Repossessed: 30 Days to Reclaim His Pack

Call It In

Selene found Ivy in the east corridor with a packed bag.

"Going somewhere?"

Ivy didn't stop walking. "This isn't my problem anymore."

"You handed us a forged filing an hour ago." Selene stepped into her path. "That makes it exactly your problem."

"I didn't forge anything." Ivy's voice cracked on the last word. First crack Selene had heard from her all day.

"Then who did?"

Ivy's eyes flicked toward the front doors. Toward the exit.

Selene planted her feet.

"You know the law," she said. "Any witness with direct knowledge of tampered evidence stays on-site until the Reckoning closes. You leave, that's on you. On record."

"You're bluffing."

"Try me." Selene had said those exact words to Kane yesterday. They worked just as well the second time.

Ivy's grip on the bag strap tightened until her knuckles went white.

"I was told to make sure the paperwork matched," she said, quiet now. "Before the rejection ever went through. Someone came to me. Not Kane's father."

Selene's pulse spiked.

"Who?"

Ivy's mouth opened.

Closed again.

"I need to think," she said, and turned down the side hall before Selene could stop her — not toward the exit this time, toward the west wing, which was somehow worse.

Selene let her go. Chasing a scared witness down a hallway wasn't going to get her a name. Cornering her again in an hour was.

She had a report to send first.

Any tampering evidence found mid-Reckoning went straight to the Elders within a day. No exceptions, no matter how it made her case look.

She found a quiet room off the study and placed the call.

Elder Cassian Roe picked up on the second ring.

"Voss." His voice was easy, unhurried, exactly like always. "Tell me you have good news."

"I have a problem." She kept her tone level. "The filing exists, but it's compromised. Two blood-true signatures from the subject, taken at different times. One shows signs of coercion or memory alteration."

Silence on the line. Not long. Half a second, maybe less.

"Say that again."

She did.

"Interesting." Roe's voice hadn't changed, but something underneath it had — a stillness that hadn't been there a breath ago. "Do you have the physical filing in your possession?"

"Yes."

"Good. Don't let it out of your sight. Not the pack, not a courier, nobody but you." A pause. "I'll want it brought to me personally once the Reckoning closes. Not before."

Selene frowned. "Sir, if there's coercion involved, this should go to the full Elder Council immediately. That's the law."

"I know the law, Voss. I wrote half of it." His tone stayed pleasant. Too pleasant. "This stays with you until I say otherwise. Understood?"

"Understood." The word came out automatic. Her training talking, not her instinct.

"Good girl." He hung up before she could say anything else.

Selene stood in the quiet room with the phone still in her hand.

Good girl.

He'd never once called her that in three years of working under him.

She looked down at the filing in her other hand — the blood-true proof that someone had made Kane sign away his own mate without his knowledge, twice, and gotten away with it for three years.

Don't let it out of your sight.

Not: bring it in immediately.

Not: this needs the full Council today.

Just: keep it. Keep it close. Keep it quiet until I say otherwise.

Her thumb pressed hard into the edge of the filing until the paper bent.

She'd spent three years trusting the man who trained her, who'd handed her this exact case out of every case on the docket, who'd never once explained why.

She looked at the filing again. At the two signatures still glowing faint blue where the reading hadn't fully faded.

Someone came to me. Not Kane's father, Ivy had said.

Selene had assumed that meant a rival pack. A political enemy.

Not — her own Elder.

Down the hall, a door slammed. Ivy's raised voice, then silence.

Selene shoved the filing into her jacket and went to find out why.