CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

RILEY

I'd started the red bike so many mornings just to hear the engine.

Not to ride it — just to sit on it in the parking lot for five minutes before opening the shop, listening to what Knox had built into it when he painted it. The engine note of a bike tells you everything about how it was tuned, and this one had been tuned the way you tune something you care about. Like he'd known my preferences before I'd articulated them.

Today I rode it with intent for the first time.

I had Hunter on the front with me, arms locked around my waist, face down in the collar of my jacket. I had an address from Knox's last message — waterfront district, loading docks off Harbor Avenue — and I was already moving before I'd consciously decided to move.

The bond was doing something I didn't have language for yet.

The best I can describe it is: I knew which turns to take. Not from direction or address, but from something underneath the navigation, something that said *left* and *right* like a hand on my shoulder. I'd never felt it this clearly before. It had always been ambient, background, the low hum I'd spent five years pretending wasn't there. Now it was a frequency I could read.

I went left on Harbor. Went right on Dock Seven. Pulled in behind Knox's Harley at a loading dock where a white van had been boxed in with the kind of precision that says the person who did it has done it before.

Knox was there. Luna was in his arms.

I got to them in about four steps.

Hunter went from my arms to Knox's in about half a second, grabbing his father's jacket and not letting go. Luna transferred to me without comment and proceeded to explain in a calm and detailed monologue that she had bitten two people, that they had deserved it, and that the van smelled bad and she thought it might need new air freshener.

I held her and listened to this and looked at Knox over her head.

He looked back at me.

Later — three hours later, the van gone, Grayson on his way, kids eating crackers on a warehouse wall — we went to find Selene.

Grayson had the location from the data trail. An industrial space on the south waterfront, the kind of place you rent by the day through a shell company when you want untraceable square footage. Knox knew the building. He'd been in this part of the city before on pack business, years ago, and he navigated it from memory.

We converged from opposite directions. No plan, no words, no coordination. The bond running full signal between us — I took the south entrance, he took the north, and we walked in simultaneously.

Selene was there with six operatives and a speech she'd clearly been preparing.

She looked at us standing in the entrance together and I watched her recalibrate, just slightly. I had Hunter on my hip. My eyes were doing something — I could feel it, the same green-gold flare I'd felt at the preschool gate, something in my vision going sharper and warmer in a way I didn't fully understand yet.

Knox glanced at me.

"Let it out," he said, very quiet. "I've got you."

I didn't know what he meant.

Then I did. It was the same thing I'd felt at the gate — the frequency in my voice, the speed, the sense of something under my skin that wanted to come forward. I'd been clamping down on it by instinct. I stopped clamping.

It wasn't a shift. Not fully. Just — edges. My senses opened up completely and for a moment I could feel the whole room, every person in it, every exit, every threat vector, and I wasn't afraid of any of it.

Selene started her speech.

Knox stepped forward.

He shifted — full, complete, the enormous black wolf I'd never seen but somehow recognized, silver-eyed and completely still in the way that still things are most dangerous. The speech ended. The operatives did not run, but two of them took a step back that wasn't quite voluntary.

He shifted back.

Looked at Selene.

"You have until sunrise," he said. "Use the time well."

She ran.

We stood in the parking lot after. Both kids in my arms, Knox's hand pressed flat on top of Hunter's head like he needed the physical confirmation. The evening was cold and smelled like salt water and Grayson arrived three minutes later, took one look at all four of us, and sat down on the curb without a single word.

I looked at Knox.

He looked back at me.

I thought: six days ago I was counting the days until this ended.