“We’ll get him,” Caleb says into my hair. His voice is steady, protective. It’s a promise that feels like a gate closing around us.
Tanner presses a small zip bag into my hand—inside, the hotel receipt and the tiny black comm. My fingers close around the plastic like a lifeline and a noose at once. The detective says they’ll process it, trace numbers, ping locations.
“My ex?” I whisper. “He—he would never?—”
“Not alone,” Caleb corrects. “And not stupid enough to use his own phone. That comm ties to men we’ve seen working for—” He bites off the name. The word hangs between us like smoke.
I look at the receipt, at the motel’s stamp, then at the ring of faces around us—pack, police, paramedics, witnesses—and I realize how tightly threaded my life has become with things I barely understood.
Someone wanted my son gone. Someone close to me is involved. Somewhere in the evidence now—tossed communicator, cramped motel receipt—are the names that will shred secrets or bind them tighter.
The detective slides the comm’s screen toward me. In the grainy audio is a voice I cannot mistake, whispering the name I thought was safe.
7
CALEB STONE
The feed went grainy, then steadied. For a second it was nothing—streetlight glare, the slow passage of cars—and then a man in a faded ball cap stepped out of a shadow and waited. I leaned forward so hard my knees cramped; the ranch-wood chair under me creaked. Mia's hand found my thigh without asking, warm and small and steady. Leo's breathing on the couch behind her was even. The room smelled like takeout and the faint iron of my own sweat.
"Pause," I said.
Tanner's fingers froze on the keyboard. "There. Zoom it."
The cap obscured his face, but the jacket told me everything. Cheap leather, a curl of something burned at the cuff—the same scorched edge we'd found on the token in Mia's bag. The man lit a cigarette. A second figure emerged from the alley, taller, shoulders broad in a silhouette that looked like it belonged on a ridge, not under a streetlamp. They clasped hands like old friends. Quiet voices. A paper envelope passed, thick with something folded inside.
Mia swallowed. "Is that?—"
"Yeah." I swallowed around the pull in my chest. "That’s him."
We'd been chasing breadcrumbs for a week—hotel receipts, a disposable sat-comm flagged to a burner phone, a deli surveillance clip. Every one of them threaded back to the same few hands. Mia's ex, all right. But the second figure—his posture, the way he owned space—matched a handful of photos Tanner had dug up from pack intel months ago. The rival alpha.
We watched the two men for a long, slow minute, every feed carving time into teeth. Mia pressed her forehead to my arm like she could steady herself through heat. She smelled like lavender and worry. Leo let out a dream-squeak and shifted, his small hand burying in the couch blanket.
"We've got places and times," Tanner said. "And a courier route. If they meet more than once?—"
"They're coordinating," I finished. My voice was flat. I felt the pack rise like a tide under my skin and shoved it back down. I had no intention of dragging the full force of our world into Mia's. Not yet. Not unless she wanted it.
Mia looked at me. Exhaustion had made the lines around her eyes raw. "What do you think—legal? Go to the detective? Or?—"
"Not yet." I halted. I wanted to say the word pack like a bomb. I wanted to tell her I could call Mateo and ten men would be at her door before dawn and the threat would end in a way the law couldn't touch. But her custody hearing sat like a stone in my gut. She needed proof a judge would understand: receipts, timestamps, names. Not stories about wolves. "We build the chain. We turn it over to Ana. We let the law do its job. We keep the wolves off the docket."
She exhaled, almost a laugh. "Thank God." Her hand tightened.
I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell her she could step off the fence and let me be the thing she feared. Instead I pulled her to me, one arm around her shoulders, and let my palm rest against the thin fabric at the base of her throat. The scent thatrose—coffee and the faint salt of tears—did something stupid to my control.
We worked until the rain tapped the windows and the city blurred into streaks. We cataloged: the motel name, plate numbers, bus timestamps. Phones pinged their own little betrayals. Every file we burned to thumb drives and sealed in envelopes. The evidence was appetite for a judge. It was also a rope.
When the room finally felt small and the air thick, Mia curled against me like she didn't know any other way to be. She asked for a shower. I made coffee. We traded work for domestic beats—footsteps in the kitchen, the slosh of mug against counter—and it stripped the velvet off the day.
She came back wrapped in one of my shirts. It hung off her like a promise. Leo was asleep now, his head heavy on the couch. Mia sat on the floor and drew her knees up. The lullaby she hummed was one she'd taught herself for nights alone; the melody snagged in my chest.
I couldn't sit across from her and pretend there wasn't a pull. It had been there since the first morning, a low, steady hum under everything we did. The elders would have called it fate; I didn't need labels. What I cared about was the angle of her jaw, the way her fingers flexed when she worried, the brave tilt of her chin when she refused to be afraid even though she was.
I closed the space between us.
We were careful at first. A brush of fingers. A test. She responded with a sigh that went straight through me and unstitched whatever neat edges I kept around duty.
She kissed me like she needed to be convinced she could let go. Not frantic. Not needy. Deliberate. Her mouth fit mine like it had been waiting—coffee and the trace of tears mingling with her scent. Hands threaded through hair. My thumb rested against the hollow of her throat, steadying her, steadying me.
