CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

KNOX

Mara called me.

Not to the shop, not through Grayson, not by text — she called, which meant something had reached the threshold where she felt it required real-time conversation.

"The projections for the second site," she said, when I picked up.

"Good morning to you too."

"It's eleven. The projections." She moved past pleasantries with the efficiency of someone who'd identified them as non-load-bearing. "Riley's been looking at a space in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. She hasn't said anything to you because she's still deciding whether she wants to decide."

"I know about the space," I said. I'd seen the listing in her email — not intentionally, she'd had it open on the kitchen laptop and I'd seen the address and recognized the category.

"You haven't said anything to her."

"It's her business."

Mara was briefly silent. "You know, Knox, when I first met you — the first time Riley told me there was an Alpha who'd appeared and was being quiet in her kitchen and making eggs — I had a significant list of concerns."

"I remember."

"The list has been getting shorter."

"I appreciate that."

"I'm not complimenting you. I'm updating my risk assessment." A pause. "The second site. She's going to need pack resources to finance it if she does the build-out the way she actually wants to. Not because she can't make the numbers work otherwise — she can — but because the version with pack resources is the version where the shop is what she actually wants it to be instead of what the budget allows for."

"I know that."

"Are you going to offer."

"When she brings it to me," I said. "Not before."

Mara was quiet for a moment. "Good answer."

"Thank you."

"I'm still not complimenting you." But her voice had shifted slightly, and I'd been around Mara long enough to know that that was approximately the same thing. "She met with Daria yesterday."

"She told me."

"How did she seem."

I thought about Riley at the kitchen table the night before, her coffee getting cold, the particular quality of her face when she'd come home. Like something had settled. Not grief — she'd processed the grief about her father in her own timeline, alone, and come out the other side of it without ceremony. Something like the beginning of a foundation. Like ground that had been soft was now solid under her feet.

"Good," I said. "She seemed good."

"Then tell her about the pack resources," Mara said. "Before she comes to you with a budget that's already been compromised."

"I'll tell her tonight."

"Tonight," Mara confirmed, with the emphasis of a woman who would follow up. "And Knox."

"Yeah."

"She's happy." She said it like she was reporting a fact, flat and precise. "She doesn't look it the way other people look happy, because that's not how Riley works. But I've known her for fifteen years and she's happy. I want you to know that I see it."

I didn't say anything for a moment.

"I'll tell her tonight," I said.

"Good," Mara said, and ended the call.

I stood in the east parking lot of the facility and looked at the old pine at the edge of the grounds and thought about the morning the twins were born — I hadn't been there, wouldn't have known how to be there, was three thousand miles away in a feral spiral that I was only now able to describe to myself accurately. Thought about every morning I hadn't been in that kitchen. Thought about the fifty mornings I had been in that kitchen and what they felt like and what Hunter's voice sounded like when he came down for eggs and what Luna looked like when she was arranging Gerald in his seat.

I texted Grayson: *Pack resource allocation for the Beacon Hill build-out. Put together a proposal by Thursday.*

He responded in under a minute: *already drafted. waiting for you to ask.*

I put my phone away and went back inside.