Page 25 of Warded By His Wolf

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It’s undignified.”

“Maddox. You claimed me on a kitchen table on top of my index cards. I think we’re past dignity.”

My wolf made a sound of pure approval. I let the red-gold heat rise into my eyes where she could see it.

“When the threat is handled,” I said, “I’ll show you. Promise.”

She settled back against my shoulder, and the bond carried her satisfaction: a woman who’d gotten what she wanted and was content to wait for the rest.

For a while there was only the fire and the snow against the glass. My wolf was quieter than he had been in three days, not because the threat was gone, but because the thing he had been waiting for his whole life had happened. She was here. She was marked. She had chosen.

Everything else was logistics.

“The vision,” she said eventually. “The woman I’ve been circling for days. I think I know who she is now.”

I waited.

“Composed. Professional. In a room I didn’t recognize, with people I didn’t know, but the way she moved had an authority I knew from somewhere.” Her voice went quieter. “From work. From the way administrators move when they’re about to tell you how to feel about something that’s already been decided.”

Through the bond, the first tremor of old pain. A wound I knew the shape of but not the depth.

“Miriam Vale,” I said.

She went still. “How did you⁠⁠⁠—”

“Your file. Your director at the school. The one who suggested the reduced caseload after the student incident.”

“She suggested a lot of things.” Flat, the voice of a woman armoring. Then, through the bond, I felt her decide to keep going. “Three years ago I saw a boy in danger. Clear as anything I’ve ever seen, the room, the person, the timing. I went to Miriam. She listened with that patient face and suggested I was experiencing stress-related anxiety. Had I considered talking to someone about the pressure of the job.”

“She didn’t believe you.”

“She made sure I didn’t believe me.“ Her hand found the mark at her shoulder, tracing it like an anchor. “The boy was hurt two days later. Exactly the way I saw it. And Miriam sat with me while I cried and suggested that survivors of near-misses often feel responsible. Did I need a referral for additional support.”

The bond carried her anger, old, buried, still glowing underneath like the coals in the grate. My wolf rose with it, wanting a direction.

“She taught me that being right was not the same as being believed. She taught me to make my voice smaller before anyone else could do it for me. Three years of it’s probably nothing, Miriam built that.” She looked up at me. “And now her face is in a vision that has nothing to do with my school and everything to do with Elias Thorne’s network.”

I sat with it. The implications were not subtle.

“You think she’s theirs.”

“I think someone flagged my bloodline before I ever reported a vision. I think the reduced caseload, the referrals, the careful erosion of my confidence. I think it was strategy. I think I was being kept. Docile and doubting and findable, until they were ready to collect.”

My wolf wanted to find Miriam Vale and conduct an interview she would remember. I kept it out of my voice, mostly.

“We send it to Gideon the moment the signal comes back. The face, the context, your institutional history. He runs it against the archive, and Tara’s already standing in it with your full sequence.” I touched her face, tilted it up so she could see me clearly. “You don’t have to be in the room for what happens after. You did your part. You reported what you saw, and this time someone listened.”

Her eyes searched mine. Through the bond, grief and anger and something that might have been relief, all tangled.

“You believed me,” she said. “From the first night. Before I had a name for what I was. Why?”

I gave her the truth, because the bond made anything less feel like a lie.

“Seven years ago I ran a safehouse for a seer whose visions I was told to manage rather than act on. She died because the agency trusted protocol over her warning. I rebuilt myself around a single principle. I stay, I believe, I don’t let process replace a person.” I held her gaze. “You walked into my life and my wolf knew in three seconds. But the believing was there before the bond, Ivy. The believing was the first thing I gave you.”

She was quiet. Then she leaned up and kissed me, not urgent, not desperate. The kiss of a woman saying something she hadn’t found words for yet.