CHAPTER SIX

ELI'S POV

"Yes," I said.

A breath on the other end. "What did he say."

"That I should step back from the treaty. Personal proximity to the matter." I paused. "He knows about the family connection."

Silence. Then, quietly: "I didn't tell him."

"I know."

More silence, and it was different from the silence at dinner — less performance, less careful management of space between us. This was the silence of two people who have put their weapons down for thirty seconds because something more urgent arrived.

"There's a leak in my inner circle," Kieran said. "I've suspected it for a few weeks. I didn't move fast enough on it."

"Cole?"

"No." The certainty in his voice was immediate, no hesitation. "Not Cole."

"Then who."

"I don't know yet." A pause. "But Draven doesn't just want the treaty stalled. He's been pressuring me to kill it from my side. Has been for months. I keep returning his calls late and giving him nothing."

I leaned back in my chair. The case file was still open on the desk in front of me. "Why are you telling me this."

"Because you need to know it."

"I need to know a lot of things, Kieran. You could have started three years ago."

The words came out cleaner than I intended. Not cruel, just accurate. I heard him absorb them.

"I know," he said, which was not the response I expected. I expected deflection. Alphas deflect. It's the thing they're best at after intimidation and taking up space in rooms. Instead he just — received it. Like he'd been holding a tab open for it for a while and it had finally come due.

I said nothing.

"The treaty," he said. "You've been building it for three years."

"Yes."

"And you knew my territory would be the sticking point."

"I knew someone in your position would make a calculation that the treaty costs you more than it gives you, and that calculation would be wrong, and I intended to prove that."

A short exhale. Almost a laugh, except nothing about this felt like laughing. "You intended to take me apart in court."

"I intended to win," I said. "The taking apart was going to be incidental."

This time the silence had something different in it. Something that had no name I wanted to give it right now.

"I need to meet with you," Kieran said. "Not family dinner, not a deposition, not anything on record. I need to sit in a room with you and talk."

"About the treaty."

"About several things."

My hand was flat on the desk. I was aware of it. I was aware of my own heartbeat in a way I am usually not, which was useful data I did not enjoy collecting.

"Give me a reason," I said.

"Because Draven has a network I can't dismantle alone. Because you've spent three years building the legal architecture he's trying to collapse and you know where every beam is. Because if we come at this from opposite sides he wins and the treaty dies." A beat. "And because I owe you a conversation I've been avoiding for ten years, and I'm out of time to keep avoiding it."

I should have said: *let's keep this professional.* I should have said: *have your legal team contact mine.* I should have said any of the things I had prepared myself to say, the ones I'd written into my own behavior like case notes, practiced until they were just reflexes.

Instead I said: "When."

"Tomorrow. There's a place I use — private, not pack territory, no governance board connections. I'll text you the address."

"I'll be there at nine."

"Thank you," he said.

I almost told him not to thank me. That this was strategy, not generosity. That I was doing this because Draven had a source inside Kieran's circle and that made us temporarily aligned, not because I had any interest in the conversation Kieran mentioned.

I didn't say any of that.

"Goodnight," I said instead.

"Goodnight, Eli."

I hung up and sat with the silence afterward.

---

Drea called at eleven.

"I found something," she said, no preamble. "In the governance board's procedural filings for the last quarter. There's a delay tactic built into the review process that Draven hasn't used yet but has clearly been setting up. If he invokes it, we lose sixty days minimum."

"How do we block it."

"We'd need Kieran's territory to formally request expedited review. Which requires him to support the treaty on record." She paused. "Has he given you any indication he'd do that."

I thought about his voice on the phone. The exhaustion underneath it. The way he'd said *I owe you a conversation* like it had weight he'd been carrying for a while.

"He called me tonight," I said.

A pause. "Okay."

"We're meeting tomorrow."

A longer pause. "Eli."

"It's strategy."

"Of course it is."

"Drea."

"I'm not saying anything," she said, in the tone she uses when she is saying everything. "I'm just noting that you answered when he called. And you took the meeting."

"He has information about the leak. And we need him on record."

"Both true," she said. "Also both things you could have gotten through his legal team." A beat. "I'm not warning you off. I'm just — watching."

"I know you are."

"Good." Her voice softened by a fraction. "Be careful with yourself tomorrow."

"I'm always careful."

"You're always precise," she said. "It's not the same thing."

She was right. I knew she was right the second she said it, and I didn't argue, because arguing with Drea when she's right is just an exercise in taking longer to arrive at the truth.

After we hung up, I looked at the first page of the case file again.

*Because it's right.*

Tomorrow I was going to sit across from Kieran Voss and be a lawyer. I was going to think about jurisdiction and procedural timelines and the sixty days Draven wanted to steal from us.

That was the plan.

I closed the file and went to bed and did not think about his voice, and the thing that had been removed from it, and what that meant.

Not for long, anyway.