Page 27 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

He's read the story. I can tell from the way he stands at the railing with his coffee. He doesn't mention it.

Ava crosses the yard from the main building carrying two mugs, her hair still damp from the shower. The horn pendant sits at the hollow of her throat, the curved piece catching the early sun.

Knox's gaze drops to it. Then his eyes track to my right horn, to the filed tip where the taper used to end in a point, and the recognition settles over his face. No surprise. His chin dips once, the nod he gives at Church when a vote carries and the room knows it. An acknowledgment that gains weight by staying quiet. Decades of riding together built that. Midnight perimeter checks and locked-gate arguments and the slow proof of loyalty that never needed a speech.

He picks up his coffee and walks inside.

Garrett sees the gap from across the lot. I don't know when he arrived or how long he stood there—seven feet of minotaur, and he moves without making a sound. His eyes find the gap on my horn, and what passes between us carries a weight no one else in this compound could understand. One minotaur knows what it costs another to file. The absence on my horn speaks a language the orcs can learn but the minotaurs are born knowing. His fist bumps his chest once, over his heart, and he turns back to his bike.

Finn hits my shoulder hard enough to rock me off the rail. "About time you stopped being the creepiest bachelor in the building."

"I've never been the creepiest. Chain sleeps with a machete."

"Chain sleeps with a machete because Chain is Chain." Finn leans against the porch post and folds his arms. "You sleep with a police scanner. That's worse."

Ava hands me my coffee and sits on the step below mine. Her knee settles against my calf. Finn looks at the pendant. Looks at me and bites the inside of his cheek to stop the massive grin trying to break free.

"No ceremony?" he asks.

"No." I drink. "The pendant says it all."

Finn shrugs. "Suit yourself. On our anniversary I made a speech that went for eleven minutes and ended with Jess throwing a boot at my head."

"Sounds about right."

"It was a steel-toe one." He pushes off the post. "Best day of my life."

He heads for the garage, and three steps out he stops. The joke drops from his face. "You earned it, brother." Then he's through the engine bay door, and the yard fills with the sound of a wrench finding metal.

Ava leans back against my shin. The pendant sits against her skin, and the morning sun draws a line down the length of the horn piece. She doesn't fidget with it. She doesn't draw attention to it. She wears it like she's always had it.

Rex pulls through the compound gate around noon with Holly in the passenger seat.

"All the agents have left." He leans against the truck hood, arms folded over his chest. "Drove south on 101. I followed them to Gold Beach and they kept going."

"How far?"

"Past the state line. Watched them merge onto Five heading toward Sacramento from the rest stop south of Crescent City." He shrugs one shoulder. "They're not coming back."

Holly drops from the cab with her phone in hand. "I got a picture of their plates. For the file."

Rex looks at her. "What file?"

"The one I'm starting." She holds the phone up, and the screen fills with a clean shot of a government sedan's rear plate, taken through a windshield with enough resolution to read the registration sticker.

"I taught Rex to document. Not you."

"And Rex taught me." She tucks the phone into her jacket pocket. Rex's mouth pulls at the corner, pride he doesn't bother hiding.

"That's my girl," he says.

Diesel corners Steel on the porch after the news breaks, talking fast enough that I catch most of it through the open window.

He drove to Ink & Iron. To tell Kim about the story, about the agency, about Ava and me—all of it public, all of it a phone call at most. She let him talk. She had a walk-in in the chair and she let him stand at the counter and explain the entire operation while she finished a wrist tattoo without looking up.

"And then she said she'd finish the compass rose," Diesel says. "Tuesday. She said come by Tuesday."

Steel grunts.