after he talks to you.”
I almost laugh. It comes out like a broken breath. “Funny, Detective. I was about to call him.”
“Then tell him I said to keep his temper out of my paperwork.” Grayson opens the door for me, and his gaze holds mine for one more second. “And Ward? Whatever you find when you get home, get your attorney between your fists and the man who filed this.”
Outside, the air is cold enough to hurt my lungs.
I make it three blocks before I pull over, hazard lights ticking in the dark while Grayson’s words stay in the car with me.
My hands should be on the steering wheel.
Instead, they're on my phone, opening the house security app because the porch has become a place I can't survive without seeing.
The feed loads with ordinary cruelty. The day sits in clean little blocks of time, the front walk washed in pale afternoon light, the porch empty, the garage camera showing nothing but concrete and the edge of Sloane’s truck.
I scroll to the window after the campus service.
My thumb shakes when I pull up the front entrance, and for one breath, the image holds.
The timestamp turns. The porch light flickers.
Then the picture folds into static.
The system stutters through exactly the minutes that matter.
Blocks of color chew through the front steps.
The audio pops, cuts, comes back as a low hiss.
When the image clears again, the walkway is empty and the timestamp has jumped far enough to leave me with a hole where Callie should be.
I pull the side camera. It gives me the same corrupted gap.
The garage feed skips, then corrects itself with a smug little buffering circle that makes a sound come out of me that is too ugly for the car.
I checked these feeds before Theo’s heat. I checked them more than once, the way I checked the locks, the backup generator, the medication drawer, the thermostat, the nest room windows, the side entrance, and every entry point a frightened Omega might need controlled or opened.
I dial Kade before I let myself think better of it. The call barely finishes ringing before he answers, and the first sound out of me is a growl, low and torn open, shoved through my teeth while the ruined feed sits frozen on the dash screen in front of me.
“Idris?” Kade says, instantly sharp. “What’s going on?”
“Our fucking pack Alpha is wrong.” My hand locks around the steering wheel. The leather creaks beneath my palm, and I don't loosen my grip. “I don’t know what he did yet, but we can’t find our Beta.”
Kade goes silent for half a breath. “Calliope? Wait, back up.”
Hearing her name from someone outside the house nearly breaks me, and I press my thumb hard against the wheel until pain gives me a cleaner place to stand.
“I went to the station to find out where she is. Someone filed a protective order and heat restriction. I don’t give a fuck what word they used to make it look civil.
It was on Theo’s behalf, and the report has Sloane’s name attached to it. ”
“Sloane didn’t file that,” Kade says, with no hesitation at all.
“No, he fucking didn’t.” My throat tightens until I have to drag the next words through it.
“The only person who could have put his name there is Garrett. He left while we were with Theo and said Callie needed help. He said he was handling it. We were with our Omega, and apparently Callie came back to the house at some point after they served her. There’s a police report saying she was removed from the property, but the house cameras are scrambled where she would have been. ”
Kade’s voice drops into the dangerous quiet I know from Sloane’s old work stories. “You think Garrett fucked with them?”
“I’m about to find out.” I stare at the frozen feed, at the porch refusing to show me the woman I should have protected. “I need to know if you know someone who can unscramble damaged footage.”
“Yeah,” Kade says at once. “Send me the raw files through the secure drop. Do not send screen recordings, and don't keep poking through the system after you pull them. I’ll get them to someone who can tell us what’s recoverable.”
I scrub a hand over my mouth, and it comes away damp. I don't look at it. “Who?”
“Someone I trust.” Paper shifts on his end, then a door closes. “Who did you talk to at the station?”
A laugh scrapes out of me, ugly enough that it barely sounds like mine. “Funny enough? Your Beta. Detective Grayson pulled the paperwork. He knows the timeline is bad.”
Kade exhales once. “Skylar will keep it clean. Send me the footage, and I’ll make the call.”
“I have to go.” I put the car in gear, because if I sit still another minute, the rage will eat the last functional part of me before I reach the right room. “I’ll send the files. I have an Alpha’s face to beat in.”
“Be careful around him,” Kade says, and the warning lands differently from anyone else’s would have. He knows what it means to want violence and choose something useful with bloody hands.
I end the call without answering. The raw files take forty seconds to send, and I spend every one of them staring at the timestamp where Callie disappeared from our cameras.
When the upload completes, I drive home with my phone face-up on the passenger seat, waiting for news I know won't come fast enough.