Page 71 of Nikolay

“I believed she meant it.” He scrolled. “Whether it was the whole truth is a separate matter, but that is true of most applicants.”

He turned the monitor slightly so I could see the typed notes.

The details were clinical. Age, pack affiliation, previous education, prior work experience within Lynch internal operations, no criminal flags, no known Council violations. Interview responses, concise and intelligent. She had wanted freedom. She had wanted to work somewhere that did not replicate pack life in another costume. She had specifically cited Obsidian as a place where species boundaries meant less than function, contract, and consent.

It sounded plausible.

That irritated me.

“She passed vetting?”

“With room to spare.” Bohdan tapped another section. “Background clean. References from internal pack administration irritatingly polished. No evidence of covert assignment, no hidden debt, no inconsistencies significant enough to warrant refusal.” He paused. “And.”

He clicked open the supplemental note.

I felt my attention sharpen before he spoke.

“And she passed Devon’s assessment without hesitation.”

That mattered.

It mattered more than either of us was entirely comfortable admitting in formal settings, which likely explained why we only discussed it in rooms with locked doors. Since my father had mated the fallen angel and the whole world had rearranged itself accordingly, Devon’s impressions had acquired a status no conventional vetting process could rival. She saw wrongness in people the way some creatures smelled blood. Not always with evidence one could put in a file. But often enough, and accurately enough, that ignoring her had become indistinguishable from stupidity.

Bohdan met my gaze. “Devon’s note says, and I quote, ‘She is restless, not false. She wants out, not in.’”

I exhaled slowly.

“So Sloan may simply have wanted a larger world.”

“Many people do,” Bohdan said. “Contrary to family myth, not everyone finds pack life sufficient unto itself.”

“No. But her brother taking membership thereafter is untidy.”

“It is.”

We let that sit for a moment while the monitors cast shifting light across the office. Somewhere beneath us, a final bottle crate rolled across the back hall and thudded to rest. The club was shutting itself down bone by bone.

I said, “Maddie is going to their full moon run.”

Bohdan’s fingers stilled over the keyboard.

Only for a second. Yet I saw it.

He already knew.

Something cold and mean slipped neatly between my ribs.

“Yes,” he said.

I did not like how level my voice remained. “You were aware.”

“She requested the time off herself this afternoon.”

Of course she had. She worked for him. He managed scheduling. No betrayal existed there. No slight. No promise broken. She owed me no report of where she meant to take her own body under the moon.

It stung anyway.

I kept my face still and discovered, not for the first time, that composure did very little to alter the interior reality of being cut.