Chapter 31

I stood at the head of the estate’s smaller council hall, sunlight cutting across the stone floor in bright strips. The windows were old and leaded, warping the light into odd shapes that stretched across the chairs and the scuffed table we’d pushed to the front.

Three minor pack leaders sat in a loose semicircle in front of me, each of them looking like they’d rather be anywhere else.

Dario, the youngest, kept tapping his knee like he was trying to kick a habit. Clara of Low Pine, gray-streaked, blazer fraying at the cuffs, had a face carved from years of gritted teeth. Vaughn, the last, leaned on a cane and looked like he hadn’t smiled since before the last Alpha election.

Still, they’d come.

I cleared my throat. “This is a space to say what you feel hasn’t been heard. Say what you need, in whatever way you need to say it. I’m not here to justify bad policy—I’m here to change it.”

Clara went first. Her voice had a burr to it, like she’d spent too many winters smoking cheap tobacco. “We haven’t had a healer make rounds in my territory for over a year. You know what that means for people? My husband's sister died in January. Lung rot. Should’ve been caught, treated. Wasn’t.”

I didn’t interrupt. I just nodded and let her keep going.

Then Vaughn laid out a list of tax codes that hadn’t been touched in fifty years.

“Still taxed for lumber,” he said, voice flat. “We switched to textiles in ‘09. Whole new infrastructure. None of it’s been acknowledged. We’re bleeding money every quarter. The big territories get incentives. We get silence.”

Dario went last. I could see him working something over in his mind. His eyes flicked toward mine, then away. “I won’t lie—my people think this forum is a joke. Theater, at best. At worst? A trap. If we say the wrong thing, we’re marked. If we say nothing, we’re invisible.”

My hands were still folded in front of me, fingers loosely knotted. “Then let's prove them wrong.”

The air shifted. Not all the way to trust—but somewhere closer. We talked for almost two hours. I took notes, I asked follow-ups, I asked them to rank priorities. I thanked them for things they didn’t expect me to notice.

Dario finally stopped twitching. Vaughn almost smiled once. When Clara stood to leave, she looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t let this get buried.”

“I won’t,” I promised. I meant it.

They filed out one by one. Dario lingered by the door.

I tilted my head. “Something else?”

He stepped back in and pulled the door shut behind him. “Just for you. Not the official notes.”

I stayed standing, didn’t crowd him. “Go on.”

He didn’t sit. “David’s team reached out last week. Said showing up here would look like choosing sides. Implied we might lose central support next cycle if we aligned too closely.”

I didn’t blink. “Did you record it?”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t formal. Just a call. A friend-of-a-friend kind of thing.”

“Understood.” I crossed to the sideboard, pulled open the locked drawer, and took out my watchlist. It was just a slim black notebook, but every name inside had weight. I flipped to the back.

DARIO – pressured by David’s camp, stood firm. Trust: cautious.

I wrote it in pencil. Everything in that section stayed erasable.

“Thank you for telling me,” I said.

“I haven’t told anyone else.”

“And they won’t hear it from me.”

He gave me a look I couldn’t read—half gratitude, half regret—and slipped out without another word.

Later that evening, I curled up on a couch with my laptop. The lights in the estate’s east wing buzzed low overhead. My summary email to Richard and Nathan was short:

Key themes: healer access, outdated taxation, forum skepticism. Three actionable points flagged.

Dario reported external pressure from David’s camp. No formal evidence. Personal discretion advised.

I hovered for a second, then added:

Trust index: medium. Might lean toward us with more support. Watching.

Sent.

I shut the laptop and sat in the silence. It had the particular weight of Richard’s absence. I hadn’t seen him since that morning—just a note scrawled in the margin of my meeting packet: Good instinct bringing in the western reps first.

There’d been no official debrief. No dinner. No footfalls echoing down the hallway. But I felt him. Like gravity in the other room.

I brushed my teeth in the bathroom. The overhead light flickered once—old wiring, or maybe just nerves. I was halfway through tying my hair back when I opened the door.

He was there.

Not close, not looming. Just... there. A quiet presence, like always.

He met my eyes for half a second before looking back in his room. “Do you want to stay again? Just in case the injury flares up.”

The air was warm, but everything in me felt tight and frigid, like I’d locked myself in from the inside.

I nodded.

He stepped aside. I moved past him, skin humming from the nearness, from the restraint. We didn’t touch. We never did, not really. But the air between us always felt like something waiting to spark.

I changed in the guest bathroom—slowly, methodically, like buying time might give me answers. When I came back out, he was already in bed, turned toward the far wall.

I crossed the room, pulled back the covers, and slid into the empty space beside him. Cold sheets. Silent ceiling.

Eventually, my eyes drifted closed. But sleep didn’t come easy. Not when his breath was steady beside mine. Not when I could feel every inch of space we weren’t crossing.

And not when I didn’t want that space to stay empty forever.

I rolled slightly, just enough to face him. His back was still to me, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself so still it was almost unnatural. I’d memorized that silhouette over weeks now—the breadth of it, the calm it pretended to carry.

“Are you awake?” I whispered.

A pause. Then: “Yes.”

My breath caught in my throat. I waited for something else, anything else, but he didn’t move.

“I keep thinking,” I said, voice low, “that it shouldn’t feel like this. Just lying here. Not touching. It shouldn’t be this loud in my head.”

Another beat of silence. Then, slowly, he turned toward me. His eyes found mine in the dark.

“I know,” he said.

My fingers were trembling where they clutched the blanket. I wanted to close the gap, just reach out and press my palm to his chest and feel the heartbeat I knew was just as wrecked as mine.

But I didn’t.

Neither did he.

“I’m trying to be good,” I murmured. “I’m trying to be smart.”

“I know,” he said again. “Me too.”

We were so close now, I could feel the warmth of his breath. My whole body thrummed with it. His hand shifted under the covers, like he was thinking of reaching for mine—but it didn’t come any closer.

We’d never talked about it, not in real terms. Not in daylight. Not like this. Drunken kisses, half-formed pleas in the dark—those didn’t count. Somehow, this felt more intimate than all of it. Just almost saying what we wanted. Just hovering near the truth. Words would’ve made it real.

His jaw clenched, barely visible in the moonlight slicing through the curtains. “It would be so easy,” he said. “To not be good or smart.”

“But we don’t do easy,” I said, and it came out like a dare.

He didn’t answer that. But his hand shifted again, and this time it brushed against mine—barely, just the faintest pressure. Like testing gravity. Like proof we were real.

My fingers curled in response. Not gripping, not claiming. Just... acknowledging.

We stayed like that, breath to breath, heat to heat, for what could’ve been a lifetime. That tiny contact said everything we weren’t allowed to.

When I finally let sleep come, it wasn’t peaceful. But it was honest.

And he didn’t move away.