Page 36 of Claimed By The Tracker

"Close," Gideon said. "But not close enough if Voss moves tonight."

Roan was in the doorway behind him now. He'd heard enough—Roan always heard enough—and his expression carried the weight of a field commander processing tactical data in real time.

"Options," he said.

Gideon gave them in the flat efficient cadence of someone who'd already run them: "Move now, lose the ward architecture Lena's anchored to. Stay, and we're defending a position Voss's network may already be triangulating. Third option⁠⁠—"

"We make them think they've found us before they actually have," Lena's voice was steady. Too steady. The voice of someone who'd decided something and was waiting to see if anyone would argue. "Feed them what they expect to see. Buy Gideon the time he needs."

Roan looked at her. Then at me.

I looked at Lena—at the set of her shoulders, the controlled gold at her fingertips, the quality of her attention that said she'd been calculating while the rest of us were catching up.

"That's a risk," I said.

"Everything is a risk." She met my eyes. "But I'm done being the person things happen to. I'm ready to be the person who decides what comes next."

Through the bond I felt something shift—not surrender, not agreement. Recognition. She wasn't asking permission. She was stating intent.

My wolf settled into something that wasn't calm but ran close beside it. Something that felt like partnership.

"Then we do it together," I said.

Gideon was already moving toward his laptop, running scenarios. Roan was already reaching for his phone, coordinating with agency contacts. Maddox came in from the eastern door, read the room in a single glance, and began adjusting whatever he'd been reinforcing to account for the new parameters.

And Lena stood in the kitchen doorway with her magic steady at her fingertips and her chin up and her eyes on mine, and I understood—with the bone-level certainty my wolf had been running on since the diner—that whatever came next, we'd meet it as what we were.

Partners.

Pack.

Mine.

Chapter 11

The Ashwood Signature

LENA

Morning came in grey at the kitchen window, and I stood with my palms pressed against Maddox's worn counter, watching the gold crawl slow and deliberate along my knuckles. Not the wild discharge from the diner parking lot. Not the furious crackle that'd erupted when Gideon read the contract terms. This was steadier—controlled, the way Tara'd been teaching me.

I could feel the anger. I didn't have to be it.

Forty minutes. That was all the gap had been, between Delaney's text reaching my burner and my father's call to Voss's network. The number sat low in my chest, sharp-edged and cold, and I let it sit there without letting it run me. The farmhouse was already reorganizing around the crisis—Roan with his phone to his ear, voice low and clipped; Gideon's laptop throwing pale light across his face; Maddox gone toward the perimeter sensors twenty minutes ago, the wards humming faintly at the eastern edge in answer to his presence.

Jace was beside me. Close enough that the heat came off him without our touching, close enough that his scent—pine and leather and that darker note underneath—wrapped around me like something solid. I didn't move away. After the night before, moving away would've been the performance, not the staying.

"The outbound call confirms it," Gideon said, not looking up. "Gabriel Rowe contacted a known Voss-network line at 11:47 last night."

I already knew. I'd known since he first delivered it. Hearing it again didn't make it lighter—but I'd stopped flinching at the shape of my father somewhere in the last few days, and what was left was colder and more useful than shock.

"Either her phone is monitored," I said, "or there's someone in my father's household watching her directly."

Roan ended his call and turned. "Both scenarios give Voss a region. Possibly an address."

"The counter-filing isn't complete." Tara came in from the hallway, dark hair pulled back, her face carrying the same careful stillness she wore whenever she was worried and refused to say so. "Gideon's seventy percent through the Council registry access. If Voss moves before it's filed⁠⁠—"

"We lose the legal ground," I finished. "The voiding requires the document registered before any enforcement action against the named party."