Chapter 6

Audrey

The holding room chair is not comfortable.

The room is small. Concrete walls, one fluorescent light that flickers approximately every forty seconds in a way that suggests it has been doing this for years and nobody has fixed it because nobody spends enough time in here to find it intolerable. There is a table. There are two chairs. There is a door with a small reinforced window through which I have counted three different warriors peering at me in the last ten minutes with varying levels of professional composure.

I cross my other leg and wait. The door opens soon after.

The warrior who enters is broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, with the specific expression of someone who drew the short straw on an assignment and is determined to carry it out with dignity. He has a notepad. He clicks his pen twice before he sits down, which tells me he has done this before and has a process, which I respect.

He looks at me. I look back.

"Name."

"Audrey," I smile. "Calloway. Yours?"

He writes it down, ignoring my question. "Pack?"

"Ashveil. Originally." I pause. "I'm in transition."

"Transition," he repeats, in the tone of someone writing down exactly what was said and reserving all judgment for later. "And the incident in the boutique on Harwick High Street. In your own words."

"I was defending myself," I say.

"The other party sustained—"

"She tried to slap me," I say. "She missed. Then she picked up a pair of fabric scissors from the counter and came at me with them." I pause. "At that point I made a professional assessment of the situation and responded accordingly."

He looks up from the notepad. "You knocked her unconscious."

"I did."

"And then you cut her hair."

A brief pause.

"She needed a trim," I say. “And she seemed to have it her head when she fell, so less hair would give her less tension on her scalp.”

He stares at me.

"Most importantly, it was uneven," I add. "It was genuinely bothering me. I was doing her a favour."

"Ms. Calloway." He sets the pen down. "You cut off approximately eight inches of a pack member's hair while she was unconscious on a boutique floor."

"The scissors were already in my hand," my tone comes out reasonable. "It seemed wasteful not to."

He picks the pen back up and writes something. I would give a considerable amount to know what it says.

"Is there anything else you'd like to add?" he asks.

"Yes, actually." I look at him. "My dress. The green one. Where is it?"

“You mean the reason for this situation?”

“Yes,” I nod, looking rather serious. “I’m not going through all this just to have it taken away from me.”

He stands without responding, clicking his pen closed, at the same time looking at me with the expression of a man who has processed a great deal of information in the last three minutes and needs a moment away from it.

"Wait here," he says.

"Where would I go?" I say.

He goes to the door.

"Excuse me," I call after him.

He stops.

"My dress," I say. "No one is going to confiscate it, are they? As evidence or something?"

He looks at me over his shoulder. The expression on his face is one I don't have a precise word for — it sits somewhere between exasperation and a kind of reluctant fascination, the way people look at things they cannot categorise.

He leaves without answering.

"I'd also like a lawyer," I call, to the closing door.

No response.

The fluorescent light flickers.

I settle back in my chair, and wait with my eyes closed. At least seven minutes pass before the door opens again.

I take in dark pants first, my eyes trailing up the long length to the leather belt and up the navy polo shirt and a jaw assembled with geometric opinions until I meet silver eyes.

It's him…

He is looking at me with the same quality of attention as before — direct, unhurried, the kind that doesn't perform itself. He takes in the room, the table, the chair, and me, in a single pass.

His expression gives nothing back, as he pulls out the chair across from me and sits down.

"Well," I say, because someone has to. "I didn't expect to be meeting you again under circumstances like this."

Something moves in his expression. "Didn't you?"

"No." I sit slightly straighter. "I'm usually more composed when I meet people for the second time. This is—" I gesture vaguely at the concrete walls, the flickering light, myself in a holding room chair with contraband hair scissors' aftermath on my conscience. "Not my best setting."

"You seem comfortable," he says.

"I'm adaptable," I say. "Are you the lawyer? I asked them to send someone."

He pauses, one beat, slightly too long. "Something like that."

The phrasing, the pause, the way he said it without breaking eye contact tells me he is either a very relaxed solicitor or a very confident one, and either way it bodes well for my situation.

"Good," I say. "Because I have a solid self-defence case, and I'd like to establish that before whoever that woman is uses her connections to reframe the narrative."

"Her connections," he says.

"She's pack," I say. "High-ranking, from the way she moved through that shop. People like that have connections." I look at him. "Do you know Ironhold's pack structure? I'm new. I don't have the hierarchy yet."

"I'm familiar with it," he says.

"Right." I nod. "So you understand the optics. New arrival, first day, altercation with a local. I need someone to make clear that the scissors were her idea, not mine. The surveillance cameras should have captured everything. The haircut was mine, I'll grant you that, but the scissors—"

"You cut her hair," he says.

"I trimmed it," I say. "There's a difference."

"Eight inches."

"She had a lot of hair to work with."

He looks at me for a long moment. Something is happening in his expression that I cannot read — it is not amusement, exactly, but it is in the same postcode as amusement, contained behind a composure that is clearly very practiced and very habitual.

"Walk me through the scissor situation," he says.

"She came at me with them," I say. "I took them away. She was unconscious by that point, and I had the scissors in my hand, and her hair was right there, and it was genuinely uneven. I stand by the decision medically and aesthetically."

"Medically," he says.

"I'm a surgeon," I say. "I have an eye for asymmetry. It's involuntary."

He is quiet for a moment. Then the door opens.

The sandy-haired warrior steps in. The instant he sees the man sitting across from me, his posture changes, completely and immediately. His shoulders drop. His chin adjusts. His notepad goes to his side.

He bows. "Alpha."

The word lands in the room like a stone in water.

I look at the warrior. I look at the man across the table. He is looking at me.

"Alpha?" I repeat. My voice comes out approximately one register higher than I intended.

He nods once.

"Alpha," I say again, because apparently I need to say it twice to make it real.

He says nothing.

"You're—" I stop. I look at the warrior, who is standing very correctly by the door with the expression of a man watching a situation he has decided not to involve himself in. I look back. "You let me think you were the lawyer."

"You assumed I was the lawyer," he says. "Those are different things."

"You said something like that."

"Which is not a confirmation."

"It is absolutely a confirmation adjacent—" I stop to breathe. “Wait— you— you're the regional alpha?”

"Yes."

I shoot to my feet. "Of Ironhold??"

"Yes."

"Zamir Vaughn."

"Yes."

"You're my arranged husband."

He stands as well. "I am.”  The corner of his mouth moves. "Though I'd suggest," he says, "that my wife probably shouldn't call me Alpha."