Chapter Two

KIERAN’S POV

The report landed on my desk at 6:47 in the morning and I knew before I opened it that it was going to be bad. Cole doesn't come in before seven unless something has already gone wrong.

He sat across from me, both hands around his coffee, and waited while I read.

The document was twelve pages. Medical terminology, progression charts, Ingrid's handwriting in the margins where she'd annotated the parts she wanted me to see clearly. I read all of it. Cole watched me read it and said nothing, which is one of the things I've always valued about him, he understands that some information needs to land before it can be discussed.

I got to the last page. I closed the folder.

"How long has she known?" I asked.

"Three weeks," Cole said. "She wanted to be certain before she told you."

"And you've known for three weeks."

"Yes."

I looked at him. He didn't look away, which is the correct response. Cole has never once flinched from something I needed him to see clearly.

"Severance Sickness," I said.

"Yes."

"Advanced."

"Yes."

I stood and walked to the window. Outside, the territory was already moving, cars, the early shift of pack businesses, the specific grey of a city morning that has never once cared about anyone's diagnosis. I stood there and thought about the word *advanced* and what it meant sitting next to a word like *irreversible.*

"What reverses it," I said. Not a question exactly. More like thinking out loud.

"Ingrid will explain the specifics…."

"Tell me now."

Cole was quiet for a moment. Then: "Reconciliation. With the bond. Not proximity, not ritual. Something genuine."

The word landed like something heavy dropped from a height.

I turned from the window. "She's been gone for nine years."

"Ten," Cole said quietly. "In March."

The night I rejected the bond, my father called me into his office two hours before the ceremony. He was the kind of Alpha who made leadership look like weather — something that simply existed, that you didn't question. He told me that the Navarro boy was a distraction. That an Omega mate would create a vulnerability that other packs would exploit. That an Alpha who let sentiment override strategy was an Alpha who didn't last.

He was standing when he said it. I was eighteen and I had never once successfully argued with him about anything.

I went back to the ceremony. I stood in front of two hundred wolves. I said the words. I said them clearly and precisely, the way my father had taught me to speak — no hesitation, no softness, nothing that looked like doubt.

I have spent ten years calling that strength.

Cole's phone buzzed on the desk between us. He glanced at it and something shifted in his expression, small, controlled, but I've known him for fifteen years and I read it.

"What," I said.

"The attorney filing the Supernatural Rights Act treaty against our territory," Cole said, and there was something careful in his voice, something that was choosing its words the way you choose steps on ice. "They just submitted the lead counsel on record."

"And."

"His name is Eli Navarro."

The room did not move. My face did not move. I am very good at both of those things.

"Eli," I said.

"Yes."

"Navarro."

"Yes, Kieran."

I sat back down. I looked at the closed medical folder on my desk with Ingrid's annotations and the word *advanced* and the timeline that was not generous. Then I looked at Cole.

"He's filing against us."

"He's been building this case for three years apparently. He's…. from everything I can find, he's exceptional. Win rate is…."

"I don't need his win rate."

Cole stopped.

I put my hand flat on the desk. Breathed once.

"There's a family dinner Friday," I said. "My mother's been planning it. New husband, introductions, all of it."

Cole looked at me slowly. "Eli's father is Marco Navarro."

"Yes."

"Who married your mother?"

"Yes."

Another silence. Cole picked up his coffee. Put it down. Looked at the ceiling briefly in a way that meant he was doing the same arithmetic I'd already done and arriving at the same answer.

"So Friday night," he said.

"Yes."

"You'll both be at the same table."

"Yes."

"While he's suing — filing — the treaty case against your territory."

"Yes, Cole."

He was quiet for a moment. Then, very carefully: "What are you going to do?"

I looked at the medical folder. I looked out the window. I thought about a boy who had packed one bag and never looked back, who had apparently spent the last decade becoming someone exceptional, who was currently dismantling pack law from the inside, and who was going to be seated across from me in four days passing bread with his father.

"I'm going to pass the bread," I said. "And then I'm going to figure out the rest."