Page 44 of Claimed By The Tracker

We stood in the doorway a long moment, the silence between us charged with everything we weren't saying. His wolf pressed close behind his eyes—not gold yet, but present, watching me with an attention that'd stopped feeling like assessment and started feeling like something I didn't have a guarded enough word for.

He was watching me now with the expression I was learning to read—the one that looked like irritation and meant something nearer to care.

He crossed the distance and took my hand. Simple. Deliberate. No performance in the gesture, just presence.

"Your sister tried to protect you," he said. "The way she knew how. That matters."

"It doesn't change what the information cost."

"No." His hand was warm in mine. "But it changes what it means."

I looked at him a long moment—really looked, the way I hadn't let myself look at anyone in years. This man who put himself between me and a threat without a breath of hesitation. Who'd slept on the floor of a room he wanted to share, because restraint was how he showed respect. Whose wolf'd chosen me in a parking lot and who'd been carrying the weight of that certainty against every protocol he had, ever since.

"I'm going for a walk in the morning," I said. "Along the property line. I need to discharge some of what's been building since the invocation."

"Not alone." Immediate.

"I know."

"Perimeter only. Two miles, maximum."

"I know, Jace."

His name in my mouth did something to his composure—I saw it in the slight hitch of his breath, the fractional widen of his pupils even in the low light. After days of sustained proximity, after everything that'd passed between us in this house, I still did that to him.

Good.

He didn't move toward me. He never did, not first. He made the space available and waited for me to decide whether to close it.

I closed it.

I crossed the distance and laid my palm flat against his chest, his heartbeat strong and steady under my fingers. His hand came up and covered mine—warm, deliberate, the pressure of a man holding himself back from pulling me closer by force of will alone.

"The bond," I said, working the thought as I spoke it. "You said you can feel my emotional register through it."

"Yes."

"Can you feel this?"

I let the restraint I'd been holding slip, just slightly. Let him feel what I felt when I looked at him—not fear, not caution, but something warmer, something that'd been building since the porch and the night that followed.

His eyes went gold at the edges. Not the full shift, not the wolf surging up—but enough. Enough to tell me he'd felt it.

"Lena." My name in his mouth was rough, raw with the work of his control.

"I'm not asking for anything tonight," I said. "I just wanted you to know that when I feel you through the bond—it isn't only direction and proximity."

It was the closest I'd come to naming the thing the bond carried from my side, and I watched him receive it the way he received everything that mattered: quietly, completely, like he was storing it somewhere it couldn't be taken from him.

I stepped back before he could answer. Headed for the narrow bed that'd become mine in this safehouse that was starting to feel like something else.

His voice followed me. "I know."

I smiled—not the armor smile, not the weapon. The real one, the one that hurt because it was honest.

Sleep came faster than I expected. The bond hummed low in my chest, Jace's presence at the edge of my awareness like a compass pointing true. The architecture thrummed beneath the floorboards, my signature woven through it. For the first time in nine years, I fell asleep feeling protected instead of contained.

Near midnight, Gideon's voice carried up the stairs, low and even, and I was awake and moving before I'd fully registered it. Jace was already ahead of me by the time I reached the kitchen, and the others gathered fast behind us—Tara from the couch where she'd been working, Roan from his post near the eastern door.