Page 16 of Claimed By The Tracker

"I'm not convinced that's true," I said. "Nothing about my life for the last twelve hours has been safe. I don't see why this driveway should be different."

Something flickered at the corner of Roan's mouth. Not quite a smile. The look of a man who'd just decided he liked me.

Maddox came around the corner of the house, older than Roan, weathered in a way that suggested he'd seen things that couldn't be unseen and made his peace with the bill a long time ago. A rifle rode easy across his back like it weighed nothing.

"Perimeter's locked," he said, voice flat and unhurried. "You're welcome to run if you want to test it. You'd just be running toward your father's people instead of away from them, and I'd have to come get you, and neither of us wants that conversation."

"Is that a threat?"

"That's a Tuesday." He didn't smile, but something in his eyes did. "Kitchen's warmer than the driveway. Your call."

I decided I liked him. It surprised me how fast the decision came.

Jace pulled up behind my car and cut the engine. He moved like a man who'd made peace with the violence in his own nature and had decided a long time ago to spend it carefully. His eyes found mine and held—gold flickering at the edges, not suppressed now, just present, waiting to see what I'd do next.

I walked toward the house.

The alarm went off before I reached the porch steps.

Not loud—a low electronic pulse from a panel just inside the door, and every single person on that property changed in the same half-second. Roan's hand went to his hip. Maddox pivoted toward the tree line, rifle already coming off his shoulder. Jace was suddenly between me and the yard without my having seen him move, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, his whole body coiled and listening.

"East fence," Maddox said. "Motion."

Ten seconds crawled by like ten minutes. My magic surged hot in my palms, unbidden, ready.

"Deer." Maddox's voice, flat again, from somewhere out past the treeline. "Big one. My apologies to the doe for the rifle."

Roan exhaled and holstered whatever he'd drawn. Jace didn't move away from me for another three full seconds, like his wolf needed the extra confirmation the rest of him already had.

"That happens a lot?" I asked, my voice not quite steady.

"Every night." Maddox reappeared, resettling the rifle. "Deer, raccoons, one memorable possum. You get used to the sensors going off for nothing right up until the one time it's not nothing."

"Comforting."

"Wasn't trying to comfort you. Trying to keep you honest about where you are." He said it without malice, and somehow that made it easier to hear.

Inside, the kitchen smelled like coffee and old wood smoke. The woman at the table was small and dark-haired, with the kind of focus that suggested she'd spent her whole career reading documents nobody was supposed to read.

"Tara Quinn." She didn't look up from her laptop right away. "I specialize in occult law. That contract your father filed? I've read it twice since Jace called it in, and I have opinions."

"Good opinions or the kind that ruin my morning further?"

That got her to look up. "Both, probably. Sit down. I promise I'm better company than the paperwork."

"Debatable," Maddox said from the doorway.

"You've never once complimented my company and I've stopped waiting," Tara said, without heat, already pulling a folder from the stack in front of her.

I sat. Jace stayed in the doorway, close enough that I could feel him through whatever strange new thread had opened between us in that parking lot—his wolf still pressing at the edges of his control, his human half managing it with visible effort, all of him waiting to see if I'd bolt or stay and listen.

I stayed.

"Tell me," I said to Tara. "Everything. Start with what my father thought he was buying."

Tara flipped the folder open. Inside were documents in my father's handwriting—I recognized the loops of his letters, the precise business signature he used for anything he intended to enforce.

"This," she said, tapping a paragraph, "is an acquisition clause. It grants bloodline-level claim over your magical output. He filed it when you were nineteen. Didn't tell you, because⁠⁠—"