“Not worried about her,” I lied. “I’m worried about me.”
She grinned, just a flash of teeth. “You always are.”
The waiting was the worst. Every second was a war between what I wanted and what I was allowed. The wolf in me was winning, but for now, I could keep him chained.
The clock on the wall ticked down the minutes. When the guard finally returned and called our names, I was already moving, unable to keep the hunger out of my eyes.
“Ready?” Bronc asked, standing tall, a hand on my shoulder.
“More than,” I said. “Let’s get this done.”
We walked the corridor together, a small army of wolves and their allies, ready to face whatever monsters the Council put in our path.
But nothing they had was scarier than what I’d do if they kept me from my mate.
We followed the guard down a corridor so long and narrow it felt like being funneled into the barrel of a rifle. The walls were bare, no windows, no distractions—just the silence and the echo of our boots. At the end, a steel door slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and a witch waited on the other side.
She was ancient, but only in the way that mattered: not in the sags of flesh, but in the patient, predatory calm of her eyes. Her hair was black streaked with silver, slicked back in a wave that accentuated her sharp cheekbones. She wore a tailored coat, dark purple, with black gloves and boots to match. Her gaze pinned us to the threshold like specimens, and when she spoke, her accent was clipped and transnational—European, but diluted by centuries of careful affect.
“I am Madame Verna,” she said, eyes lingering on me a second too long. “You are the wolf known as Menace.”
It wasn’t a question. “Bridger Hardin,” I replied. My voice came out rawer than I meant.
She nodded, lips twitching into something that might have been a smile. “Come in.”
The room was an interrogation suite, dressed up as a conference chamber. Table in the center, two chairs on either side,mirror glass on the wall behind her. Another guard—witch, this one, with runes inked along her collarbone—stood in the corner, eyes down but ears open. Bronc and Juliet took seats, but I couldn’t sit. I paced the perimeter, trying to look at everything at once, trying to sniff out a trap.
Verna didn’t bother with pleasantries. “The Council wishes to confirm the legitimacy of your fated bond,” she said. “For the record, please state how long you have known Savannah Calloway.”
I snorted. “Six weeks, give or take.”
She wrote this down with a fountain pen. “And when did you first suspect she was your mate?”
“First moment I saw her,” I said. “She was chained up in a cell, starved, bleeding. My wolf recognized hers before she even looked at me.”
Verna looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “And you, as a soldier, believe you can trust the instincts of a beast?”
“It’s not instinct,” I said. “It’s chemical. It’s fucking gravity. I walked into the room, and my bones started rearranging themselves just to get closer to her. You think I wanted this?”
She smiled, not unkind. “You would be surprised how many do.” She set her pen down and folded her hands. “Describe what happened next.”
I shrugged. “I broke the locks, got her out. Carried her through the tunnels. She was hallucinating, almost feral, scared shitless. I had to talk her down, let her smell me. I think she hated me at first, or at least the idea of me. But my wolf wouldn’t let go. She had so much she was dealing with. PTSD. She’d already been on the run, but that’s her story to tell. I took care of her after I saved her. She was so lost. Scared. I went slow as I could. Had to see if she realized. She did.”
Juliet made a small, involuntary noise—a sound of recognition or empathy. Verna ignored it.
“And you marked her?” Verna prompted.
I nodded. “After I made sure she was sure. She said yes. She wanted it. Told me she wanted it more than anything in her life.”
Verna raised an eyebrow. “And you believe this is a genuine bond, not the result of trauma or coercion?”
I stopped pacing and leaned over the table. “You ever see a wolf try to mark an unwilling mate? You’d have a corpse, not a couple.”
She accepted this without a blink. “I must ask these things. Council requires it.”
I sat finally, but only because the urge to throttle someone was fading into exhaustion. “Ask what you need,” I said. “But I’m not leaving here without her.”
Verna considered me for a long moment, then looked to Bronc and Rafe. “Will you support the claim as witnesses?”
