Page 30 of The Bear Between Us

"Then you know that every unsanctioned session gives them updated intelligence."

"And every sanctioned session gives them the same thing, just on a schedule they can predict." She holds my gaze. "You're not actually concerned about the surveillance. You're concerned that I'm doing something you don't know about."

It's accurate enough that I don't answer immediately.

"Is there a difference," I say finally, "between those two things right now."

The argument that follows is the real one. It covers the early morning sessions and the surveillance and the escort parameters and then moves, the way their arguments move, into the territory underneath those things. She says protection and control produce the same lived experience when the person being protected is given no say in the terms. I say that the terms exist because the situation requires them and feelings about the situation don't change the situation. She says that's exactly the kind of reasoning that mistakes management for care.

That one lands.

Brennan is in the hallway when I come out of the workroom. He doesn't ask how it went.

"Implement the escort parameters," I say. "Full accompaniment, no exceptions."

He nods and moves off.

I stand in the hallway and think about what she said about management and care, and about the specific look on her face when she said it, and about the fact that I am standing in a hallway having just implemented exactly the kind of measure I told myself I wouldn't reach for.

I told her once that I didn't want to cage her.

I think about whether what I just did is different from that and I don't arrive at a comfortable answer.

23

ELOWEN

The message comes through Nessa.

That's the first thing I should have questioned and didn't, not because I'm careless but because it's Nessa, whose voice I know as well as my own, and the message is exactly the kind of thing Nessa would send. Disturbances near the shop. Strange behavior from the display stock, remedies going bad overnight, a smell she can't identify coming from the back room. She's worried about the inventory and she's worried about me and the message has her specific cadence all the way through it, the run-on quality of her texts when something has her attention.

I read it twice and then I go to find Kaedric.

The conversation is not easy. The escort parameters have been in place for three days and the atmosphere between us is functional in the way that things can be functional and still feel like a door held shut from both sides. He listens to the message, asks two precise questions about the timing and the specific details Nessa mentioned.

"Escorted visit," he says. "Full team. You don't go inside until the exterior is cleared."

"Agreed."

He looks at me for a moment longer than the agreement requires. Something in his expression that isn't quite the Alpha reading the tactical situation. Something more personal that he pulls back before it becomes a conversation.

"I'll have Torin run the approach," he says.

Torin puts four people on the exterior sweep when we reach Briar and Root, moving through the surrounding streets and the alley behind the building with the practiced efficiency I've watched him apply to a dozen situations by now. The shop looks undisturbed from the outside. The new window catches the afternoon light cleanly. The chalk menu board is visible through the glass with Nessa's handwriting on it and the shop is clearly open, a customer visible at the front counter.

Torin gives the all clear.

I go inside.

Nessa looks up when I come in and her face does the thing it does when she's genuinely relieved, the specific brightness of it. "You came," she says.

"You said there were disturbances."

She blinks. "I texted you that I missed you and asked when you were coming back. I didn't say anything about disturbances."

The back of my neck goes cold.

I turn toward the door.