Page 38 of Claimed By The Tracker

"Yes."

"I know." I moved closer, letting the bond guide me, until I was close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him through the thin cotton of his shirt. "When this is over."

"When this is over," he echoed, low, and the words carried weight going both directions, a promise handed back and forth between us like something fragile neither of us wanted to be the one to drop.

He didn't reach for me. I reached for him instead, my palm settling against his chest, over the place where I imagined I could feel his heartbeat if I concentrated hard enough, and his breath caught audibly, a rough inhale that told me exactly how much restraint the stillness was costing him. Up close his eyes had gone more gold than hazel, the wolf riding close under the surface, and when I tipped my face up toward his he made a sound low in his throat that wasn't quite a growl and wasn't quite anything human had a name for.

"You're allowed to move," I said softly. "I'm not made of glass."

"I know what you're made of." His voice had roughened, and one hand finally rose to cover mine where it rested against his chest, holding it there like an anchor. "That's the problem. If I start, the version of me that stops when you ask isn't the version that shows up tonight."

"So don't stop."

"Lena." My name in his mouth was equal parts warning and plea. "Tonight I need the wolf that doesn't get distracted. Tomorrow, when this is finished, you can have all the distraction you want. I promise you that."

The ache low in my belly didn't care much for patience, but something steadier underneath it—the same steadiness I was learning to hold onto with my magic—recognized the sense in what he was offering. I let my forehead drop to his shoulder instead, breathing him in, and felt his hand come up slow to cradle the back of my head, careful, like I was something he'd fought hard to be allowed to hold.

We stood in the doorway a long moment, the silence between us charged with everything we weren't saying yet, saving it, the way you bank a fire to keep it burning longer than the night requires.

Gideon's knock came at midnight, and the sound of it changed the shape of the room before he said a word.

"He's contesting the filing," Gideon said. No preamble. He didn't need one—we'd all been waiting to hear how Voss would answer the counter-filing, and the set of Gideon's shoulders told me the answer had come back worse than expected. "Formal challenge, routed straight through the primary tier. He's using the Council's own review mechanism to freeze ours before it can even be heard."

"He's fighting us with our own weapon," I said. Not a question. I'd had hours to sit with the shape of what that meant, and the fury had gone from something wild to something I could hold steady in my hands.

"He's fighting you with a weapon he understands better than we do," Roan said, coming off the wall he'd been leaning against. "That's the part that should worry us. Voss didn't improvise this. He had it ready before the filing ever went in."

Tara looked up from the anchor diagrams spread across the table. "Which means someone told him it was coming."

The room went quiet in a different register than fury—colder, more exact.

"My father," I said.

No one argued.

Jace hadn't moved from beside me, but I felt the shift in him through the bond, the same blade-edge focus he'd worn since Delaney's text first landed. His hand found the small of my back, not asking, just present.

"So the filing's frozen," I said, "and Voss knew exactly how to freeze it."

"For now," Gideon said. "I need time to find out what's still open to us. The primary tier isn't the whole system—it's just the door they've locked."

"Then find the door they haven't thought to lock," I said, and pulled a chair up to the table.

It was past three by the time Gideon had a thread worth pulling and Roan called it for the night—rest while you can, because tomorrow's going to want all of it. Tara went first, then Roan, the house settling by degrees into the particular quiet of people who'd decided to trust the walls around them for a few hours.

I found Jace already upstairs, sitting on the edge of the bed with his forearms on his knees, staring at nothing.

He looked up when I came in. Didn't say anything. Didn't have to—I felt the day catch up with him through the bond, the low hum of a man who'd spent hours holding himself between careful and controlled and hadn't set either one down yet.

I closed the door.

"Tomorrow," I said, "might not give us three in the morning with a locked door and nowhere to be."

"Lena."

"You said tonight I could have all the distraction I wanted." I crossed the room and stood between his knees, my hands sliding into his hair. "It's not tonight anymore. It's tomorrow. You promised."

He huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh, low and rough, and his hands came up to rest at my hips—not pulling, just settling there, like he was giving himself a second to decide whether to trust the moment.