CHAPTER 5
1085 Words
Three weeks in, I was faster than I'd ever been in my first life, and I was still getting corrected every twenty minutes.
"Again," Dayo said.
I reset my stance. Rolled my neck. Went again.
We were in the training room just after six a.m., which was the second session of the day. The first had been a five a.m. run through the eastern forest, not shifting, just running, my father's rule about building the foundation under the power before you built the power itself.
What Dayo called the afternoon sessions he actually ran in the late morning, which I suspected was deliberate, because by the time we got to strategy work I was already physically wrung out and had to think clearly through the exhaustion. "This is when it counts," he'd told me on day two. "When you're tired and someone's still talking at you, trying to get something. You don't get to be fresh."
Today's session was different. No physical movement. Dayo had pulled two chairs to the center of the room and told me to sit.
"Someone is going to walk into a room with you," he said. "They're going to say hello. They're going to be warm. They're going to ask you three questions that sound like small talk." He settled back in his chair. "What's the first thing you do?"
"Listen for the question underneath the question," I said. We'd covered this.
"And if you can't find it immediately?"
"Buy time without showing I'm buying time."
"Show me."
He leaned forward. Smile on. Warm voice: "So Zara, how are you settling in?"
"Better every day," I said easily. "The eastern air is different from home. Cleaner."
Dayo's eyes moved over me. "That's deflection with texture. Good. You gave me something that sounds like an answer and told me nothing." He paused. "Try again with this one. How long are you planning to stay with your father?"
This one had a sharper underneath. It was a timeline question. Someone asking that wanted to calculate a window.
"Probably through September," I said. "I've been spending too many summers in the city. I forgot how much I like it here."
"And do you plan to attend any of the inter-pack events this season?"
There it was. That was the real question. Wrapped in two layers of casual.
"I haven't decided yet," I said. "It depends on how training goes."
Dayo sat back. "What did I actually want to know?"
"Whether I was going to be at the gathering. Whether I was going to be where Callum was going to be. Whether I was avoidable or whether you needed to adjust a plan."
He nodded slowly. "And you gave me?"
"Nothing committed. Nothing that moved my position. And a reason, training, that makes refusing events sound responsible instead of evasive."
"Good." He stood and stretched. "Now do it in a room with someone who has more power than you and knows it."
"Gregory Reeves."
"I wasn't going to say that out loud."
"I know." I stood too. "But that's who I'm preparing for."
Dayo looked at me for a moment. Then he said, "He's going to try to meet before September. Before the academic year forces the issue."
"My father mentioned a meeting request."
"Your father said he'd consider it." Dayo's voice was careful. "What do you want?"
"I want it on our terms or not at all."
"And if he won't agree to our terms?"
I thought about Gregory's voicemail. The smoothness of it. The patience under the smoothness.
"He will," I said. "Because refusing makes us look like we're running. And Gregory Reeves doesn't want someone who runs. He wants someone he can manage." I met Dayo's eyes. "So I'm going to appear manageable, right up until the moment I'm not."
Dayo's mouth curved, just slightly. Not the grin, something smaller and more real. "Your father was right about you."
"What did he say?"
"That you were smarter than the situation you were born into." He moved toward the door. "Ten minute break, then law and procedure until lunch."
He left. I stayed in the center of the room and breathed.
Twenty minutes later, my phone showed a message from an unknown number.
Not Gregory this time. Different area code. No name.
Just six words:
She knows you're at Crestfall. Careful.
No signature. No follow-up.
I stared at it. Read it twice. Put my phone in my pocket and walked to the window and looked out at the eastern fields, where the younger pack wolves were running drills in the bright morning.
She.
Priya. It had to be Priya, someone telling me Priya knew where I was.
But why would someone warn me? Who in Priya's orbit would warn me?
Unless it wasn't someone in her orbit. Unless it was someone in Gregory's.
I turned that over slowly. Gregory Reeves had people watching this situation from multiple angles, I already knew that. But if one of those people had just warned me about Priya, that meant either Gregory didn't know about the message, or Gregory wanted me to know, which meant it was a move, and I needed to understand what move before I reacted.
Or.
Or there was someone inside Gregory's structure who wasn't fully his.
I saved the number. Said nothing to anyone.
At lunch, my father looked at me across the table with the particular attention he'd been paying me since I arrived, not worried exactly, but watchful, the way a man watches something he's trying to understand.
"You're quiet," he said.
"I'm thinking," I said.
"About?"
I looked at him. "How many people does Gregory Reeves have inside other packs?"
My father set down his fork.
The table was suddenly very still.
"Why?" he said. Quietly.
"Because I think he might have someone here," I said. "And I think that person might not be fully his."
My father looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at Dayo.
Dayo was already looking at me like he was revising something.
"Eat your lunch," my father said. His voice was steady. "Then you and I are going for a walk."
I picked up my fork and ate and didn't show any of the things moving underneath my face.
Someone was inside Crestfall who had access to Gregory's information but had just warned me instead of reporting to him.
That was either a resource or a trap.
And I had exactly as long as lunch to figure out which.
- Writer
