CHAPTER 4 — Don’t Say My Name

The phone’s screen went dark in Daire’s hand. The words still echoed off wet brick.

*Recover the Lunaris vessel. Alive.*

Every muscle in his body screamed to move.

He didn’t waste time explaining.

He spun back toward the alley mouth, eyes tracking the bobbing white beams of Tribunal flashlights as they probed the main street. Their line of advance was obvious: sweep the open fronts first, then the side alleys.

They’d hit the bar in less than a minute.

“Back inside,” he said. “Now.”

The omega—Elowen, even if she hadn’t given him that name—blinked at him like he’d punched her. Rain plastered her hair to her cheeks. Silver pulsed faintly under her sleeve, the bracelet heat he’d felt against his palm not entirely in his imagination.

“You just said—”

“I know what I said.” His tone came out harsher than he meant. “The front is about to be full of uniforms with scanners. We don’t want to meet them in the open.”

Her eyes flicked toward the end of the alley where light scythed across the rain, then back to him. Logic warred with every instinct that told her not to follow an Alpha anywhere.

“What if they smell you?” she asked. “You’re on their list too, remember?”

“They’re already smelling for me,” he said. “You’re bonus.”

Her jaw tightened. “Comforting.”

Light washed fully across the alley entrance. A tracker’s silhouette turned their way.

Daire didn’t wait to see if they’d commit.

He grabbed Elowen’s hand and yanked her toward the side door halfway down the alley—a rusted metal thing most people mistook for a dead exit. He knew better. Kieran had shown him the blueprint weeks ago.

“Stop—” she began.

He hit the door with his shoulder. It gave with a reluctant screech, opening into the bar’s narrow service corridor. The warm, stale air of the building rolled over them: beer, sweat, fryer grease, and under it all, the faint, bitter sting of cheap suppressant tabs.

He dragged her inside and shouldered the door shut as softly as a slammed door could be, then twisted the deadbolt home. Outside, boots splashed closer.

“This way,” he said, low, already moving.

They slipped past the staff bathroom, the mop sink, a stack of cracked crates. At the end of the corridor, a smaller door waited with a peeling *STOCK ONLY* sign.

He threw it open and pulled her into the dark.

The storage room was barely wider than his wingspan—shelves on either side loaded with cases, boxes, or cheap bottles. A single bare bulb flickered overhead, throwing everything in sickly yellow. Dust motes jittered in the light like nervous fireflies.

He closed the door and braced his back against it, listening.

Only then did he realize he still had her hand in a death grip.

He opened his fingers. She snatched her hand back like he’d burned her and pressed tighter against the shelves, making a row of bottles clink in protest.

He wasn’t here for apologies. Or the way her scent tugged under the suppressant haze. Not when the Tribunal was three breaths away.

Outside, the muted thump of music continued. Voices rose and fell in the main bar. Above that, heavier footsteps carried a different rhythm—measured, disciplined.

Trackers.

“Are you insane?” she hissed. “Dragging me deeper into the building when they’re—”

“Better than leaving you framed in a doorway when they come through with scanners,” he muttered.

She froze.

They both heard it then: the faint, mechanical whine of tribunal gear powering on. Scent-sweepers. Something else—higher pitched.

*Indicators*.

His wolf shoved against his ribs, wanting to pace. To put his body between every potential line of sight and the thing the broadcast had just called a vessel.

“We stay quiet,” he said. “We wait. They check IDs, threaten the owner, and posture, and then they move on to the next place.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we improvise.”

She stared at him like she’d like to improvise a knife into his ribs.

The corridor outside creaked. Light edged under the bottom of the door as someone passed. A few more footsteps, then the distinct click of something being set down.

A man’s voice filtered through, muffled but clear.

“No mark, no *registry*,” he said. “Crowe loves the easy ones.”

Elowen’s stomach lurched.

Daire heard the tiny, involuntary sound she made, halfway between breath and a swallowed curse. Her scent spiked, fear trying to burn through the suppressant tab haze.

His own teeth ground together. *Easy ones.* They tossed those words around like they were talking about repossessing a car, not people.

He shifted a fraction closer, more instinct than thought.

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” he murmured. “Stand?”

“Don’t act like this is about *me,*” she whispered, pressing her back even harder into the shelves. “You’re the fallen, Alpha. They’ll drag you out first if they see you.”

Fair.

But the broadcast hadn’t been just about him.

Outside the door, another voice joined the first. “Crowe wants a Lunaris read. Start with unregistered omegas. Use the *indicator* on any without a visible claim.”

* Indicator * Perfect. They were escalating.

Elowen’s fingers curled into her own palms to keep them from shaking. The bulb overhead flickered once, shadows jerking across Daire’s face.

Rule One floated up like an old, ugly friend.

*Unclaimed means recoverable.*

It had been true in Frostveil’s gilded shadows. It was true in this shitty bar where no one knew her face.

Elowen forced her lungs into rhythm. In for four. Out for four. Keep quiet. Don’t shake.

She was not going to be the omega who panicked and drew attention.

Daire’s silhouette loomed a foot away in the dimness, blocking the door. His hood dripped onto the scuffed floor. The lines of his shoulders were coiled, but his stance was measured—not some wild lunge for glory. He was counting probabilities, exit angles, and collateral.

He’d buried enough bodies that weren’t his to bury.

The doorknob rattled.

Daire reacted on pure instinct.

He moved in, crowding her back into the corner where shelves met wall. One hand came up, broad palm clamping gently but firmly over her mouth. His other arm braced against the shelf beside her head, caging her in without actually pinning.

Her heart kicked hard against his chest. Heat shot under her skin, a confusing blend of fear and something she did not have time for.

He leaned down, mouth near her ear, his breath warm against rain-chilled skin.

“Quiet,” he breathed, barely sound.

Her hands flew to his wrist on reflex, fingers digging into tendons. She could’ve tried to wrench him away. She didn’t.

Outside, the knob stopped rattling. A boot scuffed. A curse.

“Locked,” the first voice muttered. “Storage.”

“Break it if you have to,” another said. “Crowe wants the sweep thorough.”

Wood creaked. Pressure shifted against Daire’s back, where he braced the door. He planted his feet wider, absorbing the shove.

Elowen’s body pressed closer to his without meaning to, nowhere else to go. His chest was a solid heat against hers. That, more than his hand, was what made breathing feel like work.

His thumb shifted, just enough to ease the pressure so she could drag in a thin breath through her nose.

“She smells like fear,” the second voice said just on the other side of the wall. “Any unregistered omegas on staff?”

“Couple,” came a third voice—probably Ira, the bar owner, sounding more scared than he’d ever let on in front of the regulars. “All on tab. No papers, no trouble.”

“‘No papers’ *is* trouble,” the tracker snapped. “That’s how you end up on lists for *asset recovery*.”

Elowen’s stomach flipped.

Daire’s hand was still on her mouth when his fingers brushed lower by accident, along the cuff of her damp sleeve.

He felt it at the same time she did.

Heat.

The narrow band under her skin went from warm metal to a searing line. A high, almost inaudible ringing started up—like distant glass under strain.

She flinched, a small jerk against him. Her wrist twisted away, instinct yanking the bracelet out of reach. For a heartbeat, the crack in the metal caught the bare bulb’s light and gleamed silver.

It had never done that just for tribunal voices before.

*Why now?* she thought wildly. *The baby? Him? The word Lunaris?*

His eyes narrowed, tracking the motion. Even without seeing the bracelet fully, he felt the pulse of something old and wrong thrum against his fingertips.

“What was—”

She shook her head against his palm, frantic.

Not now. Not *that*.

Outside, footsteps moved a step down the hall. Something hummed—a handheld device waking up. A faint, searching whine.

“Run the *indicator* down the back hall,” someone said. “If she’s here, we’ll get a ping.”

Elowen’s heart hammered, but her face stayed turned toward the shadows. She focused on the feel of the wall at her back, the rough fabric of his jacket under her palms, anything but the image of a glowing device reading “Lunaris” and a clipboard turning her into “Lot One.”

Daire’s jaw clenched. He hadn’t signed up for this when he came to Vesperridge. Contracts, yes. Revenge, maybe. Not shepherding an unclaimed, pregnant omega with a cracked Lunaris seal through a tribunal sweep.

He eased his hand away from her mouth slowly, fingers lingering a split second too long.

“Don’t scream,” he murmured.

She nodded once, sharp, pressing herself tighter into the corner as if she could slip between the shelves.

“Don’t run. Don’t spike your scent on purpose. They’re sweeping for anomalies, not for you specifically.” He paused, knowing it wasn’t much comfort. “Yet.”

“‘Yet,’” she echoed, voice low and razor-thin. “Comforting.”

“Who are you really?” he demanded again, even quieter this time.

She swallowed. The urge to spit the truth—*Elowen, the woman you hid, the one you told to leave*—burned her tongue.

She forced it down.

“I told you,” she whispered. “Nobody.”

His gaze skimmed her face, searching for something she refused to give him. The wolf in him recoiled from the lie. The man didn’t have the luxury of caring which ghost she was. Not when Crowe’s men were two doors away and talking about unregistered omegas like loose inventory.

“Lies make you interesting,” he said. “Interesting gets people like you tagged.”

“People like me?” she hissed. Bitter amusement laced through the fear. “Unmarked. Unclaimed. Easy to put on a list.”

Something flickered in his eyes. Guilt. Anger. At himself, maybe. At the system he’d spent too long negotiating with instead of burning.

He angled his head, bringing his mouth close enough to her ear that his next words were for her alone.

“If they take you,” he said, “you’ll be sold.”

Her breath caught.

“Tell me what you are.”

Not *who*.

*What*.

That was what Nightmoor called things it wanted to own.