"He's treating her like an active Pack-Heart," Hayes corrected, rubbing his jaw. "He smelled the triangulated load on her skin. If Trent takes that clause to a council tribunal, they won't care about ethics. They'll see a stabilizing asset and lock her back in a cage with him before sunset."
"He can't prove she's a Pack-Heart," I said. "He smelled the stabilization, but the silver tether is hidden under her clothes. He doesn't have the evidence to trigger a hearing."
"He doesn't need evidence. He needs a council mandate authorizing a magical audit," Chris countered. "If they force her into a diagnostic circle, the silver lines will flare under magical scrutiny. The second the council sees a verified Pack-Heart mark, Wren stops being a student. She becomes a continental asset. They'll strip her autonomy and auction her stability to the highest bidder."
The thought ran cold in my veins.
She had barely survived a brutal public rejection only to land in the center of the most explosive political crossfire in the modern shifter world. The terror in her eyes when Trent touched her. The panic when she'd begged us to let her burn her own core out rather than face his cruelty again.
I wouldn't let them take her back. I'd level the entire Northern Dynasty before I let Trent Hawthorne leash her to him again.
But brute force wouldn't solve a closed-door legal tribunal.
"We need leverage," I said, pushing off the chain-link wall. "We need to know what Trent is planning before he files. If we know his angle, we can block it before it gains traction."
"He's an envoy. His comms are encrypted by Northern pack magic," Hayes said. "I can't authorize surveillance against another envoy without my father finding out. And the last thing we want is the Aldridge Alpha sniffing around our perimeter."
"I don't need your family's surveillance," I said quietly.
Hayes and Chris both went still. Two different calculations locking onto me simultaneously.
They knew my frat-boy persona was a constructed mask. They knew how my family operated. Not generational old money — violent new money. An empire built on underground gambling dens, illegal combat rings, and a network of information brokers that operated outside council law. I'd spent my adolescence in the ruthless underbelly of the city long before my father bought our way into legacy status at Aldridge.
"Tristan," Hayes said — the command weight of an Heir demanding transparency from a packmate.
"I'm using my inheritance," I said, pulling a burner phone from the bottom of my gym bag.
"Trent thinks he's untouchable because he operates in daylight and high society. But wealthy envoys get bored in neutral territory. They make stupid mistakes. They hire private security, buy illicit information, indulge in vices the council wouldn't approve of."
I flipped the phone open and dialled a sequence I hadn't used since freshman year.
"I'm putting invisible eyes on him. Guys who don't exist on any government registry. If Trent contacts a council lawyer, I'll know before the ink dries on the retainer. We cut off his legal threat before it gained momentum."
Hayes studied me for a long, tense moment. His lifelong respect for pack law warring with the memory of Wren collapsing onto cold stone in a campus courtyard.
The memory won.
He gave a curt nod. "Do it. Don't leave a trail."
I walked into the dark concrete hallway near the back locker rooms. The encrypted line connected after three rings.
"Thought you went straight, pretty boy," a gravel voice answered.
"I need a ghost, Marcus," I said. "A target arriving from the Northern territories. Official envoy named Trent Hawthorne, operating out of the VIP legacy dorms on campus."
"The VIP dorms are tight," Marcus said. The click of a lighter. "Multi-layered wards. Trigger-happy security. That's expensive real estate to breach."
"Double your usual rate, paid in untraceable silver within the hour," I said. "Full twenty-four-hour shadow. Audio, visual, and a complete list of every local contact his comms access. I need his endgame before he makes his first move."
"You're tracking a seated high council envoy?" A beat of silence. "That's treason, Tristan. If they catch my guys?—"
"Just get me the intelligence," I growled, power crackling visibly off my skin. "If his security spots your tail, you don't exist and we never spoke."
The line went dead.
I slipped the phone back into my bag. My heart was hammering. I'd just crossed an irreversible political line. Initiating an illegal surveillance operation on a council envoy was a guaranteed path to execution if I was caught.
I didn't care. I was half-tethered to her whether either of us had consented to it, and whatever the bond had already threaded into my instincts had made the calculation before I could think it through rationally.
