"What novel?"
"Something about a woman in a lighthouse. I think someone died."
Silas considers this for a long moment. Then: "I'll find you something."
"You don't have to—"
"I'll find you something," Silas repeats, and goes back to his chicken.
Nico looks at me. I shrug.That's Silas. You've been chosen. There's no appeal process.
His eyes hold mine for a beat longer than the shrug warrants. Theask me lateris there — in the pause, in the warmth behind his expression, in the way his gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second before he remembers where we are. A house full of shifters who can hear heartbeats. His spikes. Mine answers. Knox, across the table, takes a very deliberate sip of beer and says nothing.
By the time Jason brings out dessert — something Robin made, because Jason cooks the mains and Robin does the sweets, Nico's heart rate has dropped to something close to normal. Not relaxed. Not comfortable. But present. Engaged. Eating pie with a table full of lions and humans and holding his own.
* * *
Knox waits until the plates are cleared. Until the wine is mostly gone and Robin is leaning against Vaughn's shoulder and Toby has his feet in Knox's lap under the table and Jason and Ash are doing the dishes together in the kitchen with the ease of two people who have divided every domestic task without ever discussing it.
"So," Knox says. "Coldwell."
The table settles. Not silence, attentiveness. The shift from dinner to something else.
Knox looks at me. I look at Nico. Nico opens his laptop bag.
We present it together. Not planned, organic. I start with what I found in the SEC filings, the seven public acquisitions that didn't fit Coldwell's profile. Nico picks up with the internal data. Langford's eleven personal flags, the hidden project code, the nineteen routed acquisitions. Then Daniel's twenty-six total.I add Delgado's five confirmed shifter properties. Nico adds the photos, the reflective glint in the eyes of previous owners, the pattern that becomes undeniable once you know what you're looking at.
He doesn't hide from his own role. Doesn't minimize or excuse. Just says: "I closed the Spokane acquisition. Rosa Navarro. I sat across from her and made a polite offer for a property I should have known didn't make commercial sense. She took the money. The building was demolished three months later. I didn't know what I was part of. I know now."
The room is very quiet.
"Twenty-six properties," Nico says. "All shifter-owned. All rural. All demolished, vacant, or resold at a loss. Or currently in evaluation. No development, no construction, no strategic value. This bar is in the active pipeline. So is Delgado's range."
Robin's hand has found Vaughn's under the table. Toby's feet have pulled back from Knox's lap — he's sitting upright now, alert. Jason has come back from the kitchen, standing behind Ash's chair with a hand on his shoulder.
Ash speaks first. "What's Langford's objective?"
"Displacement. The properties aren't the product, the erasure is. He's using corporate resources to systematically eliminate shifter-owned businesses in rural areas. The acquisitions lose money. The land sits empty. It's ideological, not financial."
"Motive?"
"He's Troy with a corner office." Nico says it flatly, without inflection, but I see his jaw tighten. "Same bigotry, different budget. Troy sneers at a dinner table. Langford demolishes buildings."
The comparison lands. Everyone in this room heard about Troy or was there, heard Nico tell him to leave, heard the story filter through the pride. Putting Langford in that context makes the threat visceral instead of abstract.
"What's your exposure?" Ash asks. He's in a different mode now. Not the man who unsticks bathroom windows. The professional. The Green Beret who assessed threats for a living.
"NDAs. Standard non-disclosure covering proprietary information, client data, internal processes. Sharing this puts me at risk for breach of contract at minimum."
"So you need legal cover."
"Yes. I might have a lawyer." That complicated expression again, personal, layered, not about Coldwell. "My uncle. He practiced corporate law for twenty years. I need to make a call."
Knox has been listening without interrupting. That's his way. Let the information come, process it whole, respond once.
"What do you need from us?" Knox asks.
Nico looks at him. "Time. Your network. Delgado's contacts, the names of other displaced owners if anyone can find them. Legal guidance once I've talked to my uncle. And—" He pauses. I can feel what's coming, the specific hesitation of a man about to ask for something that costs him.
