Chapter 1
Decker
This meeting is not going to go easy. I’ve come in after spending hours on the bike, twenty minutes under a locker-bay shower, and still haven’t got the road out of me. Or maybe it isn’t the road. Maybe it’s what I’ve done.
Rafael and Sable. The wolf and his mate. They deserve to be together, and I don’t care what the Aurora council thinks about it. I’m not going out there to haul in a male who’s already had his name stripped off him just so they can lock him up again while they decide what to do with him.
The healer already knew what to do.
I hold on to that and reach for fresh clothes. Jeans, a button-down, then my boots. Two pairs in the locker—the road boots and the second pair. I leave the road boots. The others are worn in over six years, and where I’m going, I want to be able to stand a while.
The meeting room is below ground. White walls on three sides, buried in maps and screens and schematics; the fourth wall a one-way window into the council corridor. The wards hum at the threshold, and my ears pop, the way they always do crossing a held line.
I stop in the doorway. Long table, twelve chairs, six people in the room. Viktor is at the head, loose-shouldered, casual—except I can feel the tension coming off him. A woman with cropped red hair works a tablet by the far screen, her body turned half toward the room. Open enough to be polite. Closed enough that no one crowds her.
There’s a male on the long side I don’t know. Charcoal jacket, two silver rings on his left hand, an open folder in front of him. The pages are already read and turned face-down. Whatever’s in them, he doesn’t want me catching it off-angle.
The other three I know. Nadia, Tabitha, Vanya.
The folder was pulled before I hit the lobby. The chairs are set. This isn’t a conversation waiting to happen. They’ve already had it once, without me in the room.
“Decker.” Viktor stays seated. “Come in. Take a seat.”
I step inside. The door seals behind me. I don’t sit. The chair they’ve left me is across from the councilor on the long side, which means they want me in it. So I stand.
“Thanks for coming on short notice,” Viktor says.
It wasn’t notice. It was a summons. He says it the same way every time, and I let him.
“You know Nadia Frost, Elder Arrowvane, and Tabitha Zidane.” He glances at the women. Two of them nod. Tabitha doesn’t. “Zoe Fade has some information to share. And Councilor Davis is here to make a determination for the council.”
Davis looks up. “Mr. Decker…”
“Just Decker.”
He nods. “We have a question, Decker. Two questions, in fact. Whether Wednesday’s events represent one compromise or two. And whether the operative running the leak case is still the right person to run it.”
So that’s the meeting.
“Top to bottom,” Davis says. “The escape and the road. Your read.”
“All right.”
He folds his hands over the pages. “We’ve got the sequence from the medical wing. Transport logs. Gate coverage for when Healer Marsh went out the door in a stolen van. What we don’t have is your side of it.”
“I don’t have a side.”
His jaw works. “You were in pursuit. You tracked them. And you released them.”
“I wasn’t in pursuit.”
“But you found them.” Vanya, even and quiet. The data sheet lies open in front of her. “You’re logged as being in the vehicle bay between oh-one-fifty and oh-two-twenty.”
“I was.”
Davis leans in. “You saw the van go out.”
I let a beat pass. Not because I need it. Because I know the game, and I won’t play it.
