"They will if I hand them a file. I can give you a report, and I can give Detective Rivera an anomaly he can't ignore. But the pack—" This time the word comes out. My mouth shapes it before I can stop it. "We exist. Around the outskirts. We handle things some people can't. But I'm not dragging them in unless you want them."
The air goes thin. Color drains from her face as if someone pulled a curtain. Her hand tightens on the folder until the edgeswhite the paper. Leo's humming stops. The apartment seems suddenly very small.
"Pack?" Her voice is brittle. "Like—wolves? Like stories?"
"Like family," I say. "Like people who would walk into a ring of knives for one of their own." I want to press family toward her like an offering. I also want to tell her everything—the how, the rituals, the forfeit to claim and the cost of public attention. I keep it pulled back. Not my information to unload in a kitchen that could be subpoenaed.
She folds into herself, a veteran of being judged. "If that gets out?—"
"It complicates things," I agree. "Courts like simple stories. Tabloids like monstrous ones. That's why I'm telling you now, before you read about werewolves in a marginal paper. I don't want the pack to be your only option."
She breathes shallow. The muscles at her jaw tick. "So what? You have people who can watch, without ceremonies. Without—claiming."
"Yes." My hand rests flat on the table, as if the contact makes the promise heavier. "Non-ritual protection. Covert. Weeknight stays at the ranch if you agree. Cameras—real ones. Patrols. People who know how to follow a tail without drawing attention. I won't ask anything of you you haven't signed off on. No public claiming. No ritual unless you want it. I swear it."
Her pupils dilate. She looks like someone offered a lifeline with a snag in the rope. "And the rival alpha?" she asks. News travels pack to city like stormfronts: quick and inevitable.
"He's interested," I say. "That's what the sealed note was about. I haven't opened it in front of you. I didn't want to scare you until I had something concrete."
She goes very still. Her hands tremble slightly as they cradle the folder. "Caleb?—"
"I know." An animal part of me wants to curl around her and the boy and make the world stop being hungry. A human part knows promises can be weapons if people in power use them. "You deserve a say in what happens next."
She lifts her head. For a moment the Mia I see is small and brave and furious all at once. She closes her eyes like a woman counting breaths. "If your 'people' show up and the judge asks why there were men looking out my window, what do I say?"
"Say you had help," I tell her. "Say the help was to keep a child safe. Say the paperwork proves it. That's the truth."
She opens her eyes and meets mine. I see fear, yes, and also a woman weighing the cost of every choice on the scales she was taught to trust. She reaches for her phone like she's looking for proof that this is still the legal world she knows.
Her thumb hovers. I feel the pull beneath my skin like a tide answering. I think about the pack. I think about the risks to her and to the boy and the way my chest tightens when Leo laughs.
I have a choice. Keep the pack in the shadows and do the slow, surgical work of pulling threads. Bring them in and end the possibility of quiet. Let her face the court without supernatural complication, and risk the stalker getting bolder.
I open my mouth and say the words I should have held for the right moment.
"I'm more than a contractor, Mia. I'm connected. I can get you the protection you need. I can keep you both safe without turning your life into a headline. But you need to know—if the rival alpha decides to make a claim, it won't be a rumor. It will be a thing. And I will be in the middle of it."
She drops the phone. It thuds on the counter like finality. Her breath comes fast. Her eyes, wide and bright, lock on mine. I see a thousand fears—custody, exposure, the helplessness that made her text at midnight—and something else. Something like possibility.
"I didn't hire a contractor to bring me myth," she whispers.
"You didn't hire one," I tell her. "You hired whoever would show up and put their body between your son and whatever is out there."
The word pack hangs between us, and I watch color leave her face. She looks at the folder, at the screenshot of the man, then back at me. The man on the screen is a small piece of a larger machine.
Her hand closes over the folder so hard the paper creases.
"I'm not asking you to decide now," I say. "I just—" My throat tightens. "I needed you to know I have options. And I can't keep pretending I'm only a contractor because if this gets worse, pretending will get you hurt."
She lifts her head as if hearing a sound in the dark—some howl she can't place. Outside, a car door slams. In my chest, something older and fiercer answers that sound.
She stares at me, a question burning between us.
"Caleb," she says, voice small. "Are you—are you saying you have a pack?"
I don't look away. Truth now will change everything. If I'm going to stand in front of their lives, she should see all the ways I might fail them.
"I am," I say.
