Council of Wolves

POV: Matteo

Dave didn't move. Didn't look away either, that untouched drink still hanging in his hand like a prop he'd forgotten he was holding.

"Councilwoman Ashworth had one too many," he said, when I finally crossed to him, my question still burning in my throat. "You shouldn't put much weight on drunk talk."

"I didn't ask you," I said.

"No," he agreed. "You didn't."

He walked away before I could push further, and I was left standing there with more questions than I'd started the evening with, and no one left in the room willing to answer any of them.

That was two weeks ago. Tonight was the full council gala, the biggest one of the season, and I hadn't found a single answer since.

"You look beautiful," Rhys said, low, close to my ear, his hand settling at the small of my back the moment we stepped into the hall.

I nearly missed a step. Two years of gala nights, and he'd never once opened with a compliment before the cameras even found us.

"That's new," I said.

"What is."

"The warmth before anyone's watching."

His jaw tightened, just once, like the words had cost him something to get out. "Maybe I'm getting better at this," he said..., and steered me toward the first cluster of guests before I could answer.

He was good at it. Better than good. All night his hand stayed at my back, steady, warm, thumb moving once against the fabric of my jacket in a way that felt less like choreography and more like habit he hadn't noticed forming. He laughed at the right places in conversation, touched my arm when introducing me to a visiting delegate, looked at me like I mattered every single time someone important was watching.

I hated how much I wanted it to be real.

This is theater, I told myself, smiling for the third photographer of the night. This is the same performance he's given for two years. Don't confuse a good actor for an honest one.

But even theater has a texture to it, and this felt different from the anniversary gala, different from every gala before it. His hand didn't drop the second the cameras turned. It lingered, just a beat too long, like some part of him had forgotten to perform the ending.

Rhys felt Matteo's shoulders ease under his palm and told himself it meant nothing. Told himself the warmth in his own chest was strategy, nothing more, the same careful management he applied to every council relationship that mattered to the pack's standing.

He was lying to himself and he knew it. That was the worst part. Two years of keeping his hands to himself in private and his face cold in the mornings, and tonight the performance had stopped feeling like a performance somewhere around the second dance, and he didn't know when that had happened or how to make it stop happening again.

Don't get used to this, he told himself, watching Matteo laugh at something a delegate said, unguarded, easy. You don't get to want the thing you built out of guilt.

He excused himself toward the far end of the hall before he had to examine that thought any further.

I lost track of him somewhere near midnight, deep in conversation with a cluster of delegates, and drifted toward the terrace doors for air. That was where the emissary found me.

"Matteo Rocha," the man said. Silver pin on his lapel marking him as one of the visiting pack's envoys, smile too smooth to trust. "Or should I say, Matteo Callahan. Still adjusting to the name?"

"Can I help you with something," I said.

"A substitute bond," he said, ignoring the question, voice pleasant and low. "Formed under grief, sealed in haste. Fascinating thing, legally. Do you know how thin the ground under a bond like that actually is?"

My stomach dropped. "I don't know what you're implying."

"I'm not implying anything," he said, smile widening just slightly. "I'm telling you. There are people very interested in exactly how vulnerable this pack becomes if that bond were ever proven unsound. The border patrol gaps don't help either. Sloppy, for a pack this powerful."

"How do you know about the patrol gaps," I said, sharper than I meant to.

"Give my regards to your husband," he said, already turning away, unbothered, like he hadn't just handed me something with teeth. "Assuming he still is that, by the time all this is finished."

He melted into the crowd before I could get another word out, and I stood there with my pulse hammering, the threat sitting cold and specific in my chest. He'd known about the patrol gaps. He'd known things no outsider should know.

I turned, searching the hall for Rhys, needing to tell him now, immediately, before the night swallowed the warning whole.

He wasn't at the delegate cluster anymore. He wasn't anywhere in the hall at all.

I caught one last glimpse of him through the side doors near the kitchens, Dave close beside him, both of them moving fast and quiet, heading out toward the border patrol routes, the same routes I'd once heard the two of them arguing about in voices too low to carry.