Chapter 8: The Inner Circle

Soren Ashveld is not what I expected.

I don't know what I expected from the Alpha King's general, some version of the men at the door maybe, big and quiet and carved from something hard, but Soren walks into the room like someone who has never once taken himself seriously and has somehow survived everything anyway. He's tall, broadly built, with light brown hair that looks like he cut it himself and an expression that is currently doing something caught between professional assessment and very poorly concealed amusement.

He looks at me.

He looks at Thalrion.

He looks back at me.

"Huh," he says.

"Soren," Thalrion says.

"I'm just saying." Soren drops into the chair across from me with the ease of someone who has been sitting in Thalrion's chairs his entire life. "I've been telling him for three years that the bond thread meant something and for three years he told me I was projecting." He looks at me with something warm and direct in his expression. "You look exactly like what I imagined, by the way. He has a type apparently."

"Soren."

"Tall, pretty, absolutely furious about being here." He grins. "Am I wrong?"

"About which part?" I say.

He laughs. It's a real one, sudden and genuine, and something in the room loosens slightly. "I like him," he says to Thalrion.

"I noticed," Thalrion says, and he doesn't sound displeased.

We are in a room I haven't been in before, long table, city view, the kind of room that exists for serious conversations. Thalrion at the head of it. Soren to his right. A third chair that has been empty since we sat down, which Thalrion has not mentioned and I have not asked about.

"Caius is running late," Soren says, reading something on his phone. "Traffic, apparently."

"He's always late," Thalrion says.

"He's always late and then he walks in and somehow you forget he was late because he says something brilliant." Soren pockets his phone and looks at me properly. "Caius Rell. You'll meet him in a minute. Inner circle advisor. Smartest person in any room he walks into." A pause. "Present company excepted, obviously."

"Obviously," I say.

Soren looks delighted.

Thalrion looks like a man watching two things he didn't expect to interact discovering they are going to get along, and something about his expression in that moment is so unguarded that I look away from it quickly because it does something to my chest that I am not ready for.

The door opens.

Caius Rell is younger than I expected. Late twenties, lean, with dark eyes that move fast and a smile that arrives before he's fully in the room. He looks like someone who has never had a bad day in his life, which means he's either very lucky or very good at not showing it.

He sees me and stops.

Not dramatically, just a half second pause, a recalibration, and then the smile is back and he's crossing the room and sitting in the empty chair and looking between me and Thalrion with an expression of genuine interest.

"So it's true," he says.

"What did you hear?" Thalrion asks.

"That you finally found him." Caius looks at me and there is something in his dark eyes that is warm and careful all at once. "Vaelis Nyther. I've read the file." He says it simply, no performance. "I'm glad you're here. I mean that."

I don't know why but I believe him.

That's the thing about Caius Rell. He makes you believe him before you've decided whether to. I file that under things to think about later.

"Now that we're all here," Thalrion says, and the room shifts, everyone straightening slightly, the warmth dialing back to attention, "Noctyros."

Soren's easy expression goes flat. Just like that, the humor is gone and underneath it is something old and cold and very specific. "How close?"

"He had Vaelis's location before we did." Thalrion is looking at the table, fingers flat on the surface, and I am learning that this is what he looks like when he is being most careful. Still. Deliberate. Like every word is placed rather than said. "He knows Vaelis is here now. He'll move within the week."

"Move how?" Caius asks.

"Legally first. He'll try to establish a claim." Thalrion's jaw tightens. "Under the old designation laws an unclaimed Omega can be petitioned for by any Alpha of sufficient standing. Noctyros has sufficient standing and he knows the law better than anyone in this city."

I go very still.

"I'm sorry," I say. "He can do what?"

"The designation laws are old," Soren says, his voice carefully even. "Most people consider them unenforceable in modern practice. Noctyros is not most people."

"He can file a legal claim." I say it slowly. "On me. As if I'm property."

"He can try," Thalrion says, and there is something in those two words that is quiet and absolute and does not leave room for alternative outcomes.

"And if he tries?"

Thalrion looks at me across the table.

"Then I counter it," he says simply. "With a prior claim."

The room is very quiet.

Soren is looking at the table. Caius is looking at Thalrion with an expression I can't read yet. And Thalrion is looking at me with those silver eyes and the morning light behind him and everything in his face is still and deliberate and waiting.

"A prior claim," I say.

"Yes."

"Which would mean..."

"It would mean," he says carefully, "that you are formally mine. Under the same laws Noctyros intends to use. Prior, established, and legally uncontestable."

My wolf surges forward so hard I press my hands flat on the table.

"You want to claim me," I say. "Legally. To stop him from claiming me legally."

"I want to keep you safe," he says. "That is the mechanism available to me."

"And the bond," I say. "Is that part of the mechanism too?"

Something shifts in his expression. Complicated and careful and right on the edge of something he hasn't said yet.

"No," he says quietly. "The bond is not a mechanism."

Soren clears his throat very softly.

Caius is suddenly very interested in his phone.

And I am sitting at Thalrion Bloodryn's table in his building in his city with his scent everywhere and my wolf absolutely certain about all of it, and the Alpha King is looking at me like the answer I give next is the only thing in this room that matters.

"How long do we have?" I ask. "Before he files."

"Five days," Thalrion says. "Maybe six."

I look at him for a long moment.

"Then we have five days to figure out if there's another way," I say. "And if there isn't." I hold his gaze. "We talk about the claim."

Thalrion holds my gaze and something in those silver eyes settles, like something that was braced just released.

"Five days," he agrees.

Soren exhales.

Caius puts his phone down and looks between us with an expression that is trying very hard not to be a smile and failing completely.

"I really like him," he says to nobody in particular.