Silence on the other end. Then: “Do you want him to?”
I stared at the ceiling, at the crack above the light fixture, the same crack that had been there since I was a kid.
“Maybe not.”
33
— • —
Finneas
The café on Main Street had wooden tables, a chalkboard menu, and a woman behind the counter who called everyone “honey” regardless of age, rank, or the fact that the man at table four was a Lycan King trying to approve a border patrol rotation over a latte with a foam heart in it.
I’d been here every morning for two weeks. Same table by the window, same laptop, same stack of reports I printed at the hotel’s business center because the café’s Wi-Fi was unreliable and I didn’t trust it with pack documents. My phone buzzed for the third time in ten minutes and I picked up.
“What.”
“Good morning to you too,” Luca said. “The council is restless. Aldric is making noises about a formal session.”
“Let him make noises.”
“Finn, I can handle the day-to-day but there are decisions that need the King’s signature. The border patrol rotation is overdue, the housing allocation from last month hasn’t been approved, and there’s a formal complaint from the Webber family about your boundary ruling.”
“I made the ruling in person before I left. They can appeal to the council.”
“They don’t want the council. They want you.”
“Tell them I’m unavailable.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
Luca was quiet for a bit before he asked, “How is she?”
“She’s talking to me. Letting me come to breakfast. She let me go to the doctor with her last week.”
“That’s progress.”
“She still says no when I ask her out.”
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
“And you keep asking.”
“Every day.”
He laughed, just once, under his breath. “You know, if the council could see their King right now, sitting in some small-town café getting rejected every morning, they’d lose it.”
“Good thing they can’t see me.”
“Aldric can barely handle you being gone. If he found out you were chasing a five-foot-three human across the state, he’d file a formal challenge on principle.”
“Nobody’s filing anything.”
“You’re deflecting.”
