CHAPTER 13

XAVIER

The coffee burned over my hand.

I barely felt it.

Porcelain had cracked through my palm, broken by fingers that should have known better than to lose control in front of my household. Hot coffee dripped from my knuckles onto the kitchen table, spreading between plates of pancakes and half-finished mugs.

No one moved.

No one breathed too loudly.

Across the table, Deena clutched her marked wrist beneath the edge of the table, trying to hide the pain from me.

She was terrible at it.

The bond fed it straight into my chest anyway.

A sharp, living heat. Recognition. Fury. Fear.

My wolf surged so hard my vision sharpened.

Human wife.

The Human Problem.

Whoever had written those words had done more than deliver a file. They had named her in the language of old law. They had made her public. Political. Open to challenge.

Mine, the wolf snarled.

Not property. Not possession.

But under my protection.

At my table.

In my house.

Mace’s radio crackled again. “Alpha?”

I released the ruined mug piece by piece. “Bring it to my study. No one touches it with bare skin. No one opens it.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

Silas stood near the doorway, hands folded in front of him, every inch the composed adviser. “This is precisely why breakfast familiarity was unwise.”

I looked at him.

The room went colder.

Silas stopped speaking.

Good.

Deena’s chair scraped back. For a moment I thought she meant to leave. Instead, she reached across the table, grabbed a clean napkin, and caught my wrist.

The entire kitchen froze harder than before.

Her fingers were warm against my skin.

Small. Steady.

My wolf quieted so abruptly it was almost pain.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

“It will heal.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. Big brown eyes, exhausted and unimpressed. “That wasn’t an invitation to be stupid.”

A sound came from Nicole. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a prayer.

Deena wrapped the napkin around my palm and pressed. “Scalds still need cooling. Werewolf or not, skin is skin.”

“It will heal,” I repeated, though my voice had lost its edge.

“Congratulations on your immune system. Hold still.”

No one spoke.

Not even Mace.

For five seconds, the Alpha King of North American packs stood in his own kitchen while a human nurse scolded him over a coffee burn.

And I let her.

Worse, some broken part of me wanted to keep letting her.

Then the marks on her wrist pulsed beneath the skin, and her grip faltered.

My gaze dropped. “Deena.”

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like my nervous system owes you rent.”

Nicole pointed at me with her fork. “She’s right. Your voice is doing weird shit.”

Mace muttered, “Nicole.”

“What? It is.”

Deena released my hand and stepped back, spine straightening like she regretted the softness. “If there’s a file with my name on it, I’m reading it.”

“No,” I said.

Her brows rose.

I heard the word after it left my mouth and hated myself for it.

There it was again. The instinct to lock every door between her and danger. To remove the threat by removing her choice.

Her expression hardened. “Try again.”

My jaw flexed.

The old me—the king, the weapon, the thing raised by war and politics—wanted to command. Wanted to make this clean.

She made nothing clean.

I exhaled. “You may read it. In my study.”

“Look at that,” Nicole said. “Growth before nine a.m.”

Mace gave her a flat stare.

She smiled sweetly. “Write it down, Filing Cabinet.”

His mouth tightened. “Do not call me that in front of the household.”

“Oh, so privately is fine?”

He walked out before answering.

A dangerous choice, because Nicole looked delighted.

I led them through the hall, Silas behind us, Miriam moving quietly at my left. Lena joined us without being asked. She had the sense not to speak, but her eyes kept returning to Deena’s wrist and the necklace resting against her chest.

The study smelled of leather, old paper, and the rain that had started against the windows sometime before dawn. My desk faced the room rather than the glass. A habit. A king learned quickly never to put his back to a door.

The courier package sat in the center of the desk when we entered.

Thick black paper. Wax seal. Silver thread woven through the binding.

Old treaty formalities.

A threat dressed as paperwork.

Mace stood beside it. “No chemical scent. No silver powder. No blood magic I can detect.”

Nicole leaned closer to Deena. “Mail inspection by sniff test. Efficient. Horrifying.”

Deena folded her arms. “At this point, I miss spam emails.”

I broke the seal with a letter opener and opened the package.

Inside was a file.

Cream pages. Black ink. The kind of formal formatting used by councils that wanted cruelty to look organized.

At the top of the first page:

Emergency Classification Opened Under Old Treaty Law.

Beneath it:

Subject: Deena Williams. Human claimant. Life-bound spouse to Alpha King Xavier Evers.

And stamped across the center in red:

THE HUMAN PROBLEM.

My wolf lunged.

I gripped the edge of the desk until the wood complained.

Deena saw it. Of course she did. She missed very little for a woman who had been dragged into my world and denied sleep.

“Subject,” she said quietly. “Cute.”

I turned the file toward her.

Silas shifted. “Xavier.”

I did not look at him. “She reads what concerns her.”

Deena’s gaze flicked to mine, surprise there for half a breath before suspicion covered it.

Good.

She should be suspicious.

Suspicion kept people alive.

Nicole moved close enough to read over Deena’s shoulder. Mace opened his mouth.

Nicole didn’t look up. “If you tell me I can’t read it, I’m going to become unpleasant.”

“You are already unpleasant,” he said.

“Then imagine my final form.”

For reasons I refused to examine, Mace did not stop her.

Miriam took the second page from the file and read aloud, her voice grave. “The blood signature given in extremis, witnessed by medical authority and sealed by surviving breath, has awakened claim rights under the first continental treaty. Recognition has been submitted by allied observers and rival houses.”

Deena looked at me. “In English.”

“It means,” I said, “they acknowledge the bond.”

“I didn’t ask them to.”

“No.”

“I didn’t ask you to either.”

My wolf hated the words.

I respected them.

“No,” I said again.

Miriam continued. “Pending review, the human spouse may be classified as protected dependent, unlawful influence, treaty threat, or sovereign consort.”

Nicole’s head snapped up. “I’m sorry, treaty threat?”

Deena pointed at the file. “Protected dependent sounds like being grounded by committee.”

“It can mean guarded custody,” Silas said.

Nicole’s eyes narrowed. “Kidnapping with stationery.”

“In some circumstances,” Miriam said carefully, “neutral custody may be ordered if the council believes the bond compromises Alpha stability.”

The temperature in the room dropped.

“No one,” I said, “orders custody of my wife.”

The words landed before I could call them back.

Deena went still.

Silas’s eyes sharpened.

Mace looked at me.

My wolf settled beneath my skin with grim satisfaction.

Damn it.

Deena’s voice came softer than before. “Your wife?”

I held her gaze. “By their language. Not by your consent.”

Something in her face shifted.

Not trust.

Not yet.

But she heard the difference.

Nicole, for once, said nothing.

Silas ruined the silence. “Language matters. If you reject the title publicly, they can accuse you of dishonoring sacred law. If you keep it, they claim you are compromised by human influence.”

Deena gave a humorless laugh. “Great. Schrödinger’s wife. Both politically inconvenient and legally married until someone opens the box.”

Nicole lifted a finger. “Alive, angry, and done with everyone’s shit.”

Mace glanced at her. “That part was clear.”

I looked to Miriam. “Find me severance precedent.”

The room tightened.

Deena noticed that too.

“What?” she asked.

Miriam closed the file slowly. “Severance is possible in theory.”

“In theory,” Deena repeated. “That sounds like medical consent forms right before a procedure with six pages of possible complications.”

“It could injure him,” Lena said.

I shot her a look.

She ignored it. Pack physician or not, Lena Ortiz had never feared me enough.

Deena’s eyes cut to mine. “You said it wasn’t dangerous for me.”

“I said not for you.”

“That was cute word-dodging.”

“I will survive it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I survive most things.”

Her mouth tightened. “That is not a plan. That is masculine bullshit with a pulse.”

Nicole murmured, “Accurate.”

My wolf bristled at the idea of breaking the bond. It wanted her close. Wanted her scent in my rooms, her voice in my halls, her body behind every wall I could guard.

Mine.

I forced the thought down until it bled.

“You want your life back,” I said. “I want the bond broken. We agree on the only thing that matters.”

Deena shook her head. “No. I want my choices back. There’s a difference.”

The words struck harder than they should have.

Because she was right.

And because every instinct I had was built to deny her exactly that.

Before I could answer, Mace’s phone buzzed. He checked it, expression going flat.

“What?” I asked.

“Communications sweep found an outgoing burst from inside the estate at 3:12 a.m. Routed through an old administrative line.”

Silas frowned. “Several staff members have access to those offices.”

I looked at him then.

He looked back, calm as ever.

Too calm.

“Then several staff members will answer questions,” I said.

Mace nodded. “Already pulling names.”

Deena rubbed at her wrist. The movement was small, but my attention went there instantly.

She caught me looking. “Don’t.”

“I did not speak.”

“You thought loudly.”

Nicole pointed between us. “That bond better not come with telepathy. I hear enough male nonsense out loud.”

“It does not,” Miriam said.

“Wonderful. A blessing.”

Deena turned another page in the file and stopped.

I saw the moment she found it.

Her apartment address.

Her work history.

A printed image from her hospital badge.

Nicole’s name listed beneath known associates.

Deena’s face did not lose color. It tightened. Hardened. Fear came through the bond, hot and controlled.

“They have my address.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And Nicole’s name.”

Nicole leaned in, then went very still. “Well. That’s rude.”

Mace stepped closer. “No one gets near you.”

Nicole turned on him. “Do not start alpha-adjacent barking at me. I am not on your org chart.”

“You are connected to her.”

“I was connected to her before any of you had a treaty crisis over paperwork.”

His jaw clenched. “That is why you are at risk.”

For the first time, Nicole did not have a fast answer.

Deena closed the file with both hands. “I need to go to my apartment.”

“No.”

The word came out by instinct.

Her eyes flashed. “We were doing so well.”

“You cannot return there.”

“My uniforms are there. My medication. My ID. My whole damn life, Xavier.”

I hated my name in her mouth when she was angry.

I hated more that I wanted it there anyway.

“We will send someone.”

“No. I’m not letting strangers paw through my underwear drawer because wolf politics caught a hard-on for my signature.”

Mace looked at the ceiling.

Nicole nodded. “Extremely fair.”

Silas made a disgusted sound. “This is not the time for vulgarity.”

Deena turned her head. “Silas, I promise you, if vulgarity is what finally takes down the werewolf monarchy, it was already fragile.”

Miriam’s mouth twitched.

I should not have enjoyed that.

I did.

I rubbed a hand over my jaw, then forced myself to do the thing I had not been raised to do.

Yield ground.

“We go together,” I said. “You. Nicole. Mace. Me. Two vehicles. No stops.”

Deena studied me. “That’s permission?”

“That is compromise.”

“Needs work, but I’ll take it.”

Silas stepped forward. “Xavier, leaving the estate while we have an internal leak is reckless.”

“Staying blind is worse.”

“And if this is bait?”

I met his gaze. “Then something will regret setting it.”

Mace’s phone buzzed again.

This time, his entire body changed.

Nicole noticed before anyone else. “What now?”

Mace looked at me. “Team watching her building lost the hallway cameras twenty minutes ago.”

Deena went utterly still.

The bond spiked.

Fear. Anger. A sharp ache that made my wolf snarl beneath my ribs.

Mace turned the screen toward us.

The image was grainy, pulled from a camera outside Deena’s apartment door. The timestamp was three minutes old.

Her door stood open.

Dark inside.

Then a shadow moved across the frame.

Mace’s voice dropped.

“Someone is inside her apartment.”