Marked By Tide

Chapter 8 - The Office

Soren's POV

Dad summons us at midday.

He does not come to the healing house himself. He sends Ashwin. Ashwin is fifty and has been Dad's Beta for the entire arc of his Alphaship and is one of two people in the pack besides Mom who can give Dad bad news without flinching. He arrives at the healing house porch at twelve-eleven, in his patrol leathers, and stands on the step instead of coming inside because he knows we are not coming out willingly.

I see him through the window. I know without him saying anything that we are being called in.

Cassian sees him a half-second after I do. The bond carries it between us — the *we are going to have to leave her* recognition, the *we are not going to like it* recognition, the *we are going to do it anyway* recognition — and we exchange the smallest possible look across the room and Cassian says, quietly, to the bed: "We'll be back."

Nerida does not respond. She is sleeping. She slept after Paloma's first conversation with her this morning and has been sleeping since. Paloma says her body is doing the thing bodies do after the first real conversation with the world post-trauma, which is to *crash*. I do not have a frame for that. I file it.

I look at her face for a beat longer than I should. The bond hums softly. The almost-pink in her cheeks is still there. Her left hand is still on the blanket within reach of where Cassian's hand has been all morning, the part of her she has been moving toward in her sleep without knowing she has been moving toward it.

We go to the porch.

Ashwin says: "Alpha wants you. Both of you. Now. Office."

Cassian says: "How long."

Ashwin says: "He gave me no time limit. He gave me both of you. He did not say *if they refuse*, which means he is not anticipating the refusal. I would not test it."

Cassian, dry: "Has he forbidden Lorelei to come anywhere near the healing house yet."

Ashwin pauses. His eyes do a thing. He says: "Tamsin handled that this morning. Apparently. I do not have the details. I have been told to relay that you should ask Tamsin."

I almost smile. I do not. Cassian's mouth does the small thing his mouth does when our sister has done something he wanted to do himself and got there faster.

Ashwin says: "Boys. The office."

We go.

---

We walk through the pack heart at midday. The pack heart is awake — pack members at the common kitchen, two of the younger wolves running across the path with bread, the smell of stew from someone's open window — and the pack is, I notice, *pretending not to watch us walk*. The pretending is its own form of attention. Every face we pass turns slightly away in the moment before we pass it, and every face turns slightly back in the moment after, and the choreography is loud enough that I clock it without having to think about it.

Cassian clocks it too. He says, beside me, low: "They know something is happening."

"They know we have not been seen in eighteen hours."

"They know Mom and Dad came to the healing house at two in the morning."

"They know Tamsin shouted at Lorelei in the courtyard this morning."

"They know Paloma has refused to come to the kitchen at breakfast."

"They know the patrols have not been rotated."

We list it as we walk. The list is the texture of pack life — every fact a pack member can observe, every fact compounded, every fact pointing toward the same answer the pack does not yet have the words for. The pack will have the words within a day. The pack always does. The question is what the words are going to be, and the question of what the words are going to be is the question I have been holding since the trees.

*Reef*, I say to him.

*Soren*.

*How much are we telling Dad*.

*Everything. He is going to ask. He is going to know if we leave anything out.*

*The Goddess part.*

*Yes.*

*The bond-fragment part — what we got from her through the snap. The kitchen. The letter. The hand for the knife block.*

*Yes.*

*The federal task force part.*

*Yes.*

*All of it.*

*All of it. Cassian will lead. You let him.*

*I know.*

*Soren.*

*Yes.*

*Cassian will lead because Cassian is better at handling Dad. You are going to want to handle Dad. You are not going to. You are going to let Cassian lead.*

*Reef. I said I know.*

*I am reminding you because I have known you for nineteen years.*

I exhale through my nose. The fury is still in him in its cold layer. The fury is also in me. The fury is going to be a thing I am holding through this entire conversation while my brother does the smooth careful work of telling Dad what happened in our trees last night. Reef is right. Cassian is better at this. I am going to let him.

---

The office is at the end of the family quarters, in the wing Dad has used since he became Alpha. The door is heavy. The hinges are old. The room behind it has been the office of every Alpha of this pack since the pack was a pack and the walls have absorbed a great many conversations and have the soft worn quality of a place where decisions have been made for a very long time.

Dad is at the desk.

He has not stood up to greet us. That is its own choice. He stands up to greet most people, including the two of us most of the time, and the not-standing tonight is a signal. The signal is *this is a formal conversation*. The signal is *I am the Alpha right now, not your dad*. The signal is *I have decided how I want to position myself*.

Cassian reads it. I see him read it. He does not adjust his face. He walks into the room at his usual pace and stops at the same distance from the desk he has stopped at since we were ten and would come to be lectured for the latest thing we had broken, and he says, easily: "Dad."

Dad says: "Cassian. Soren."

I stop beside my brother. I say: "Dad."

Dad gestures at the two chairs across from his desk. We sit. The chairs are the same chairs that have been there since we were ten. The chairs have absorbed two decades of being sat in by us and they fit our bodies the way old shoes fit feet.

Dad does not begin immediately. He looks at us. He looks at us properly — both of us, one after the other, with the slow careful eye contact of a man who is taking in something he has not had time to take in yet.

He says: "How is she."

It is not the first question I expected. It is the right one.

Cassian says: "Stable. Paloma is satisfied. She woke up this morning. She spoke with Paloma for about thirty minutes. She is sleeping again now."

Dad says: "Did Paloma get her name."

Cassian says: "Yes."

Dad waits.

Cassian says: "Nerida. Bramwell. She is eighteen."

The name lands in the room. Dad says it once, quietly, to himself — *Nerida* — testing the shape of it. He has used the names of a great many people over thirty years of being Alpha. He treats names the way Paloma treats wounds, which is to say with the assumption that a name is a *thing* that has weight and needs to be handled with the weight it deserves.

He says: "Did Paloma get who hurt her."

Cassian: "Yes."

A beat. Dad's face does not change but his hands on the desk do — they lay flatter against the wood, the way Dad's hands do when he is bracing for something he does not want to hear and is not going to flinch at.

Cassian says: "Her brother."

Dad's hands stay flat. His face stays still. The not-flinching is its own form of reaction. I watch him absorb it for a long second — the word *brother* sitting in the room between the three of us — and I watch him do the slow careful internal recalibration that I have watched him do twice before in my life, both times when something I told him reorganized the shape of a problem he had been holding.

He says, after the beat: "Family."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "Did she give Paloma a first name."

Cassian: "No. Paloma did not push. The name will come."

Dad: "And he is going to come looking for her."

Cassian: "She told Paloma he will. She was specific about it. She said he has documents that say she is his ward, and he is going to use every legal tool he has to find her, and every illegal tool too, because the documents are part of a scheme and she is the proof of it."

Dad does the thing he does when he has just been handed a problem with a shape he recognizes. His shoulders do not move. His face does not move. But the air around him changes — the way air changes when a body that has been holding two possible reactions has chosen which one to commit to. He has chosen.

He says, quietly, to himself: "Eighteen. Documents. Ward. Brother."

He sits with the four pieces.

Reef is in the back of me holding the layer of cold fury exactly where he has been holding it since the trees. He does not move it. I do not move it. Cassian's voice across the desk is even and easy and is doing the work I asked him to do. Cassian is, as he has been my whole life, the diplomat of our pair. I let him.

Dad says: "I have been thinking since last night."

Cassian: "We have been too."

Dad: "There are things you did not tell me at the healing house. Either because you did not have the bandwidth or because you did not have permission from your wolves to share them yet. I want to hear those now."

Cassian does not pretend not to know what he means. He says, easily: "Yes."

Dad: "Start with the wolves."

Cassian: "Surge said the Goddess knows her."

Dad's face does *not* go still here. Dad's face does something else — something I have not seen on it since I was thirteen years old and asked him a question about pack lore he did not want to answer, which was the look of a man who had been hoping his sons would not have to be the ones who carried this question.

He says, quietly: "Surge said that."

Cassian: "In the trees. Right when we found her. He said it the way he says things he is certain of. Reef agreed through the twin bond at the same time."

Dad: "Did Surge say anything else."

Cassian: "He has been *holding* since the snap. He has not contradicted it. He has not amplified it. He is waiting for us to be ready to push back on it. Reef is doing the same. Both wolves know. They have not been pushing."

Dad nods slowly.

He says: "What else."

Cassian tells him about the bond fragments. The flickers we got through the snap when she briefly resurfaced at the healing house table — the kitchen. The letter on a table. The hand reaching for a knife block for *something larger than a knife*. Cassian tells Dad that we do not have the picture yet, only the pieces, and that the pieces are starting to assemble themselves in a way that is making us angry.

Dad listens to the fragments. He does not ask us to repeat any of them. His face does the holding thing it does when he is filing things to come back to.

He says, when Cassian is done: "The bond has not stopped giving you those."

Cassian: "No."

Dad: "It is going to keep giving you them."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "She is going to give you the rest in her own words when she is ready, and you are not going to tell her you have already had pieces of it through the bond. Are we clear."

Cassian: "Yes."

Me: "Yes."

Dad: "Good. What else has happened that I have not heard about."

Cassian tells him about this morning. About Tamsin. About Lorelei. About the decision we made silently across her bedside, which is that Lorelei will not be within fifty feet of Nerida at any point ever.

Dad's mouth does a small thing at the Lorelei part. He says: "Your sister handled it."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "Lorelei's father is going to come to me about it."

Cassian: "Probably."

Dad: "I will handle that."

Cassian: "Thank you."

There is a long beat.

I have been quiet through all of this. Reef has been quiet. I have not corrected anything Cassian has said because there has been nothing to correct. He has been clean and complete and accurate. I have been letting him.

Dad looks at me now.

He says: "Soren. Anything to add."

I find my voice. I have been planning to. There is one thing.

I say: "The federal task force is going to come asking."

Dad's face does the going-still. It does not move. It does not blink. He has been holding the same question I have been holding, I see now. He has not asked it because he has been hoping I or Cassian would not raise it. I have raised it. He cannot un-raise it.

He says, after a beat: "When."

I say: "Within the day. Probably the morning, given how their alerts trip. The eastern boundary had a non-biome anomaly last night. The boundary did not pulse the alarm we have come to expect. The federal monitoring is going to register both halves of that, the *anomaly* and the *no biome response*, and they are going to come asking."

Dad says: "Who are they going to talk to."

I say: "Ashwin first. The protocol is in place. Ashwin will say what we have decided he will say. The question is what we have decided he will say."

Dad says: "What have we decided he will say."

I look at Cassian. Cassian looks at me. The bond carries the agreement.

Cassian says: "We think Ashwin should say *a hiker crossed the boundary, was found inside, was treated for injuries sustained before entering, and is in stable care*. No name. No further detail. No mention of who treated her, no mention of who found her. The framing should be *we are handling an isolated incident under standard protocol*."

Dad considers. "And when they ask why the biome did not respond."

Cassian: "Ashwin says he does not know. Which is true. None of us know."

Dad: "And when they want to interview her."

Cassian: "Ashwin tells them she is in no condition to be interviewed. Which is also true. He offers to share the medical record when the time comes. There is no medical record. We will construct one if necessary. Paloma can do it."

Dad: "Cassian."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "We are going to be lying to a federal task force."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "We have been doing that for eight months on lesser questions."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "We are going to keep doing it on this one."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad is silent for a long moment.

He says, eventually: "She is the one they are eventually going to ask the question about. Not this week. Not this month. But the question is going to be asked, and she is going to be the answer, and the entire reserve system is going to rearrange itself around what she is, and we have eighteen hours to figure out how we are going to keep her safe in the middle of that rearrangement."

He looks at both of us.

He says: "Boys. I have not said this yet. I am saying it now. The conversation last night was not a conversation. It was the three of you telling me what was true. I heard you. I am with you. Your mother is with you. The pack will be with you when we tell them, which will be on a timeline I am still deciding. You did not have to fight me. You should not have had to fight me. I should have said this last night. I am saying it now."

Cassian does not respond immediately. His throat does a thing. He says, after a beat: "Thank you, Dad."

Dad looks at me.

I say: "Thank you, Dad."

He nods.

He says: "Go back to her. Both of you. I do not want either of you out of that room for longer than thirty minutes at a stretch until she is well enough to ask you to leave. Do you hear me."

We hear him.

We stand. We move to the door. Cassian gets there first because he is slightly faster on his feet today, which is interesting because he is the more exhausted of the two of us and should not be faster, except that the bond is doing something to his body it is also doing to mine and his is showing the something more visibly than mine is. He stops at the door. He turns back.

He says: "Dad."

Dad: "Yes."

Cassian: "When she is awake. When she has met us. When she has been told what we are. When she has decided whether she wants to stay."

Dad: "Yes."

Cassian: "We are going after the brother."

Dad does not blink. He says: "Yes."

Cassian: "All of us."

Dad: "All of us."

Cassian: "Pack resources."

Dad: "Pack resources. We will discuss the *how* when she is well. We will not act until she has told us his name and confirmed she wants him gone. We will not take a single step without her consent. Are we clear."

Cassian: "Yes."

Dad: "Soren."

I say: "Yes."

Dad: "I am asking you both because I know what is in both of you right now and I know what the wolves in both of you are doing, and I want you to hear me. We do not move on him without her. We will not deprive her of being the person who chooses what happens to him. Do you understand."

I say: "I understand."

Cassian: "I understand."

Dad: "Good. Go."

We go.

---

The walk back through the pack heart is faster than the walk in. The pack is still pretending not to watch. The bond is humming. Reef is settled. Surge is settled. The fury is where it has been since the trees and the fury is not going anywhere, but the fury is — *contained*, now, in a container Dad has built with two specific words.

*All of us.*

*Pack resources.*

He gave us both, and he gave us the rule about her consent in the same breath, and the rule about her consent is the rule we would have made ourselves if he had not made it first. He read us correctly. He gave us the version of what we were going to do anyway with the structure built around it that makes it the pack's work instead of ours alone.

Reef is in my chest doing the cold settling thing he does when a problem he has been holding has been *received* by the system that is going to do something about it. The fury is still cold. The fury is still going to be there until it has work to do. But the work has a *shape* now. The work has *all of us*. The work has *pack resources*. The work has *with her consent*. The work has a timeline and a structure and a hierarchy of decisions, and the hierarchy puts Nerida at the top of it, which is where she belongs, which is the only place the fury was ever going to be allowed to be put down.

Cassian, beside me, is doing the same settling. The twin bond carries it. The two of us walk through the courtyard with our wolves quiet in our chests and the pack pretending not to watch and the bond between us and her humming low and steady and *unfinished*, and the unfinished is the thing we are going back to.

We reach the healing house porch.

I stop at the steps.

I say, before we go in: "Cassian."

He stops. He turns. "Yes."

I say: "Thank you for handling Dad."

He does the small smile he does when I have just thanked him for something we both know I would not have been able to do. He says: "You held Reef."

I say: "Yes."

He says: "That was the harder thing."

I say: "No it wasn't."

He says: "Yes it was. Don't argue with me, Soren. Reef was going to shift and you held him. I have been watching you hold him for two hours. The work you did at that desk was harder than the work I did. I am the one who got to talk."

I do not have an answer to that. I do not have to. He turns and pushes the porch door open and we go inside.

Paloma looks up. She gives us a single nod. The girl in the bed is still sleeping. Cassian goes back to his chair beside the bed and sits and puts his hand back where it was on the blanket near her hip and his face does the small relief it does when he has come back to where his body wants to be. I go to my own chair. I sit. The bond settles into the room.

Surge says, in Cassian's chest, just loud enough that he carries through the twin bond: *welcome home.*

Reef says back: *welcome home.*

I close my eyes for a moment. Not to sleep. Just to feel the room. The bond hums. The morning sun is fully up and the light is across the floorboards in the angle that means past noon, and Nerida's breath is steady, and my brother is six feet away from me, and Dad has just told us we get to do what we were going to do anyway with the pack at our backs, and the federal task force is going to arrive by tomorrow morning, and we are going to be ready.

I am going to be ready.

She is going to wake again before the day is out. Paloma has said so. Both of us have to be in this room when she does, because Paloma is going to tell her there are two men in the next room who have asked to be told when she is ready to meet them, and Nerida is going to have a face she has to put on the men, and the bond is going to do whatever the bond is going to do when she sees us awake for the first time, and I do not know what is going to happen.

I am ready for it.

I open my eyes.

Cassian is watching me across the bed.

He gives me the small nod he gives me when we have agreed on something we have not had to discuss. I nod back. We sit. We wait. The bond hums.

The afternoon will come. She will wake. We will be here.