Page 73 of Claimed By The Tracker

"That's because you'd tell her it was good before she finished it."

"I would not."

"You absolutely would."

His mouth did the rare thing. The almost-smile I'd been collecting for a year now. I still felt it the same way I had the first time. Like something small and necessary clicking into place.

We found Delaney in the north pasture with her sleeves pushed up. Gold-adjacent light—softer than mine, a different bloodline note entirely, something she was still learning the shape of—moving careful and slow between her palms. Jace's wolf pressed close to the surface as we crossed the grass, alert the way it always was around new magic, curious rather than wary now—it had learned, this year, which threats were real and which were just family testing new edges of themselves.

She'd asked Tara eight months ago whether an emotional discharge could be taught into something deliberate the way mine had been. Tara's answer had been an even yes, if you do the work.

Delaney had done the work.

She held the anchor for eleven seconds. Then twelve. Then let it go and turned to us with an expression I recognized. Because it had been mine once. In this same field. Under Tara's clinical attention and Jace's quiet watching.

"That's longer than last week," I said.

"That's longer than I thought I could do."

"Those are different statements," I told her. The way Tara would have. Delaney laughed. Something in my chest settled the way it always did when I watched my sister choose this life instead of having one chosen for her.

"Does it get easier?" Delaney asked, wiping her palms on her jeans. "The holding?"

"The holding gets easier. The choosing to hold it gets harder, some days, and easier other days. You don't get to pick which kind of day it is in advance."

"That's not encouraging."

"It's not supposed to be encouraging. It's supposed to be true." I caught Jace's eye and saw him almost smile at hearing his own line, a year old now, still living in my mouth. "Encouraging gets you through one bad afternoon. True gets you through the next nine years."

Delaney considered that, then nodded slowly, like she was filing it away somewhere permanent.

That evening, the farmhouse did the thing it did now most evenings. Filled slowly with the easy noise of people who had chosen to be in the same rooms as each other. Maddox cooking without being asked. Tara correcting someone's form across the table with the same brisk affection she'd once corrected mine. Roan arriving later than everyone else, the way he always did, carrying intelligence updates like other people carried wine, his changed hand doing the work of setting the table one-handed with the same practiced ease it always did now—a year in, nobody watched it anymore, least of all him.

Gideon's update, when it came, was quiet enough that only I caught the weight under it.

"The fifth case," he said. Setting his laptop down across from me. "Registry access cleared this afternoon."

I felt Jace's attention sharpen beside me. The bond carrying his focus the way it always did when something mattered.

"And?"

"And it's going to take longer than the other four." Gideon's expression was the careful neutral he wore when he respected a problem enough not to undersell it. "She buried it well. Whoever she is, she understood exactly how the Council's own systems worked. And she used it against itself. The thread doesn't stay inside the Council. It runs out into the Conclave's diplomatic registry. Which is sealed deeper than anything I've pulled yet."

"Smart," I said.

"Extremely."

"How much longer?" Jace asked.

"Weeks, if I'm lucky. Months, if I'm not." Gideon shrugged, unbothered by his own uncertainty in a way that had taken me most of the year to understand wasn't carelessness—it was just honesty about what he could and couldn't promise. "I'll take either. I don't quit cases. You know that about me by now."

"We do," I said.

I looked at the registry number still pinned to the corkboard by the door. Twelve digits. Council-standard formatting. A woman's name I still didn't know attached to a thread I had not stopped pulling since the morning Gideon first showed it to me.

Four cases closed. One still waiting. Patient as a carved crescent in old bark. Waiting for someone willing to find it. And beyond it, a whole second institution full of people who didn't yet know the Council had a name for them.

I was not in a hurry. I had learned, this year, the difference between urgency and patience. And I had learned which one actually got things done.