Page 76 of Guarded By The Alpha

Eventually I said: "I spent thirteen years not knowing if my mother was alive. Seven not letting anything be necessary because of what that absence did. And I walked into a warehouse on a Tuesday night and ended up here."

A beat—shorter than his, because this was me working toward something, not away from it.

"I keep waiting to find the catch. The part where it costs more than I can pay."

He was quiet a moment. Then: "Where is here?"

The question wasn't rhetorical. He was asking because he wanted my actual answer.

I considered it properly.

"Somewhere I'm not bracing anymore," I said. "Or starting not to be. The difference is smaller than I expected."

His shoulder was solid against mine. I didn't move away from it.

I put my hand over my mark—not as a claim, just as contact—and felt the bond answer me: steady, certain, not going anywhere.

The repair wasn't finished in that moment. It didn't need to be finished to be real.

The board's confirmation came at 0600.

Hearing confirmed, location sent, terms set.

Gideon was already at the secure terminal when it came through. He read the attendance list twice before he said anything, which was the tell—Gideon didn't read a document twice unless the second pass was confirming something he needed to be sure of before he spoke.

He looked up from the screen.

"The full board is coming," he said. "All seven seats. And the Council's senior lawyer—not the one who handles procedure. The one with real authority."

A pause in which the room reorganized.

"They filed a second motion overnight. Not a standing challenge this time."

He set the tablet on the table.

"They're asking to have my bloodline contested at the hearing itself—in open session, on record, in front of all seven board members—on the grounds that something woken under bond pressure from a Pack Guard wolf can't be treated as independent evidence."

The meaning landed without needing to be spelled out.

They weren't just going to challenge my testimony. They were going to use the board's own session to argue that everything I'd documented was tainted by the bond—that I wasn't a witness but a thing that had been made.

That Roan had made me.

Across the room, I was already pulling my notes.

My face was the deciding face, not the fear face.

Roan read it, and his jaw set. The question no one said out loud was whether the board—all seven seats, full authority—would see what the Council's lawyer was doing before I took it apart from the inside, or whether the challenge landed first.

I looked at the motion again. Studied it the way I study crime scene evidence—not for what it said but for what it gave away about the person who wrote it.

"They're scared," I said quietly.

Gideon looked up from his terminal.

"If they weren't scared," I went on, "they'd let me testify and go after the evidence on technical grounds afterward. This—" I tapped the tablet, "—is panic dressed up as procedure. They know the case is solid. They know the bloodline records are confirmed. The only angle they have left is to make this about the bond instead of about what I saw."

Tara appeared in the doorway with two cups of coffee. She handed me one without comment and leaned against the wall.