Chapter One

ELI’S POV

The first thing I heard when my father called was the sound of a restaurant in the background, low music, the specific hum of a place that costs too much. He always delivers bad news from somewhere comfortable. I think it's so he has somewhere to look that isn't the conversation.

"I have something to tell you," he said.

"Okay."

"I got married."

I put down my pen. I was in the middle of annotating a treaty clause that I'd been fighting over for three years, red ink everywhere, coffee going cold beside it. I looked at the wall.

"Congratulations," I said. Because what else do you say?

"Her name is Sienna. She's…we've been together for two years, Eli. I should have told you sooner."

"Yes."

"I know you're angry."

"I'm not angry, Dad." And I wasn't. Anger requires surprise as a foundation and my father had spent most of my life preparing me for exactly this kind of phone call, the one where he does the thing and tells me after. I was so unsurprised it almost felt calm. "What's her last name?"

A pause. Just one beat too long.

"Voss," he said. "Sienna Voss."

I didn't say anything for eleven seconds.

I know it was eleven because I was looking at the clock on my office wall, the one I keep there for depositions, so I can track how long a witness has been avoiding a question. Eleven seconds is a long time to be silent on a phone call. My father filled it with nervous sounds. I let him.

Here is what I knew about the name Voss in eleven seconds:

I knew that Kieran Voss had been the Alpha of the Northeast territory for six years. I knew he was twenty-eight, one year older than me. I knew that three years of my legal career had been building toward a Supernatural Rights Act that would mean nothing without his signature, and that getting his signature was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done in a courtroom, because Kieran Voss had every political reason to refuse.

I knew one other thing about Kieran Voss, but I didn't think about that in those eleven seconds. I had gotten very good, over the years, at not thinking about it.

"Eli," my father said. "Say something."

"I have to go," I said.

"I know this is a lot….."

"I have a filing due. I'll call you back."

I hung up. I sat in my office for a long time after that, the red pen still in my hand, the treaty clause still open in front of me. Then I turned to the last page of the file where I kept the opposing signatures, the ones I still needed, and I read the name at the top of the list.

Kieran Voss. Alpha, Northeast Territory.

I put the pen down very carefully, like if I was precise enough about small things, the large things would hold.

Here's something nobody tells you about being an Omega lawyer in the supernatural world: the humans respect you more.

Not because they're better people. Because they have no idea what you are. To them I'm just a thirty-seven-hundred-dollar suit and a win rate that makes opposing counsel check their notes twice before they speak to me. They don't smell the designation on me. They don't adjust their posture when I walk in. They don't have the specific look that some Alphas get, the one that says “you're doing very well for what you are” because they don't know what I am.

I left the pack world at eighteen with one bag and a decision that I was going to build something the pack couldn't touch. That took six years of law school, two years of cases nobody else wanted, and one very long night where Drea Santos sat on my kitchen floor with me and said: “you are going to be so devastating when you're finished being sad.” She was right. I finished being sad. I got to work.

I haven't shifted in four years. I tell people it's a choice. That's almost true.

Drea was in my office within three minutes of me texting her. She does this — materializes when things go wrong, like she has a separate calendar just for my catastrophes.

She sat across from me, read my face, and said: "How bad?"

"My father got married."

"To who?"

"Sienna Voss."

A silence. Then: "Eli."

"I know."

"As in—"

"Yes."

She sat back in her chair. She was quiet for a moment, which with Drea means something is serious because Drea is quiet approximately never. Then: "The treaty signature."

"Yes."

"So Kieran Voss is about to become your stepbrother."

"Technically."

"While you're suing his territory."

"I'm not suing, I'm filing for legislative enforcement of—"

"Eli." She leaned forward. "While you're suing his territory."

I looked at the treaty clause still open on my desk. Three years of work. Twenty-seven Omega families whose cases were attached to this filing. A rights act that would restructure pack law from the inside if it passed, and would mean almost nothing if it didn't. All of it sitting underneath one name on a signature page.

I closed the file.

"We go forward," I said. "Nothing changes."

Drea looked at me for a long moment with the expression she gets when she knows I'm wrong and has decided to let me figure it out myself.

"Sure," she said. "Nothing changes."

She stood, smoothed her jacket, and walked to the door. Stopped with her hand on the frame.

"He's going to be at the family dinner next Friday, you know," she said. "Your dad sent a group text. I'm on it somehow. You're on it. Presumably Kieran Voss is on it."

I stared at her.

"Sienna wants everyone to meet," she said, with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Isn't that nice."

She left.

I sat in my office for a very long time after that, looking at the clock on the wall.