CHAPTER TEN

KNOX

Grayson called me from the arrivals hall to tell me he'd identified the twins from thirty feet away without having met them.

"The boy's got your forehead," he said. "And the girl did this thing with her chin when she saw me carrying the wolves. That's your chin, Knox. You make that face when someone brings you a problem you already solved."

He was right on both counts.

By the time I got down to Riley's apartment Grayson had been installed on the living room floor for approximately seven minutes and the twins had accepted him as a permanent fixture of their lives. Hunter was explaining the structural limitations of a block tower with the focused intensity of a small engineer, and Grayson — who had spent the last four years handling pack security negotiations and was not known for patience — was listening with what appeared to be genuine investment. Luna had positioned the two stuffed wolves Grayson brought in a formation she considered strategically sound and was now directing a collaborative narrative that I gathered involved a heist of some kind.

"Gerald and the new one," Luna informed me when I crouched down beside her. "His name is Brick."

"Brick," I said.

"He's the getaway driver."

I looked at Grayson. He shrugged. "She named him. I just work here."

Riley came in from the kitchen, saw Grayson on her floor surrounded by children and stuffed wolves, and said, "You must be Grayson," in the tone of someone who had been briefed but had still not quite prepared for the reality.

"That's me." He stood up, offered his hand. "I brought wine. Knox said not to but I brought it anyway."

She took the hand. "Good call."

They liked each other immediately, which I'd expected. Grayson is the kind of person who makes most people feel like he's been on their side the whole time. It's useful and occasionally terrifying depending on which side you're on.

We talked alone in the kitchen while the twins supervised Grayson through the world's most complicated block tower collapse.

"They sent a scout two days ago," he said. "Elder Reth's man. I made him before he got within two blocks. He doesn't know that yet." He set his coffee down. "They're talking about invoking the Heir Recall Act. Formal remand of the twins to pack territory."

"Stall it."

"Knox—"

"Buy me time. I have a challenge filed with the pack attorney. It's not ironclad yet but it'll be enough to slow them down if I can get another three weeks." I looked at him. "You said Selene Voss has been asking about Riley."

The shift in his expression was small. Grayson has good control — better than most — but he's been my beta for six years and I know every register of his face.

"Through third parties. Two separate channels, both traced back to her family's PR network." He paused. "Knox. She's been in Seattle longer than you have."

I set my mug down very carefully.

"How long."

"Best estimate? Two weeks before you arrived."

I thought about the scent trail that had brought me here. The way my wolf had gone from manageable feral grief to this specific, bone-deep certainty that Riley was northwest of the pack lands, that she was here, in this city, in this building. I'd told myself it was the bond finally breaking through the suppression. I'd told myself the mate mark had simply gotten strong enough.

"She fed me the trail," I said.

"That's what I think."

I filed that away somewhere cold. I'd deal with what it meant later, when the twins were safe and the sixty days were intact and I could afford to do something about Selene Voss without it becoming a larger fire than I had hands to put out.

We went back to the living room. Grayson had surrendered completely to the block tower project and was accepting structural critiques from Hunter with the dignity of a man who had decided that losing gracefully was a skill worth practicing.

I heard Riley before I saw her — a small sound from the direction of the kitchen, quickly suppressed. I turned. She was watching Grayson and Hunter with the expression she got when something was too much and she was holding it by the very edge. I didn't say anything. I just stood next to her and watched with her.

After a moment she said, "He's good with them."

"He's been a beta for six years. Good betas are basically glorified babysitters."

She made a sound that might've been a laugh. "Don't tell him I said this, but he seems like a good person."

"He is."

I added three people to the building's maintenance staff that afternoon. Pack-trained, reliable, and very good at looking like regular building employees. I briefed them on Riley's schedule, the twins' school route, and what constituted a reason to call me immediately. I did not mention this to Riley.

She found out forty-eight hours later. She caught one of them — a wolf named Cass who was very good at looking like she was fixing a radiator — scenting the south stairwell.

She came to find me.

"Those are wolves," she said, when I opened the door.

"Some of them, yeah."

"You put wolves in my building."

"I put wolves in the building, yes."

"Without telling me."

"Yes."

She looked at me for a long moment. I could see her choosing the shape of her anger — whether to go wide with it or narrow, whether to go for volume or precision. Riley Harper when she's truly furious is a precision instrument, and I waited to see which version I was getting.

"Someone is trying to find us," I said, before she could start. "Someone who has resources and connections and a specific reason to want to know where you and the kids are at all times. I found out two days ago. I should've told you the same day." I held her gaze. "I'm telling you now. I'm not apologizing for the security."

She stood in my doorway.

"You should've told me," she said finally.

"Yes. I should've."

The argument she was prepared for didn't happen, which I think frustrated her more than the argument would have. She turned and went back downstairs. I stood in my doorway and called my pack attorney and told him to accelerate the Heir Recall challenge to a formal filing.

I was done playing this defensively.

---