BUYING TIME

He kept his arm around me a while longer before I finally sat up straight and wiped my face with the back of my hand, annoyed at myself for needing a minute like that.

"Zayen."

"Yeah."

"Don't tell Ren."

He went still next to me, and I could feel him turning the request over before answering it. "Morrigan already said not to."

"I know. I'm not asking because of Morrigan."

"Then why."

"Because if Ren hears an Alpha from the north wants to bind himself to me as a third Lykora, he's not going to handle it like an elder warning everyone to keep quiet, he's going to handle it like the actual end of the world, and I don't have the energy to manage that right now on top of everything else." I rubbed my eyes. "He worries when I sneeze wrong. You've seen it."

That got the smallest laugh out of him, low and surprised, like he hadn't expected to laugh at all today. "He does ask a lot of questions about your sneezing."

"See. I rest my case."

"Fine." He nodded slowly. "I won't say anything. But you know this isn't something you can sit on forever, right. Secrets don't last long around here, especially not ones this big."

"I just need three days. That's all the elders gave me anyway."

"Three days is a long time to keep something from him."

"Then I'll move fast."

He didn't look convinced, but he let it go, and something about being trusted with it instead of being managed around it seemed to settle into him in a way I noticed but didn't comment on, because there wasn't time for that conversation either.

What I did have time for was a plan, and sitting around for three days waiting on the elders wasn't one. If I let this play out passively, they'd come back with some version of pressure dressed up as patience, and I'd be no better off than I was right now. I needed something they couldn't argue with later.

So I went to the archives.

I didn't fully know what I was looking for, just that founding laws existed somewhere in this pack's history and most pack laws had loopholes if you looked hard enough, so I figured Luna laws probably did too. The archive room smelled like dust and old parchment, the kind that gets into your throat if you stay too long, and I'd been in there maybe ten minutes, reaching for a shelf clearly built for someone taller than me, when the ladder I was standing on decided it had other plans.

It hit the floor with a crash loud enough to echo through the whole room.

Somewhere behind a row of shelves, a man yelped and dropped what sounded like an entire stack of scrolls.

"I am so sorry," I said, already crouching to help gather them up.

The archivist stared at me like he couldn't decide whether to be afraid or annoyed, landing somewhere in between. "You're the Luna."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"You could have asked me to get something down for you."

"I didn't want to bother you."

"You knocked over a ladder."

"That part was an accident."

He didn't look like he believed that, but he helped me up anyway and asked what I was actually searching for, which honestly should have been my first move instead of climbing furniture. I told him I needed anything on founding law regarding Luna bindings, and his face shifted from annoyed to mildly interested, which for an archivist apparently counts as excitement.

It took another hour, but we found it.

The text was old enough that the ink had gone brown and the language was stiff, the kind that takes two reads before it makes sense, but the meaning was clear by the third pass. A Luna could not be bound to an additional Lykora without her full and unpressured consent, and any attempt to coerce that consent would void the binding before it ever took hold. Older than half the seats currently sitting on that council.

I read it again just to be sure I wasn't imagining how useful it was.

I requested an early audience that same afternoon, before my three days were even close to up, and the elders clearly hadn't expected that, because a few of them were still settling into their chairs when I walked in already holding the scroll.

"I'm not here to ask for more time," I said before anyone could open with something formal. "I'm here to reject the Kieran arrangement, and I'd like to do it on legal grounds instead of personal ones, so nobody can claim later that I was just being emotional about it."

Elder Morrigan's mouth tightened, but she gestured for me to continue, so I read the law out loud, slow enough that nobody in that chamber could pretend they misheard it.

When I finished, the room went quiet in that specific way rooms go quiet when nobody wants to be the first to respond.

"This law is still active," I said. "Which means any pressure applied toward forcing my consent voids the binding before it starts. Either this happens on its own, freely, or it doesn't happen at all. There's no version where you push me into it and it holds."

Elder Cassius shifted like he wanted to argue, but Morrigan cut him off with a look before he got the chance.

"The law stands," she admitted, and each word sounded like it cost her something to say. "We won't contest it."

"Good."

"But understand this," she added, her voice tightening further, "the north won't wait forever for an answer. Kieran isn't gone. He's postponed. That door doesn't stay closed on its own."

"Then I'll deal with that when it actually becomes a problem," I said. "Not before."

Nobody had anything else to add after that, so I left, feeling steadier walking out than I had walking in three hours earlier.

Ren was waiting outside the chamber doors.

He wasn't pacing exactly, but he had the stiff, deliberate stillness of someone working very hard to look like he wasn't pacing, and the second he saw me his shoulders dropped half an inch, like he'd been holding them up by force the entire time.

"I heard you got summoned again," he said, too casual, the kind of casual that gives itself away immediately.

"I did. It's handled."

"Handled how?"

"Legally," I said, holding up the scroll like that explained everything, which it didn't, not to him.

He looked at the scroll, then at me, and didn't push, but I could see him filing the question away for later, the way he did with things he wasn't ready to let go of yet.

"You didn't have to wait out here," I said.

"I know."

"You could've gone back to your rooms."

"I know that too."

He didn't explain further, and I didn't ask him to, because we both already knew why he was standing there, and neither of us needed to say it out loud for it to be true.