The woman we loved had spent her formative years learning that attachment led to abandonment, that belonging was temporary, and that the safest strategy was to keep one foot out the door.
Hudson had found her in that state. A nineteen-year-old who’d aged out of the system, working two jobs, sleeping on a friend’s couch. He’d offered stability.
And then he’d used all of it against her. Turned her need for belonging into a cage she couldn’t leave.
No wonder she’d run.
“We can’t take this from her,” I said. The words cost me.
Every instinct I possessed was screaming that Thiago Maxwell was wrong, that his timing was too convenient, that no man abandons his child for years and returns with pressed photographs and her mother’s tea blend.
“If this man is who he claims to be, she deserves the chance to know her father.”
Solomon’s jaw worked. “And if he isn’t who he claims to be?”
“Then we deal with it. But we don’t preemptively destroy the one thing filling a wound we can’t reach.”
Solomon held my gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded.
On the fourth visit, Thiago asked questions.
“They’re firefighters?” He sat in the living room, watching Solomon through the kitchen doorway. “How interesting. All three brothers choosing the same profession.”
“They’re dedicated,” Mira said from beside him on the couch.
“Very protective of you, too. I noticed the way they position themselves. Always between you and the door.” His smile was warm. “Military background?”
“Just close-knit,” Mira said.
“Where did they live before this town?”
The question was directed at Mira, but Solomon heard it from the kitchen. I heard it from the study. Percival, sprawled on the floor reading a book he wasn’t absorbing, heard it from three feet away.
“Up north,” Mira said. The vagueness was intentional. “They moved for work.”
“And they just happened to settle in the same small town as my daughter.” Thiago’s tone was amused, conspiratorial. “Fate works in mysterious ways.”
Through the bond, Solomon’s focus tightened to a point. I felt it in my own chest, instincts moving from observation to classification. Thiago was cataloguing us. Our habits, our positioning, our background. Asking the questions a curious father might ask, but in a sequence that built a profile.
I made coffee. Carried two mugs to the living room. Set one on the table beside Thiago with the hospitality of a king who’d hosted far more dangerous guests than this.
“Mira tells me you’re in consulting,” I said.
“Private sector. Risk assessment, mostly.” Thiago reached for the mug.
His sleeve rode up.
A fraction of an inch. Half a second. The cuff of his shirt shifted as his wrist extended toward the table, exposing the skin below his watchband.
A tattoo.
Small, precise, inked in a color that was closer to iron than black. A symbol I recognized because it was carved into the walls of Veyndral’s Hall of Memory, etched beside the names of the dead, seared into the collective consciousness of every lycan of our pack who’d survived the Burning Years.
A crescent moon bisected by a silver blade.
The mark of the Order of the Silver Dawn.
Thiago’s sleeve fell back. His fingers wrapped around the mug. He sipped and smiled and said the coffee was wonderful.
