TheMacbethreference isn’t lost on Knox, and he gives a huff of laughter before he continues. “Right. You have already done the part that only you could do. Kirwan is off the board. That’s more than enough.”
Nix leans forward, eyes sharp. “And now?”
“As I said, don’t ask too many questions. Live your lives as if none of this happened—” Gideon snorts, finally standing straight. He’s already shaking his head.
“Okay, maybe that’s too much to ask, but the more you go poking around here, Mr.Carnell,” Knox says meaningfully. “The more likely it is that they’ll turn their eye on your pack again. Don’t remind them Grayson exists. You don’t want to give them a reason to look closer at him or Skye, or Rose.”
Something hot and savage surges through Grayson, and the bond lights up with Nix in the same instant. Nix is on his feet, fangs down, and eyes flashing blue. “Let them come.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that, but it’s still true.” Sighing, he adds, “Please don’t give them more cause to remember you. You’re free from this, and we’d like for you to enjoy it. Let the experts handle this.”
He’s no longer asking—he’s telling.
Gideon studies him for a long beat. “And if they come for him again?”
Knox shrugs. “Then we will deal with it.” He lets the words settle, and a breeze whispers through the long fronds shielding them all from prying eyes inside the building.
Now that Grayson knows that whatever happened with Kirwan is on the radar of people who can actually do something about it, he finds his wolf is, if not happy, exactly…then cautiously happy to let them do it.
“Gideon?” Jay asks. It never ceases to amaze him that Jay will publicly defer to his second-in-command over something as delicate as pack security.
“If they think it’s safer this way, for Skye and Rosie especially, then…okay.” It’s not a resounding agreement, and he’s not actually committed to keeping his fingers out of it, but it’s good enough for Jay, and thus it’s good enough for the rest of the pack.
Wisely, Knox realizes that it will have to be good enough for him, too.
“Good. I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up—” His phone rings in his hand, and he checks the caller ID with a curse. “Dammit, I need to check in.” He offers his hand to Jay and then to Gideon, before smiling at Nix.
He walks away but turns around at the last minute, seeming to hover above the ground. “See you tomorrow in class, Grayson. Don’t forget those fifteen minutes.” With a last wave, they watch him disappear into the Admin offices.
“That’s it?” Leo asks. “Are we just going to let this go?”
“We leave it to the experts,” Jay says. He hauls a still-frowning Leo up from the table. “Let’s go home. Don’t we have a Moon Dedication to plan?”
It’s enough to get Leo’s mind onto something else, but Grayson isn’t foolish enough to think his Alpha and Gideon aredone with the Guild’s machinations despite Jay’s faux cheer. Kirwan may be gone (he’s not thinking aboutto whereright now), and a looming trip to the Aeternum Academy is off the table, but there’s still Percival and even Bixby to deal with.
For now, however, Grayson will leave it up to Knox and his secret society to worry about the pale man, and as Verity had said, he’s going to “take the win, dude.”
Epilogue: Grayson
The lunch bell rings through the Guild, and the building swells with the familiar chaos of several hundred hungry students turning hallways into rapidly flowing rivers of noise. Grayson pauses halfway up the staircase, one hand on the polished banister, and checks the time on the ancient lobby clock out of habit, even though he already knows it. Skye will be pulling up outside any minute, which leaves Grayson enough time to drop his bag and tidy his desk.
The thought is enough to put a smile on his face before he can stop it.
It has been years now, long enough that Grayson should be used to this life. The classrooms, boisterous students, and the way the art room smells faintly of clay dust, oil paint, and patchouli, no matter the season. He should be used to the fact that he teaches here now, that nervous students call him Professor Pearce in the halls, that magic and art and young people with too much power and not enough confidence are simply his daily life.
He should be used to his son texting him to ask if he has time for lunch.
But he isn’t.
“Professor Pearce!” The voice rises over the crowd, and Grayson turns just in time to catch sight of Emery Fontaine weaving through the foyer with all the grace of a baby giraffe. Hisbright blond hair is being blown about by his own access to The Plain, pale strands lifting and twisting around his flushed face in visible little gusts of Air.
“No yelling in the halls, Emery,” Grayson says, even as fondness softens the words. “You’re supposed to be setting an example.”
Emery skids to a stop at the top of the stairs, cheeks bright pink. “Yeah, sorry. Sorry.” Two first-years giggle nearby and nearly trip over each other trying not to stare.
“Come on.” Grayson jerks his head toward the art room at the end of the hall. “Let’s get out of the way before you take somebody out.”
He unlocks the art room door and steps inside, letting the quieter hush of the room settle around them. Sunlight slants through the tall windows, catching on shelves of student work in various stages of completion and the collection of odd, beloved objects that have gathered over the years. Augusta Shaw’s pottery still sits on the back shelf where he put it after her retirement, earthy and warm in its simplicity. Beside it rests the piece Professor Bixby sent him the year Grayson was hired: an hourglass rimed with ice that never fully settles, fine snow whispering down in endless soft drifts.
