CHAPTER FORTY

KNOX

She walked out and I followed, and Grayson fell in behind us without a word, and the three of us made it to the corridor outside the council room before I said anything.

I said: "Riley."

She stopped walking.

"What you said in there." I stopped too. "I need you to know I—"

"Don't." She turned around. Her face was composed, the controlled composure that costs something. "Not right now."

"Okay."

"What I said was the truth. You know it was the truth. I don't need you to confirm it and I don't need you to apologize for it again. What I need is to walk around this building for fifteen minutes and not have anyone talk to me."

I stood where I was.

She walked.

Grayson came up beside me. We watched her go — steady, unhurried, shoulders back, the particular walk of a woman who'd been loading her own truck since she was seventeen and saw no reason to change that now.

"She was extraordinary in there," Grayson said quietly.

"I know."

"Vasquez is going to recommend full Luna standing. I watched his hands when she spoke. He uses his pen as a tell — taps it when he's troubled, stills it when he's decided. It stilled in the first twenty minutes."

"And the others."

"Divided. Elder Chen is the holdout. She's old tradition — doesn't believe half-blood parentage can transmit full Luna capacity." A pause. "Reyes will carry the vote if it's close."

"Will she."

"She came to Seattle to see Riley. She came here. She's not here to abstain." He straightened. "The children's status follows the Luna ruling. Once that's settled, the heirs classification is procedural."

I watched the corridor where Riley had gone. The old building creaked in a draft from somewhere high up.

"She's going to make me earn it," I said. Not a complaint. Just the truth of the situation, stated out loud.

"Obviously," Grayson said.

"Every day. For a long time."

"Also obviously."

"And she should."

He looked at me sideways. "This is growth, Knox. I want to acknowledge that."

"Stop."

"I remember when your primary mode of processing things was—"

"Grayson."

"Silence and long drives on the motorcycle, yes, I know, I was there. I'm merely observing that—"

"Find out who Elder Chen's contacts in the Harper half-blood community are," I said. "I want to know her sources on transmittable Luna capacity before morning."

He pulled out his phone. "Already texting."

I went to find Riley.

She was in the east courtyard, which was cold and mostly stone and had a bench nobody used because of the cold and the stone. She was sitting on it anyway, elbows on knees, looking at the far wall where someone had planted something years ago that had grown into the mortar and been cut back so many times it was now more scar tissue than plant.

I sat on the other end of the bench.

We sat there. The cold came in from the east. She didn't tell me to leave.

After a while she said: "What does full Luna standing actually mean. Practically. Not the ceremony, not the status. What does it mean for my life."

I considered the question. She wanted the practical version — that was always what she wanted first. The mechanics before the meaning.

"It means the shop is pack property, not monitored civilian property. You set your own terms for everything that operates out of it. It means the twins' education is under Alpha-family provision, not council grant. It means if something happens to me, you have independent authority — you don't revert to ward status."

A long pause. "If something happens to you."

"I'm not planning on anything happening to me."

"Wolves say that. Things happen to them anyway." She looked at the old scarred plant in the wall. "I've been planning for scenarios where I have to handle things alone for five years. That's a hard habit to stop even when—" She stopped.

"Even when you don't have to."

"I was going to say even when the situation changes," she said, and it was close enough to the same thing that we both let it stand.

I looked at the plant. "Reyes thinks the vote goes our way."

"You talked to Reyes."

"Grayson did. Grayson talks to everyone."

"Your best asset is that man." She pulled her jacket tighter. "The cold out here is."

"Significant."

"We could go inside."

"We could," I agreed, and didn't move.

Neither did she. We sat in the cold on the stone bench in the courtyard of an old building while the deliberations happened inside and the night came down, and I thought about four years of nights she'd sat with things that were much harder than this, and I thought about the mark on her neck and the pilot light she'd described to Mara that I wasn't supposed to have heard, and I thought about earning things.

"I'm going to be here," I said. "I know you know that. I know you have reasons not to trust it yet. I'm going to be here anyway until the reasons are gone."

She didn't say anything for a moment.

"Sixty days was the original timeline," she said.

"I know."

"It's been forty-three."

"I know."

"Seventeen more days in the original framework." She looked at her hands. "I'm not — I'm not counting down, Knox. I just." She stopped again. Started again. "I need you to know that whatever I decide, it's not because the calendar said so."

"I know that too."

"I decide on my own timeline."

"I know."

"Good," she said. "Okay." And pulled her jacket tighter and stayed on the bench, and I stayed on my end of it, and eventually she said "I'm going in" and stood up and went inside, and I sat in the cold for a few minutes more and let the night do whatever it was going to do.