Chapter 9: Five Days

Five days.

I keep turning it over in my head like maybe if I look at it from enough angles, it starts to feel like enough time. It doesn't. 

Five days between me and a legal claim filed by a man who kept another Omega on a table in a white room until there was nothing left to keep. 

Five days between the life I have been running and whatever comes after it, which is either Thalrion's protection or Noctyros's version of it, and those two things are not remotely the same.

I spend the afternoon alone.

Thalrion doesn't push. That's something I am still adjusting to, the way he gives space without making it feel like abandonment, the way he seems to understand that I need walls around my thinking and he doesn't try to take them down by force. 

He shows me the floor I'm on, the kitchen, the main room, a smaller sitting room with bookshelves that go to the ceiling and a window seat I immediately identify as the best place in the building, and then he leaves me to it.

I sit in the window seat with my knees up and watch the city and think.

The legal claim thing is the part I keep snagging on.

I knew the designation laws existed. You can't survive eight years in the werewolf world without knowing which legal structures are being used to hunt you. But knowing they exist and sitting five days away from having one filed against you by a man with the resources and the patience of Noctyros Malvane are two very different things.

Thalrion's counter claim would work. I know enough about the law to know it would work. A prior established bond claim supersedes a petition claim every time, it's not even a close legal question, and with the Bloodryn name behind it, Noctyros wouldn't get within ten feet of a courtroom before it was dismissed.

The problem is what the claim means.

Formally mine.

That's what Thalrion said. Under the law, formally his. And I have spent eight years running from exactly that, from being formally anyone's, from being property with a designation and a legal owner and no exit, and it doesn't matter that Thalrion is different from every other Alpha I have run from because the law doesn't make that distinction. The law just sees a claimed Omega and an Alpha with a prior bond on record and calls it settled.

My wolf thinks it's already settled.

My wolf and I are not currently speaking.

I hear the door to the sitting room open around four in the afternoon and I don't look up from the window because I already know it's not Thalrion. The scent is different. Lighter.

"He sent you to check on me?" I ask. 

"He absolutely did not," Soren says, dropping onto the couch behind me with the ease of someone who has been using this furniture for years. "I came entirely of my own free will because I was bored and Caius is on a call and you seemed like you needed someone to not make everything significant for five minutes."

I look at him over my shoulder. "And you're that person?"

"I am absolutely that person." He puts his feet on the coffee table. "Thalrion makes everything significant. It's exhausting. Someone has to balance it out."

Despite everything I almost smile. "How long have you known him?"

"Since we were twelve." Soren says it easily, no weight on it. "His father was training the next generation of pack soldiers and I was the general's kid so I got drafted early. Thalrion broke my nose in sparring on the third day and then spent an hour making sure it was set correctly because he felt bad about it." He pauses. "He has never once admitted he felt bad about it, but he spent an hour on my nose."

"That's very revealing," I say.

"Isn't it?" He looks at me with those straightforward eyes. "He doesn't do things without reason, Vaelis. Not the coffee this morning, not the folder, not the eight weeks he spent watching and waiting instead of just taking you the second he had your location. Every single thing he has done since he found you has been deliberate."

"I know," I say.

"Does it help?"

I turn back to the window. "Ask me in five days."

Soren is quiet for a moment. Then, "For what it's worth, and I know it's not worth much coming from someone who has known him for over twenty years and is therefore not exactly objective, I have never once seen him look at anything or anyone the way he looked at you this morning when you said together."

My chest does something inconvenient.

"You're right," I say. "That's not worth much."

He laughs, easy and real. "Fair enough."

We sit in silence for a while, me at the window and Soren on the couch, and it is surprisingly comfortable, the kind of quiet that doesn't require management, and I think that Soren Ashveld is probably the most effortlessly decent person I have met in eight years and I don't quite know what to do with that either.

"Can I ask you something?" I say.

"Go ahead."

"Caius." I keep my voice neutral. "How long has he been in the inner circle?"

Soren shifts slightly. Just slightly. "Four years. Why?"

"No reason." I look at the city. "He just seems very good at making people trust him quickly."

Soren is quiet for a beat longer than the question requires. "He is," he says. "It's one of his best qualities."

He says it like he means it.

But something underneath it doesn't sit flat, and I file that away in the place I keep things that don't sit flat, which has kept me alive longer than any scent blocker I have ever owned.

The door opens again.

This time, it is Thalrion.

He looks at Soren on the couch with his feet on the table and says, "I thought you had a briefing."

"I moved it."

"To when?"

"To after this." Soren stands, unhurried, and rolls his shoulders. "He's good, by the way," he says to Thalrion, nodding at me. "You should talk to him properly. Not about the claim, just talk." He walks to the door. "Novel concept, I know."

Thalrion looks at him with an expression that says this is a long established dynamic and he has made peace with it.

Soren grins and leaves.

The room is quiet.

Thalrion looks at me in the window seat, the afternoon light behind me, the city below, and he crosses the room slowly and sits in the chair nearest the window rather than the couch, closer, and looks at me with those silver eyes and says, "How are you doing?"

It was not a performance of concern, just the question, direct and real.

"I've had better weeks," I say.

"I know."

"You could have told me about the designation law before the meeting."

"Yes," he says. "I could have."

"Why didn't you?"

He is quiet for a moment. "Because I wanted you to hear it with Soren and Caius present, so you could see how people I trust respond to it, so it wasn't just my word on the table."

I look at him.

"That's..." I start.

"Calculated," he says. "I know. Most things I do are."

"I was going to say considerate," I say.

Something in his expression shifts. Quiet and unguarded, there and gone.

"Don't tell Soren that," he says. "He'll be insufferable."

This time I do smile. Small, real, and I see the exact moment Thalrion registers it because something in those silver eyes goes very still and very warm and very focused, the way they go when he is paying complete attention to something, and I feel it like a hand against my sternum.

"Five days," I say, because I need to say something that isn't about the way he just looked at me.

"Five days," he confirms. His voice is steady. "We'll find another way, if one exists."

"And if it doesn't?"

He holds my gaze.

"Then I make the claim," he says quietly. "And I spend every day after it proving it means something different coming from me."

The city burns below us in the late afternoon light.

My wolf is warm and certain and completely silent.

And Thalrion Bloodryn is looking at me like five days is already a formality.

Maybe it is...