“Sign here,” Caleb said twice. The pen he offered was sturdy. I signed because files and signatures were what kept judges from inventing monsters out of good intentions. I initialed a clause that said any pack action beyond discreet protection—rituals that could be construed as altering familial status—required my written consent.
Paper made it real. My signature made it enforceable. The more I pushed back against a world that wanted me to be only a provider, the more the paperwork became a weapon. The more Caleb’s quiet presence became a shield.
We were closing the last page when a shadow shifted between the trees. The truck’s engine ticked; a figure stepped into the lamplight—tall, broad, his coat flapping like a dark flag. He walked with the precise, assured gait of someone who lived by rules others didn’t understand. No one else in the city moved like that.
Caleb’s fingers tightened on the folder. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing anyone,” I said.
“I didn’t plan to.” He slid the folder into his jacket and opened the door anyway. “Stay in the truck.”
The man stopped at the passenger window and looked at me. He smelled faintly of wet leather and smoke. A pale scar ran along one cheekbone—the kind you see on people who have chosen a different life. He didn’t smile. He dropped a sealed envelope onto the truck’s hood and made a single, polite gesture toward Caleb.
Caleb took the envelope without a word. He didn’t open it. He folded his hands as if he were holding a living thing.
“You all right?” I asked, stupid with adrenaline.
“Bad news.” He said it like a fact. Then, almost to himself, “Rival alpha has taken interest.”
The words hung between us like smoke. Pack politics weren’t my language, but the sentence translated: proximity, stakes, scrutiny. Interest didn’t equal promise. It meant someone was watching.
The man—an emissary, I supposed—turned and melted into the night. He left footprints in the gravel the lamplight ate. He did not look at me again.
Caleb slid a business card under my palm. “Ana and I should draft a last clause. No claim. No public rites. Pack acts as security only. Any rituals are ceremonial and non-binding, witnessed by a neutral elder and my attorney. You have veto power.”
I read the card twice. The ink was plain. The name was not.
There was a thread between us older than legalese. It tugged when he stood too close and his scent filled my nose. My practical brain said: documents, witnesses, signatures. My fear said: take his help and you lose everything.
I chose the signatures.
We exchanged contact info. I left him the spare key to my apartment’s front door—emergencies only, the terms written on a Post-it stuck to my fridge. He left a small list of names and phone numbers for background checks. He promised discreet cameras and a changed drop-off route. He promised to keep the pack out of courthouse records unless I asked them in.
He did not promise he would vanish.
On the drive home I tried to stage-manage my panic. I called Ana again. “If anyone leaks that you used pack help,” she said, “the opposition will throw in shifter nonsense just to confuse a jury. We keep supernatural out of filings. We file police reports. We list contractors. Then we demonstrate a pattern of harassment. Your ex’s credibility collapses under his own footprints—if we can tie him to the men who followed Leo.”
It felt like threading a needle across a rope bridge.
That night, after I put Leo to bed in our apartment—crayons, sock laundry, the safe, unremarkable world I’d built for him—I slid the signed agreement into a manila envelope and set it on the kitchen table. I called Caleb to tell him where to collect it. We spoke in low sentences about camera placement and school times.
“I’ll drop by tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll install two cameras before Friday.”
“Good.” My voice was small but steady.
Exhaustion swallowed me on the couch. When you’ve been running on three hours for four days, the couch takes the fight. Leo’s breathing came soft from his room. My phone buzzed once and I turned it facedown.
Sometime later, a shadow moved in my apartment. I woke with the sensation of being watched. For a full second I clung to sleep because denial is a warm place. Then I remembered the idling van, the carved bench, the man who’d followed my son. I sat up.
My bag hung off the kitchen chair where I always left it. I reached for the strap and my fingers brushed something rough. I pulled it out.
A scrap of dark leather, about the size of a quarter, sat in my palm. An ink symbol was burned into it—rings and a pointed tooth. I’d seen that mark before: the bench, the scrap of fabric in my pocket the morning Caleb first appeared. The space around me tightened like a hand at my throat.
The leather smelled faintly of smoke. Someone had slipped this into my life with a purpose.
Caleb’s voice, even imagined, steadied me—he’d said the rival alpha had taken interest. I remembered the emissary’s scar, the sealed envelope on the hood.
I should have called him. I should have called Ana. I should have woken Leo and driven to Ana’s office with a stack of signed documents and a plan.
Instead I sat there, heart loud in my ears, and realized how small the space was between signing a paper and being claimed. The token in my hand was a declaration. Not words—symbol. A map.
