My lawyer sat across from me, flipping through pages with the same detached concentration he always carried. It was comforting, in a strange way—his calm. His sense of routine. Today, the world felt anything but routine.
There was a knock on the office door.
“Come in,” I said without looking up.
Cole stepped in. The moment his eyes landed on the table—the documents, the lawyer, the pen in my hand—he slowed down.
The expression on his face tightened. I knew that look.
Confusion first, then a slow, simmering understanding.
“Alpha,” he said carefully.
I didn’t respond immediately. I finished signing the last page of the current document, slid it forward, and waited for my lawyer to stamp it. Only then did I gesture toward the empty space beside me.
“Cole, sit. I need a witness.”
Cole
