The Weight of Command

POV: Lachlan

The view from the forty-third floor of Nightshade's Melbourne headquarters was designed to remind visitors where they stood in relation to everything else.

The city stretched below in every direction, glass and steel catching the late afternoon light. Lachlan Pierce stood at the window with his back to the room, hands clasped behind him, and gave it almost none of his attention.

He was listening to Rhys talk, which required focus because Rhys delivered information the way some people delivered furniture: methodically, piece by piece, in an order that made perfect sense to him and nobody else.

"Fourteen incidents across three states in six weeks," Rhys said.

He was thirty-four, built like a man designed for physical confrontation who had leaned into it professionally, with close-cropped dark hair and the stillness of a person who had learned early that the most dangerous people in any room were the quiet ones. He was Nightshade's head enforcer and the best Lachlan had ever worked with.

"All targeting children under the age of ten. All with documented Alpha bloodlines or unusual ability markers."

"Patterns in the approach?" Lachlan asked without turning from the window.

"Coordinated. They're not opportunistic. Someone is feeding them information about which children to target and where to find them." Rhys paused.

"Whoever is running this knows things that shouldn't be publicly available. Medical records. School enrollments. Pack registries."

Lachlan turned from the window.

He was thirty-one, six feet five, and built with the kind of physical authority that had nothing to do with effort and everything to do with bloodline. His black hair was kept short, and his steel-grey eyes were consistently described as unreadable, which suited him. Even the Melbourne business press had once called his permanently stubbled jaw and controlled expression "inscrutably composed," a description he'd found mildly insulting.

He ran one of the most powerful packs in Australia and had built Nightshade's commercial portfolio into a business that rivalled mid-tier corporations. In seven years, he had fought three formal Alpha challenges and won all of them without taking significant damage, which was either a testament to his skill or a deterrent to future challengers. He had never particularly cared which.

He had been Alpha of Nightshade Pack since he was twenty-four, when his father had stepped back from the position with the graciousness of a man who had secured the transition in his own interests before anyone else's.

He was also, in ways he refused to examine or discuss with anyone, profoundly tired.

"Sydney," he said.

Rhys nodded. "Silvercrest territory has the highest concentration. Six of the fourteen incidents in the past three weeks alone. The rogues are circling a specific target up there."

Kieran Walsh, Nightshade's Beta, looked up from the tablet in his hands. Thirty-two, lean, and sharp-featured, he had intelligent brown eyes that missed very little and knew when to speak and when to let silence do the work. He had been at Lachlan's right hand for six years and was the only person in Nightshade who could challenge Lachlan's decisions without turning it into a dominance issue.

"I can send Rhys and a team," Kieran said. "You don't need to go personally."

"I'm going personally."

Kieran's eyes moved to him. "Can I ask why?"

Lachlan looked at the incident map on the wall screen. Red markers clustered across the Sydney coastal region with the concentration of a force being drawn toward a fixed point. His wolf, restless for weeks in a way he had stopped trying to rationalize, stirred again. That low, directional pull, like a compass needle insisting on north regardless of which way the map was turned.

"Because someone is hunting children," he said, "and sending a team communicates that it's a standard enforcement matter. It isn't."

He turned from the window and moved to the desk.

"Get me on the first flight tomorrow."

The office door opened without a knock.

Sienna Bancroft did not knock. She had stopped approximately two years ago. Lachlan had noticed and never addressed it, which said enough about where his attention had been.

She was tall, raven-haired, and dressed in the kind of outfit that suggested she'd come from somewhere photographers were waiting and was headed somewhere similar.

Emerald eyes swept the room, cataloged Rhys and Kieran with the brief acknowledgement, and fixed on Lachlan with the proprietary certainty she had been deploying since they were teenagers and had decided, at some point he had never been consulted about, that he was hers.

She crossed to him, slid her hand along his arm, and said, "You look like your meeting is boring you."

"It isn't," he said.

She smiled as though he hadn't spoken and turned to face the room beside him, which was her habit. Positioning. She was very good at it.

"The engagement announcement," she said. "The photographer needs a confirmed date."

"We'll discuss it later."

"We've been putting it off for three weeks."

"Then it can survive a fourth." He quietly moved out of her reach.

"Rhys, get those files to Kieran by tonight." Rhys nodded and left with the efficiency of a man grateful for an exit.

Sienna's smile had not moved. It was a remarkable smile, technically. The kind photographers loved because it read as warmth from a distance and gave nothing away up close.