CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

KNOX

Grayson called me four blocks from the school.

"Rogue operative at the gate — Yestin's man, I've seen him before. Pack scent confirmed. Knox, one of the twins is already outside the yard."

I hit the Harley.

I don't remember most of the four blocks. I remember the turn onto the school street and I remember the smell — rogue, unfamiliar, close — before I could see anything, and then I saw Riley's red hair from the end of the block and she was already moving.

She'd gotten there first. Of course she had.

I found out what happened at the gate later, from Grayson who'd gotten the account from three separate witnesses: a man had Hunter by the hand at the gate, telling the teacher he was a family member, that there'd been a family emergency. Riley had appeared. What happened after that the witnesses couldn't fully describe — some said she'd moved so fast they weren't sure they'd seen it correctly, that her voice had gone to a register that wasn't quite right, that two of the adults present had ended up on their knees without being touched.

She had Hunter when I arrived. Both arms around him, face in his hair, the specific locked-down stillness of someone who has been terrified and is now containing it with everything they have.

"Luna," she said. Her voice was completely flat.

"I have her." I was already back on the bike. "Get to the red bike. I have her."

I'd picked up the van's scent the moment I'd gotten off the Harley and I was already tracking it — the rogue's scent, Luna's, a specific chemical undertone of a vehicle going west. I ran three lights I probably shouldn't have run and caught them at a loading dock off the waterfront, boxed them in from behind with the Harley at an angle that left them no room to reverse.

The van stopped.

I got off the bike.

The operative who came out of the driver's door was trying to look calm and managing it poorly. I was aware of what my face was doing. I was also aware that I had my full Alpha presence running at a level I don't normally maintain in urban environments because it frightens civilians, and the operative felt it immediately — the way everyone feels it when I don't bother to contain it.

"Back door," I said. "Open it."

He opened it.

Luna was sitting cross-legged on the van floor with her arms crossed, staring at the second operative with the focused intensity of a child who has been extremely inconvenienced. There were three red marks on the second operative's forearm that looked very much like tiny bite marks.

"She bit two of them," the first operative said, and his voice was doing something that was trying not to be terrified.

Luna looked at me.

"Daddy," she said. "They smelled wrong."

I picked her up.

I held her with her face pressed against my neck and my hand flat against the back of her head and I stood in the loading dock entrance and let the thing that had been running full voltage through me since Grayson's call start, slowly, to come back down. She smelled like herself — soap and fruit snacks and that particular smell of her, the one that's been mine to know for three weeks and that I'd been aware was irreplaceable since about the first morning I cooked eggs in her mother's kitchen.

"I'm okay," she said, matter-of-fact, into my collar. "I bit the smelly one."

"You did good," I said.

"I know."

I set her down. Looked at the operative.

Then I dealt with the operative. The narrative doesn't need the details. They're not the point.