Page 59 of Claimed By The Tracker

Jace's hand came up, slow and careful, and settled on my shoulder. The mark side. Always the mark side in the quiet moments, proprietary and gentle in the same motion—the wolf laying claim to a place it hadn't yet been given leave to mark, and waiting, the way he always waited, for me to be the one who decided when.

Under the cedar and cold air I caught something new in his scent, something steadier than relief, and I understood without asking that some part of him had been braced all morning for a version of today that hadn't happened.

I put my hand over his.

Behind us, Gabriel Rowe walked away toward the parking structure, and I didn't watch him go. I had spent twenty-eight years watching that man for the next shift in the weather. I was done. Whatever he did next would happen somewhere I no longer lived.

The afternoon light moved over the Asheville streets—the city I'd fled, the geography of everything I'd run from—and I stood in the middle of it with my chin up and my power quiet and my hand over the hand of the man who'd come through every wall to reach me.

The wolf settled under my palm. The bond settled in my chest. And the place on my shoulder where his hand rested stayed warm long after, like a question neither of us was ready to answer out loud but both of us already knew the shape of.

Chapter 20

The Watch

JACE

Gabriel Rowe walked toward the parking tier.

I watched him go because Lena wouldn't.

That was the job now. Not standing between her and her father—she'd handled that herself. On her own terms. In front of witnesses, with her power visible and her voice steady. The job was tracking what he did after. Reading the exit. Watching him for the next move.

He didn't look back once.

That told me something. A man who looks back is still recalculating. Still arguing with the collapse he just watched. A man who doesn't has moved past it. Gabriel Rowe was the second kind. I'd been reading him since Gideon laid his contract on Maddox's table. Nothing about his exit contradicted the picture.

My hand was still on Lena's shoulder. The mark side. She had her hand over mine, and neither of us had moved. I let the moment hold.

I could feel the cost through the bond. Not regret. The bone-deep tiredness that comes after holding yourself upright through something that matters more than your body can admit. She'd stood in front of the man who built her cage and told him the cage was empty. That kind of win takes something out of you.

"He's going to try something else," she said.

Not a question. Her voice was steady. The bond carried the truth underneath—the weariness of a woman who'd learned exactly how many times a man like her father would try before he ran out of material.

"Probably."

"Soon?"

"I don't know yet." I turned my hand under hers. Felt her pulse against my palm—steady, strong. "He didn't come here to win today. He came to see what losing looked like. Men like him collect information the way Gideon does. Not for today. For later."

"That's not comforting."

"It wasn't supposed to be." I held her gaze. Let her see the wolf at the edges of my eyes—not a threat. Just presence. "It was supposed to be true."

Something in her expression eased. Not relief. The small steadiness of being told the real shape of something instead of a softened version. She'd had enough softened versions.

She nodded and turned to look at the building behind us. The Council's neutral inquiry location. The steps she'd walked down with her testimony given and her father's claim rejected to his face.

Delaney came down those same steps a moment later.

She moved carefully. Like a woman whose legs hadn't decided yet whether they'd hold. I watched her cross the plaza, catching the sharp, adrenal edge of her scent even from a distance—fear and relief tangled together, not yet sorted into one or the other.

The tremor in her hands she tried to still by keeping them folded. The way her eyes kept cutting toward the parking tier where Gabriel had gone. The brightness of someone running on adrenaline that hadn't yet become anything else.

She'd just done something brave. She hadn't felt the cost of it yet.

Tara appeared at Lena's other shoulder with her phone lit. Her voice shifted into the crisp, clipped delivery she used when data steadied her.