She studied him, then nodded once. “Then I trust you.”
After a while, Melvin said, more quietly than he meant to, “You’re really okay with this?”
Jasmine turned toward him with a look somewhere between disbelief and irritation.
“I’m not just okay with it. I’m proud of you. That’s different.”
The words caught him off guard enough that he blinked hard and looked back at his cup. She bumped his shoulder again, gentler. “And yes,” she added, lighter now, “I want to meet him. Preferably before Mom and Dad figure out something’s going on and start asking questions you’re not ready to answer.”
He let out a breath that turned into a quiet laugh. “They don’t even know I’m gay.”
“And now there’s a wolf,” she said. “Maybe break that news in stages.”
Melvin nodded because she was probably right, though the thought of Mac meeting them felt less like a problem to solve than something inevitable that would happen in its own time.
They stayed there until the coffee went lukewarm and the street fully woke. The strange thing was how calm Melvin felt in the middle of it all. The city usually left the panther in him restless, too much motion pressing in from every direction, but that morning something had settled deep in his chest, steady and certain.
Mac was here. Close enough that the pull he’d felt for weeks no longer felt abstract. And underneath that certainty was the sense that whatever waited between them had only just begun to unfold.
By the time Melvin made his way back to the hotel, the sidewalks were busy and the traffic steady below. He found Mac awake and dressed, standing near the window with the curtains pushed back, watching the movement outside with the quiet attention he gave to unfamiliar terrain. Even in jeans and a plain shirt he carried himself like an officer taking in a new area of operations, noting patterns without making a show of it.
Mac glanced over as Melvin came in. “You eat?”
“Nah. Just coffee,” Melvin said.
Mac nodded once, as if that accounted for everything. For a moment neither of them spoke. The ease between them settled back into place as naturally as if Melvin had never left.
Then Mac asked, “Reynolds doing alright?”
“Better,” Melvin said. “He’s been training all week. Getting steadier.”
Mac nodded, absorbing that.
Melvin hesitated, then added, “Council wants to see you while you’re here.”
Mac’s eyes sharpened. “Me.”
“Yeah. They’ve been watching Reynolds all week. They want to see what happens when the three of us are in the same room.”
Mac let that sit for a moment before nodding once. “Alright.” He didn’t ask questions yet, which Melvin understood.
“It’s not far,” Melvin said. “Underground access. Training facility.”
Mac gave a faint half-smile. “Council’s version of not far usually means complicated.”
“You’ll see.”
The entrance sat behind an unmarked service door off a narrow side street where delivery trucks came and went without attracting attention. From the outside it looked like nothing worth noticing, aging brick, a steel door worn dull by weather and time.
Inside, the security belonged to a different world entirely.
Mac didn’t say much as they passed through the controlled checkpoints, but Melvin could feel the way his attention sharpened, cataloging details without appearing to. Muscle memory from years of deployment.
Reynolds met them on the lower level where newer construction gave way to older stone. The change was subtle at first, then unmistakable as the corridors narrowed and the air took on the mineral coolness of deep earth.
He looked steadier than he had in Iraq. The strain of transition had begun to settle into something more grounded.
“Sir,” Reynolds said, nodding to Mac.
