We found a bed. Small—my truck's fold-out when I'd needed a place to sleep between runs—but tonight it felt like the center of the world. We didn't hurry. We traced the map of scars across each other's skin, learning borders and safe havens. When we finally moved, it was soft as forgiveness and hard as the promise of protection.
It stayed our secret, the kind that layers trust on top of something more dangerous. After, she folded into me as if the two of us could hold the dark at bay. No words were necessary—only the steady thrum of two people anchoring. She pressed her palm to my heart and whispered, "Don't let them use me."
I let the pack slip back under my ribs, a restrained thing. "I won't."
Morning came with its ledger—courts, calls, more feeds. We worked like a team, the way hands that fit do. Mia was a natural at this detective life. She knew how to prod a clerk's memory, how to get a barista to remember a face. I stayed on the edges and watched her do what she did best: make systems bend to protect the small, the vulnerable. It made me want every kind of ferocity.
By the time we left for the community gathering that Tanner warned would be a hazard, my decision had been stitched into place. The rival alpha had issued an ultimatum through emissaries—a crude, clear thing: claim the woman publicly or suffer consequences. The pack would see it as custom; Mia would see it as captivity.
We could have met the threat in the shadows. Mateo could have shredded the ultimatum into ash and no one would have known. We could have eliminated the threat quietly and never had to write the word mate in day-to-day life. But secrecy wasn't a victory for her. It was cowardice.
The gathering was midday at the community center—a town hall flanked by folding chairs and people who liked the idea ofcivility. The rival cut through the air even before he entered, his presence a hard line that drew attention. He expected submission. He expected me to weigh my rank and choose the safe path. I saw the question in his eyes, the casual cruelty. I felt the weight of standing on two things at once—pack and heart.
Mia stood beside me because she'd decided she would. I saw her jaw set. When he laid down his demand like a businessman's term sheet, I felt the old rules chanting in my bones. The pack would call me fool. Some would call me weak.
I stepped forward.
"No." The single syllable carried like a bell.
Heads turned. A murmur ran the room. The rival alpha's smile thinned. "You deny customs, Caleb? You put your pack at risk."
I swallowed. "I put my family first."
It was more than words. I felt the pack tighten, felt Mateo's eyes on me like a vise. I felt the rival alpha's gaze—sour and calculating. But there was something else too: a shiver of respect from the fringe who wondered if old rules could bend.
Mia exhaled like she couldn't believe I'd done it. "You—" she started and caught herself. Her voice didn't tremble. "You said you would."
"Yeah." I reached for her hand, rested my thumb over her knuckles. Public or private, words mean little without action. "I'll protect you. My way."
The rival alpha looked like he'd tasted something sour. He didn't argue. Instead he left a last thing on the table: a warning that if I refused, pressure would escalate. That night I found a folded note pushed into my truck's cupholder with a single line: "We play for keeps."
I slept like a man who'd decided, and the decision echoed in my bones.
Late into the night, when the town was a hush and only the station's neon bled through, we watched more footage. Tanner had pulled local cameras from a strip connecting the motel to the deli. The grainy feeds stitched together into a timeline. We stretched it across the wall like a tapestry of guilt.
At first it was small things—a hand at a window, a shadow crossing a doorway. Then we found the meetings. Not just one. Three. Four. Over weeks. Different corners, different times. Repetition had turned routine into choreography.
Mia went very still. The color drained from her face like someone turned down a dial. "He lied," she said. Each word hurt.
Tanner swore softly. "This isn't chance. This is choreography."
I felt cold smear across my skin. Collusion didn't just mean her ex wanted leverage. It meant he had friends with muscle and motive. It meant he was willing to talk to men who would use the pack as a tool.
My jaw closed until it ached. The pack's eyes, the council's expectations, the rival's ultimatums—they narrowed into one thin line of what needed to happen. We had proof now. Proof that could topple a claim, prove intent in court, condemn men who used other men as pawns.
But the footage did something else. In the last clip Tanner pulled up, dated late and stamped with a time that made my stomach drop, the rival and the ex leaned in so close their faces blurred. The exchange was too animated to be polite. The rival's hand rested on the ex's arm, firm, possessive—not a casual touch of a deal, but an ownership gesture.
Mia's hand found mine. She squeezed like she was holding herself together with me. "What do we do?" she whispered.
I looked at the screen. I looked at her. The answer sat heavy and clear. We take this to Ana, to the detectives. We let the system see the men who would make a child a bargaining chip.
When the clip widened, the thing that made my breath stop wasn't the men. It was the time stamp. The clip rolled forward and there, crouched in the frame a fraction of a street away, was a van idling—the same van we'd found tailing Leo at the park. Then the footage blinked, and an image I did not want to see shoved the whole room into silence.
The ex and the rival shook hands, and the camera lingered on the exchange. A flash of white paper slid from one to the other. The rival tucked it inside his jacket like a map. As the frame dissolved to static, my skin prickled with a cold that wasn't weather.
Tanner's voice went very small. "That's not good."
I didn't argue. I thought of Leo asleep on the couch, of Mia who braved the courtroom every day for the boy. I thought of the pack, and of the rules that had always told me to bend first.
