Page 187 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

I press it down and focus on Wren, who has pulled a manila folder from her drawer and is smoothing it open on the blotter.

"So," she says, sliding the top page toward us and rotating it so we can read it right-side up. Her manicured nail — pale pink, practical length — comes to rest on a line she's already circledtwice in green highlighter. "I want to start by saying this is not a catastrophe, all right? I can see the planner in you already bracing for one." She gives me a knowing look over the glasses. "But there is a correction I have to make to your registration, and I'd rather you hear it from me, plainly, than get a form letter in the mail that makes it sound scarier than it is."

"I appreciate that." My stomach tightens anyway. "Go on."

"Your pack registration came back from the state with a hold on it." She taps the green circle. "As it stands, the system can only certify a pack of four for you. Not five."

I blink. "Four."

"Four."

I look sideways at Beckett. He's gone very still, the way he does when he's decided to let me lead but is ready to plant himself the second I need it. One dark eyebrow lifts.

"Why?" he asks. His voice is that low, even rumble that makes people answer him honestly. "We put five names on the paperwork. What happened to the fifth?"

Wren folds her hands. "The fifth name is where the hold originates," she says carefully. "Mr. Mercer. Cade." She glances at me, gentle, checking I'm steady before she keeps going. "When I ran the confirmations, his came back tangled. It appears Mr. Mercer has a pre-existing clause on file — a signed one — that conflicts with a new pack registration. He can't be legally bound into this pack until that prior clause is resolved."

The office goes quiet except for the tick of a wall clock and the distant, muffled hum of a copier down the hall. I feel Beckett shift beside me.

"A clause," I repeat. My logistics brain is already moving, already flipping to the back page and hunting the source. "What kind of clause? From what?"

"That's the frustrating part — I can't see the full text of it from my terminal." She turns the page and points to a referencenumber, a string of digits that means nothing to me and clearly means little to her either. "All my system shows is that it exists, that it's binding, and that it was executed a few years back. My best read is that it was signed with another organization, or as part of some prior commitment. A brief engagement of some sort, maybe, or an agreement he entered into and never formally closed out." She shakes her head. "These things happen more than you'd think. People sign something in a hurry in their twenties and forget it's still sitting out there with teeth."

Beckett leans forward, forearms on his knees, hat dangling from his fingers. "You said signed," he says. "So this wasn't an error on your end. Someone sat him down and he put his name to it."

"To something, yes." Wren spreads her hands. "Whether Mr. Mercer fully understood what he was agreeing to is a separate question, and not one my terminal can answer for you. But it wasn't clerical. It was a signature. A choice."

Beckett sits back slow. His jaw works once. He doesn't look at me, which is how I know he's landed on the exact thing I've landed on.

A few years back.The words snag on something in me and won't let go.What did you sign, Cade? When did you sign it? Why, in five years, have you never once breathed a word of it?

"A few years," I say slowly. "Do you have a date?"

"Not a precise one on my screen. Within the last handful of years is as close as I can pin it." Wren studies my face, reading whatever's crossing it. "Does that mean something to you?"

I don't answer right away, because I honestly don't know yet. Five years is a handful. Five years ago is when my whole life came apart on the front steps of the Lantern House. It's probably nothing. It's probably some boring old contract from a job or a lease or a young man's bad idea. But I've built a career on the factthat coincidences in paperwork are worth a second look, and this one is humming.

"Maybe," I say. "I'm not sure. Keep going — how does he fix it?"

"He fixes it himself." Wren says it kindly but firmly, and I get the sense she's had to deliver this exact sentence to a hundred people who wanted a shortcut. "That's the crux. This isn't something you or I can sign away for him. The clause can only be nullified by Mr. Mercer, in person, and I believe he'll also have to make contact with whatever organization holds the original agreement to have it formally released on their end." She spreads her hands, apologetic. "Which — I'll be honest with you — is not a fast process. Interagency releases can take a while. Days, if he's lucky and somebody answers the phone. Months, if it gets stuck in a queue. The timeline genuinely isn't up to me. It's up to the system, and the system moves how it moves."

Beckett and I exchange a look. It's a whole conversation in a half-second, the kind you can only have with someone who's already decided to stand next to you.

I turn back to Wren and ask the thing I have to ask, the practical thing, the thing that would keep me up at night if I didn't. "Does this affect their employment? Any of theirs? If the pack's only certified as four, does the state come after their businesses, their licenses, the compliance status we already fought for?"

"That's the part I care about," Beckett adds, and there's an edge under the calm now. "August has a shop full of people who count on him. The Lantern House has weddings booked into next spring. If this snag lands on any of that, we need to hear it today, not in a letter three weeks from now."

"No. Not at all." She says it immediately, and the relief that loosens my shoulders is embarrassing in its size. "I want to be very clear about that, because I can see it's yourfirst fear. Everyone continues their work exactly as before. Bellamy Blooms, the Lantern House, all of it — untouched. The gentlemen's livelihoods aren't in any jeopardy here." She settles the page flat again. "What it means, in plain terms, is narrower than it sounds. It means that as far as the government is officially concerned, the pack it can confirm and protect is you, Miss Whitlock, together with Sawyer, August, and Beckett. Those four. Legally. On paper. Today."

Four names. Mine and three others.

Beside me Beckett exhales, long and low through his nose. I chance a glance at him. He's already looking at me, and there's no surprise in his face at all — just a quiet, steadying weight, like a man watching the tide come in exactly as far as he said it would. He gives me the smallest nod.Steady. I've got you.He doesn't have to say a word of it. His whole body says it for him.

I sit with it, and something strange happens in my chest — not the drop I braced for, but a slow, quiet click, like a key finding the one lock it was cut for.

Four.

It's four. It's always four. Isn't that the number the universe keeps handing me? I stood at the top of a staircase two mornings ago with Beckett's arms around me while a door slammed on the fifth of us, and I whispered a nursery rhyme to myself about how there used to be none and now there were four. I thought it was just a feeling. I thought it was just my bruised heart doing math in the dark. Now here's a state registrar with a green highlighter, telling me the paperwork agreed the whole time. The law caught up to the campfire. The fine print says four.