Page 55 of Claimed By The Tracker

She wrote something. "Your wolf decided before your conscious mind?"

"My wolf recognized her as mate approximately ten seconds after I made eye contact in a diner parking lot. I could smell it before I understood it—something changed in the air the second she looked at me, and my conscious mind spent five days catching up to what my body already knew."

"And how did Ms. Rowe respond to that recognition?"

"With appropriate wariness." I watched her write, watched her interpret the way I said it—not defensive, not proud. Just factual. "She ran from a wedding and a life she'd been carefully managing for nine years. She wasn't looking to bond with anything. She spent days scared of what it would mean. She processed it systematically, asked questions, didn't accept anything I told her without verification from other sources. She made an informed decision to choose the bond after confirming it was hers to make."

"Did you pressure her?"

"No."

"Did you use the bond to influence her?"

"No."

Dr. Okafor set down her pen. "Ms. Rowe told me the bond feels like a second heartbeat. That she can sense your emotional state through it. That she initially experienced that as violation and has processed it into understanding. Is that accurate from your side?"

"Yes."

"And when she's in danger or distress, what's your response?"

"Protective. I want to remove the threat. That's partly the bond, partly the way I was trained, mostly the fact that I'm not letting anything touch what's mine while I still have a choice in the matter."

"What's yours," she repeated. "You see her as a possession."

"I see her as a person who matters enough to fight for," I said. "That's different than possession. Possession is about control. This is about standing when standing is what she needs."

She studied me for a moment, and I made myself sit still under it, made the wolf hold its ground without pushing forward the way it wanted to.

"The charter violation process is going to be difficult," she said finally. "Her father will use it to argue that her judgment is compromised, that the bond is coloring her perception of reality, that she's not stable enough to make autonomous decisions."

"I know."

"How will you respond to that?"

"By showing up," I said. "By being in the room. By making it clear I'm not going anywhere, that I believe in her capacity, and that anyone who wants to challenge her autonomy is going to have to go through me to do it."

She nodded slowly. "And you're comfortable with that level of public association? With being identified as her partner in an institutional hearing?"

"Yes."

"Even knowing it might complicate your work with the agency?"

"My work with the agency matters less than she does," I said. "That's the part you'll put in your evaluation if you're being honest—I'm not a stable professional asset anymore because I've made a choice about what matters more. And I'm not going to apologize for that."

Dr. Okafor stood. The interview was over.

"Thank you for your time," she said.

I was at the door when she spoke again.

"For what it's worth," she said, "Ms. Rowe isn't unstable. She's unusually stable, actually. Most people would've fractured under nine years of that kind of pressure. She didn't. She adapted. She preserved her capacity for rational decision-making while carrying psychological weight that would've broken most people." A pause. "Her father is going to argue that her autonomy makes her a risk. What he's actually afraid of is that her autonomy makes her independent of his control. There's a difference."

I nodded.

"And Mr. Mercer," she added, "for someone who's bonded for five days, you're surprisingly thoughtful about what that does and doesn't mean. Most shifters just assert and assume consent is implied."

"Most shifters didn't have to wait for someone to choose them," I said.