“Tomás Hooper,” she said, making my name sound like an admission of guilt.
I gave her nothing.
I waited.
She stood there, hands in the pockets of the coat, and let the silence stretch to a breaking point, waiting for me to give her the floor.
When I didn’t, she rolled her eyes just a fraction and did it anyway. “I’m here for Liam James. And the child.” Her voice was meant for conference rooms, for testifying, for anything but this gravel drive. “I have documents. Signed and notarized. If you’d like to see them, I can produce them at any time.”
I didn’t look at the car. “You want to read them out loud, or should we cut to the point?”
A small, surprised laugh. “You’re not exactly what I pictured.” She took a breath, let it out, and the pheromone ramped up a click. “The boy is a ward of the James family. His actions in coming here are legally invalid under Montana designation law, and you’re harboring him under a fraudulent marriage contract. I’m here to collect him. If you refuse, I’ll have local law enforcement on the property by the end of the morning. They’ll have a warrant, and so will I.”
She pronounced every syllable of “warrant” like it was her god-given right.
I looked her in the eye, said, “You’re wrong on all three.”
That stopped her. Not much, but enough for the crack to show.
“First,” I said, ticking it off with my thumb, “Liam is an adult omega, and he exercised his legal right to a contract marriage under county law. The paperwork already went through days ago. The clerk’s office is open, if you’d like to verify it yourself.” I watched her eyes—she’d known about the wedding, but not the date.
“Second, the James family’s guardianship terminated the day Liam turned twenty-one. That was three years ago. If you need to, you can confirm it through the county records. Rawley’s got the proof, and if you’d like to see the documentation, we can have it on your desk before noon. Your lawyers should have told you that.”
Her mouth was a hard line now. She was recalculating.
I held up a third finger. “Third, one of my men is sitting a quarter mile back in his truck, radio on. Another is at the east fence. The two men you left at the tree line are currently having a conversation with a third man. You have no legal authority here, no badge, and if you cross onto the property again without aninvitation, I’ll have you on a trespass warning and a phone call to Sheriff Calloway. He’s already waiting on our word at the county road junction.”
I said it all easy, as if it was a weather report, nothing personal.
She took a step up onto the first stair, which put her about even with my chest. She looked me dead in the eye and let the alpha scent spike. I felt it, but didn’t give ground.
“You’re making a mistake,” she said, not loud but deadly clear.
I shrugged. “You made yours when you thought intimidation would work.”
The two men in the car didn’t move, didn’t so much as open a window. I imagined one was on the phone, probably to her legal team, the other scanning the perimeter to see if the math checked out.
Eleanor’s face went blank, the emotion wiped clean. I’d seen it before—the instant compartmentalization of someone who knows the script has failed and is waiting for the next version to load.
She said, “He doesn’t belong here.” Her voice dropped, not in volume, but in temperature. “He belongs with his own kind. Not with—” she gestured at the house, at me, at the ranch, “—this.”
I let that land for a second. Then I said, “He’s exactly where he belongs.”
We stood in the cold and the silence. The only sound was the SUV’s idling engine, the faint whine of a fan belt about to go.
She said, “You think I won’t come back? You think you can keep him hidden from his own family?”
I smiled, not mocking, just tired. “He’s not hidden. He’s right here. And if you want to see him, you can write him a letter. Or call, if you can get his number.”
She gave a little snort. “You’re not even good at this. You think you’re the first to try?”
I didn’t answer. Just waited.
She reached into her coat and pulled out a folder—neat, heavy, embossed with a firm’s logo. She opened it, thumbed to the page with the most type on it, and held it up for me to see.
“Do you want to take this, or should I just drop it in your mailbox on my way out?” she asked.
I didn’t touch it. “You can drop it. I’ll line the doghouse with it.”
