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Her throat bobbed, but she didn’t look his way. “Yeah. Why?” She pulled a fishnet cap from the bag, stretched it over her bun, and tucked her blonde bangs underneath. The cap squeezed so tight that her head looked comically small above her face.

Alex bit the inside of his cheek, a grin breaking through anyway. He leaned his elbow on the steering wheel. “You look nervous. Anything on your mind?”

Her jaw tightened, a flush creeping up her cheeks. She went back to rummaging into the plastic bag. “I don’t know. It’s just I think—” She paused, then sighed. “I’m mad.”

“About what?” asked Alex, lowering his voice.

A pause. “I was right that Snowy was involved.”

Alex hummed against his fist. “Well, you don’t really know what yet.” He pointed behind him. “We can’t say for sure until we get into that studio and find out what the fuck is going on.”

Kana finally turned to him and raised a thin eyebrow. “And then?”

He shrugged. “We figure it out from there.”

Kana scoffed, pulling out a dark brown wig. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Alex leaned back and crossed his arms. “What do you mean?”

“Like, just going with the flow. Especially when you have to improvise during things like”—she scrunched the wig in her hands like a stress ball and gestured out the windshield—“this infiltration that was just planned yesterday.”

Alex let out a low chuckle. “Sometimes you got no choice, you know?” He stared at the car ceiling, thinking of all the countless times that he had to pivot.

Kana combed through the mess she made with her wig. A small smile appeared on her lips. “You know, you kind of remind me of a shrike.”

“A what?”

“A shrike. It’s a bird I used to see in Toronto. They look like any other small songbird, but they’re not what they seem. They’re impulsive and have a lust for violence.” She threw the wig over her head and adjusted it around her crown. “Once, when I walked home from school, I saw one taking a mouse and impaling it with the tip of a fence.”

Alex’s eyebrows shot up. A laugh burst out of him before he caught it. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, pretty gnarly bird.”

“Is that what you think of me?”

Kana shrugged, turning her face at different angles in the mirror. The wig looked like it had always been hers, long brown hair framing her face like magic.

“Just the impulsive part. Maybe the violent part.” She threw him a smirk before turning back to the mirror. Alex’s heart skipped. “But they’re also known to be territorial, which is why they show those violent tendencies. To protect the things that they love.”

Alex let her words settle. No one had ever framed him like that before—not as a thug, not as his father’s son, but as something with purpose behind the violence.

All his life, he’d gone by names tied to his father’s shadow—the Eagle’s son. She’d just called him something entirely his own. A bird of prey that wasn’t borrowed.

He turned the thought over, testing the weight of it. A shrike. A new name for a new family. He could live with that.

“If that’s how it is, then everyone in that garage, that other night, is also a part of the chaos.” He nodded at her. “So, you got no choice but being a part of that chaos too, princess.”

Kana chuckled. “I know. When I first saw you at Norms, I thought, ‘I have no idea the kind of shit I’m getting myself into with this’”—she circled her acrylic pearly nail at him—“’guy.’”

“Just a ‘guy’?” Alex questioned with a scrunched nose.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know what my first impression was,” she muttered, hiding her smile.

That only made Alex lean closer, grin widening. “Oh no, princess. You started it.” Kana pressed her lips together, fighting a smile. “Now you gotta tell me.”

Before she could answer, a loud knock rattled the window. Alex spun. Hal stood outside in a slim dark suit, gesturing for them to move. “Y’all done making out in there or what? We gotta move!”

Alex shoved his middle finger under Hal’s nose and climbed out. He’d barely straightened up when he felt a tug on the back of his suit jacket.