CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

KNOX

Grayson texted at six-seventeen in the morning. Not a call — a text, which meant he'd done the math on what calling would mean and chosen the slower method as a kindness.

*Elder Reyes landed at SeaTac forty minutes ago. She didn't notify the council she was coming. She doesn't have to. Knox, she's coming to the shop.*

I read it twice. Put the phone face-down on the counter. Picked it back up.

Riley was upstairs getting the twins ready for preschool. I could hear Hunter arguing about shoes — not whether to wear them, but which specific shoes, a distinction that apparently mattered enormously — and Luna narrating something about breakfast in that calm, precise way she had, as if she were filing a report.

I made coffee. Set out a second mug.

The thing about Elder Reyes that most wolves didn't understand — that most Alphas, even experienced ones, got wrong — was that she wasn't theatrical about her power. She didn't announce herself. She showed up in rooms and occupied them the way weather occupies a landscape: completely, without apology, as if the room had always been built around her presence and was only now fulfilling its purpose.

She was seventy-two years old. She'd survived four pack wars, three council restructurings, and one attempted coup that the official records described as a "procedural dispute." She had the kind of face that had been beautiful once and was now something better — carved down to its essential architecture, every soft thing gone, what remained being entirely load-bearing.

I'd met her twice. Both times I'd walked away feeling like I'd been evaluated at a cellular level and the results were pending.

The shop's address wasn't in the public pack directory. Grayson's people had made sure of that when Riley moved in. Which meant Reyes had gotten it from the council's private records, which meant she'd wanted us to know she knew, which meant this was intentional in a specific way.

I texted Grayson back: *How long.*

*Maybe an hour. Maybe less. She travels fast.*

I looked at my watch. Fifty-three minutes until the twins' preschool started. I needed Riley out of the building first, or I needed Riley in the room when Reyes arrived, and I didn't know yet which one was right.

I heard the bedroom door open. Luna came down first, as she always did, fully dressed and carrying Gerald and looking like someone who'd given herself plenty of time. Hunter was still audible upstairs, now apparently debating the structural integrity of Velcro versus laces.

"Dad." Luna set Gerald on the counter, climbed up beside him, and regarded me with those gray eyes that saw too much. "Why did you make two coffees."

"Having a visitor."

"Is it Grayson."

"No."

She looked at the two mugs. "Is it a bad visitor."

"I don't know yet."

She considered this with the gravity of a four-year-old who had learned early that most adult situations fell into the category of things to observe rather than panic about. "Okay," she said, and reached for her cereal.

Riley came down at seven-ten, Hunter on her back with both arms around her neck and his shoes finally on, correctly. She deposited him at the table, saw my face, and stopped.

"What," she said. Not a question.

"Elder Reyes is coming here this morning."

The room got very still. Hunter kept eating. Luna looked at me, looked at her mother, and filed Gerald more securely under her arm.

Riley's hand was on the back of the nearest chair. She didn't grip it — just rested her fingers there, like she needed to know the furniture was solid. "When."

"Less than an hour."

A pause. "And you're telling me this now."

"I found out twelve minutes ago."

She breathed. Straightened. Her chin came up in that way it had — the way that said she was finding the load-bearing architecture in herself, getting down to what was essential. "Are you sending me out."

"I don't know yet. I wanted to ask you."

That surprised her. I saw it — a quick flicker, gone as fast as it came. She'd been expecting to be managed, not consulted. Something shifted in her posture that was almost imperceptible and meant quite a lot.

"I want to be here," she said.

"Okay."

"She's coming to see me, not you."

I'd thought that too. "Most likely, yes."

Riley took her coffee mug in both hands and looked at the twins. Hunter had a small amount of cereal milk on his chin and was deeply unbothered about it. Luna was arranging Gerald in a position of maximum dignity.

"Then I'll be here," Riley said. "Take the twins to school."

— • —

I was back in twenty-two minutes. Reyes was already there.

She'd come alone, which was unusual for an elder of her rank — most brought at least one representative as a formality. She stood in the middle of the shop floor examining a custom frame Riley had been building for the past three weeks, her coat over one arm, and she looked exactly the same as she had the last two times I'd seen her except for a new gray in her hair that she'd made no effort to conceal.

Riley was at the workbench. Not hiding behind it — using it. She had a socket wrench in one hand and she wasn't pretending to work, she just hadn't stopped working, and the distinction was important. The deliberate choice of a woman who had decided not to perform anything for anyone this morning.

Reyes heard me come in. Didn't turn around. "Your mate doesn't stop for Alphas," she said.

"No," I said.

"Good." She turned then, and looked at me with those level, measuring eyes. "I'm not here for you, Blackthorn. I'm here for her. Go stand somewhere and don't talk."

I stood somewhere and didn't talk.

What followed was not an interrogation — Reyes didn't interrogate, she observed. She moved around the shop slowly, looking at the work, occasionally asking Riley a technical question about something she was building, and Riley answered directly and without performance. No deference. No apology for the grease on her hands or the bluntness of her manner. Just two people in a room, one of whom happened to hold the kind of authority that could make or unmake everything we were trying to build.

After forty minutes Reyes came and stood beside me.

"She's stronger than you know," she said quietly. "You understand what I mean by that."

"Yes."

"The question isn't whether she can carry what's coming." She looked at Riley, who was bent over the frame again, working. "The question is whether your pack is ready for what she is."

"I'm working on it."

"Work faster." She picked up her coat. "The council convenes in eleven days. You should be there. Bring her." A pause. "Don't tell her I said that. Let her decide."

She left without ceremony. The shop door swung shut and the morning light came back in.

Riley looked up from the frame. "Well," she said.

"Well," I agreed.

"She called me stronger than you know."

I stared at her. "You heard that."

"I hear everything. This is my shop." She set down the wrench. "What's in eleven days."

"Pack council meeting."

"Are we going."

I thought about what Reyes had said. About letting her decide. "That's up to you."

She looked at me for a long moment. Picked the wrench back up. "I'll think about it," she said, which was as close to yes as Riley Harper got before she was ready.

I took that and went to call Grayson.