I follow Maximus through the main hall and out the front entrance. The night air hits, cool and still. The car is already idling at the base of the steps. Kyle is behind the wheel, not looking back.
Maximus opens my door. I get in. He rounds the car and slides in beside me.
The door closes. The compound recedes through the rear window.
Atlanta fills in around us as we move toward the city. Strip malls and overpasses and then denser blocks, the lights thickening. I watch it through the window without really seeing it. The tension in the car isn’t bad. Just present. The city moving past and both of us letting it.
I can hear them outside the car. Heartbeats. Dozens, then hundreds as the blocks get denser. A couple arguing on a balcony three stories up. A bass line from a bar we pass in half a second. Someone laughing so hard they’ve stopped making sound. All of it muffled by the car, by the distance. None of them know what’s driving past them right now. Two vampires on their way to sit across from a wolf alpha.
Maximus’s hand rests on his knee.
“What do you think he wants?” I ask.
“Terms.” Maximus is looking forward. “Kael didn’t bring specifics. That was intentional. Erik wants to negotiate in person.”
“So we’re walking in blind.”
“We’ll have the room to read once we’re inside. He’ll want to size us up in person. That’s why he chose the Wax and Wane.”
“His pack owns the place.”
“It’s neutral ground.”
“Neutral ground that belongs to him.” I watch a traffic light cycle through green to yellow to red. “I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying he built that into it.”
Maximus is quiet. “He did.”
“Smart.”
“He usually is.”
The light goes green. Kyle moves the car forward.
I look at Maximus. The city lights move across his face in slow bars. He’s watching the road ahead, and the wanting hits me so hard it’s physical. His jaw. His hands. The particular way he holds still when everything in him is moving. I want to put my mouth on his throat and not come up for air.
I look back at the road.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask.
He turns his head. His expression changes.
“The northern buffer zone corridor,” he says. “The contested strip of land between Iron Claw territory and ours, disputed since the eighties. I’ve had two reports in the last week of activity in that stretch. Not ferals. Something else. I didn’t have enough to bring to the briefing.”
“But you have enough to walk into this meeting with.”
“I have enough to listen with.”
The laundromat comes into view on the left, dark at this hour, fluorescent light guttering through the front window. Kyle pulls to the curb.
I take in the building. The dryers are visible through the glass, one still turning with a forgotten load inside.
“Last time I came here, I was dying,” I say.
“I know.”
“My, how times change.”
Maximus reaches for the door handle. Pauses. “Celeste.”
