Chapter 146
MATTHEW
The school pickup line moved at the pace it always moved, which was to say approximately the pace of a glacier melting, which required a level of patience that I had never thought I was capable of having, and I spent the fifteen minutes of waiting doing what I’d been doing for most of the past three days–turning the same set of facts over in my mind and failing to find an arrangement of them that made comfortable sense.
Two high–ranking officials from BloodMoon City wanted to attend my pack assembly.
That was the fact I kept returning to. Not because it was impossible, because this happened before, volunteers from other packs visiting a neighbouring pack, was common, but what made it impossible like to me, was because of the specific combination.
The Alpha King himself, who by all accounts had barely engaged with external relations in five years, had locked himself up behind h
r the death of his mate and focused on just his son was suddenly motivated to attend a neighboring pack’s
y meeting.
interns
who had gone out ving me a specific
lish personal rapport with me, and wanted to come see the event oming.
me event.
nce briefing fro
found out som tighten chil
it hadn’t to
as a wolf
ngerous
The car
Marc
and
T
ce had told me there was a credible threat to Theo.
planned about Theo and had reached out to me, and had told me to proceed as resources were being oriented toward the problem
threat. Who, specifically. From which dir
mation, and every instinct I had was tell
ok a lot different as soon as I was given
rd two lengths and stopped again.
nary results of the contact trace on Mi ing useful. Multiple routing servic
cking had been able to narrow not to a specific number or d
ed technical evasion or
vanted.
e intensity of how
which had arrived that morning
raphic region–BloodMoon City and
tools by someone who didn’t want to be
ing.
the
No calls, no messages, nothing. Which could mean worth it. Or it could mean she’d stopped using
as its own particular discomfort.
id see children beginning to emerge in the uneven stream of
ag over both shoulders the way he wore it when it was heavy. His friends—I’d een keeping a gentle eye on the social dynamics of Theo’s reintegration.
+25 Bonus
Sophie and a boy named Daniel, had started meeting him at the door some days. Today they weren’t there, and Theo walked to the pickup area alone, scanning for my car
He found it, and his face did the small shift it did when he located something he’d been looking for. Not a big reaction, just a settling
I unlocked the door and he climbed in, dropping his bag on the seat beside him with the thump of something heavier than expected.
“What’s in the bag today?” I asked, pulling forward as the line moved.
“Books Daniel lent me,” Theo said, buckling himself in with the automatic competence he’d developed. “About dinosaurs. He said I could keep them until Friday.”
“That was generous.”
oks. He said his mumem every week from the market.” Theo considered this. “I told him we could do inted.”
ately do that,” I said
neo seemed satisfied with thi quiet a lot recently–not the
I let it be, because I’d learn
We were two streets fro
“Daddy. I think I saw
My hands stayed
“Someone
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