Henrik’s office smelled of woodsmoke and old leather, and underneath both of those, a sharpness I couldn’t place, the scent of an alpha older and stronger than every other one I’d met so far, including the man walking half a step ahead of me with his shoulders already braced like he was walking into traffic.
He was smaller than I remembered from orientation—maybe just 5 minutes in a corridor, a handshake, a packet of pills pressed into my palm before he’d vanished.
Everything else I knew came from Tomáš.
Grey at the temples gone fully white, reading glasses pushed up into his hair, a cardigan over his shirt instead of anything that said pack alpha.
It was the stillness that gave him away.
Even sitting, he took up the whole room.
“Sit,” Henrik said, before either of us had crossed halfway across the room.
“I’d rather stand,” Damjan said.
“I wasn’t asking you, I was asking him.” Henrik’s eyes moved to me for the first time, slow, unhurried, running the same calculations I’d watched Dr.
Vos run 20 minutes earlier, except none of it showed on his face.
“Sit, Nico.” I sat anyway, refusing to look smaller than him in front of Henrik, and Damjan stayed on his feet, planting himself just behind my chair instead.
“You already know,” Damjan said, flat, no question anywhere in it.
“I knew— I knew the moment the wind shifted at 4 this morning.” Henrik laced his fingers together on the desk.
“Half the pack knew, the only person in this building who’s surprised right now is whichever assistant brought me coffee and asked why the corridor looked like someone had died.” “I came to— to tell you myself,” Damjan said, “before you heard it from anyone else.” “You’re about 4 hours late for that, but I appreciate the gesture.” His gaze slid back to me.
“How are you feeling?” “Bit sore, but mostly fine, yeah.” “That’s not what I asked.” He tapped one finger against a folder on the desk that I hadn’t noticed until then, thin, recent, the kind of folder that hadn’t existed yesterday.
“Dr.
Vos already sent over her notes.
Temperature, the bite, and how fast the heat resolved.
I’m asking how you are.
Not how your body is.” “Does it matter how I am?” “It matters to me.” Henrik’s voice gentled, just slightly, the only time it did the whole meeting.
“It won’t matter to the Council.” Heat climbed up the back of my neck before I could stop it.
“Honestly?
I don’t know what you want me to say, it happened, and I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I didn’t want it to.” “Then we— we have a problem,” Henrik said, “because wanting it isn’t the part anyone outside this room is going to care about.” “What is the part, then?” I said.
“Whether it looks chosen, or whether it reads as exactly what it was.
A heat, a bite, a bond that happened before either of you decided anything on purpose.” His voice didn’t change pitch once, the whole time he said it.
“I believe you, for what that’s worth, but the Council won’t care what I believe.” “Tell that to your own laws,” Damjan said, an edge of Croatian creeping into the vowels for the first time since we’d walked in.
“He— he chose this, I will say it to the Council myself, if it comes to that.” “It won’t come to that, not if we move first.” “Move…
how?” I said.
Henrik looked at me, not at Damjan, when he answered, and that told me whatever was coming was aimed mostly at me.
“A sanctioned bond, formally announced, closes the— the gap that an unsanctioned one leaves open, if done properly, in front of the pack, it stops being a question anyone can raise later.” He let that sit a second before he added, “I want to do it this weekend.” “This weekend?” My voice came out flatter than I meant it to.
“As in 4 days from now?” “As in 4 days from now, yeah.” “What’s it even involve?” I said, “This…
whatever you’re calling it.” “Less than you’re imagining.
A claiming before witnesses, a few words, the pack present, though it isn’t a wedding.” “That’s still a wedding, just with fewer flowers.” “Call it whatever helps you sleep.
Just be there Saturday.” “I haven’t even told my mum yet that I’m a fu—that I’m a werewolf, Henrik, let alone that I’m bonded to my own captain in front of an audience by Saturday.” “Your mother is the least of what should worry you right now.” “She’s not, actually, she’s exactly what worries me.” “Then tell her today, better from you than from a headline.” Damjan stepped fully between us for the first time since we’d walked in, his shoulder nearly touching mine.
“He— he needs time, we both do.” “Time is the one thing none of us have,” Henrik said.
“I can give you 4 days, but I cannot give you 4 weeks, not with what’s already moving through this league.” “This isn’t about Nico needing time, is it?” Henrik’s eyes hadn’t left Damjan’s face.
“You’ve had 14 years to decide whether you wanted this life in front of people, I’d say you’ve made that decision plenty of times already, every time you chose not to.” “That’s not fair.” “It isn’t meant to be fair, it’s meant to be true.” Henrik didn’t look away from him.
“Tell me I’m wrong.” Damjan didn’t answer, his weight shifting off one foot and onto the other, a small restless movement I’d never once seen him make, not in 5 days of training and certainly not last night, his eyes fixed past Henrik’s shoulder instead of on either of us.
“What’s moving?” he said finally, and his hand found the back of my chair, gripping the wood hard enough that I heard it creak.
Henrik didn’t answer right away either.
When he did, he was looking at Damjan, not me.
“Eisenwald’s been asking pointed questions about our medical staffing for 3 weeks.
I didn’t think much of it until this morning, Gregor Falk doesn’t waste questions.” “Who’s Gregor Falk?” I said.
“Eisenwald’s pack alpha,” Damjan said.
“Leander’s father.” The name meant nothing to me yet.
Henrik’s jaw worked once before he spoke again, the rest of his sentence staying behind his teeth.
“I’ve heard the same rumours,” Damjan said.
“It doesn’t mean—” “It means I’d rather you and Nico finish what you started under terms we control, instead of terms Gregor invents once he’s certain, and you know exactly how he operates, and so do I.” The room went quiet enough that I heard my own pulse, and then Damjan’s grip on the chair tightened again.
“Say it plainly,” Damjan said.
Henrik leaned back, unhurried, and let the silence sit there a moment before he filled it.
“I think— I think Gregor already knows what happened in that room last night.
And I think the only question left is whether he finds out who Nico Wray belongs to from us, this weekend, on our terms, or from somebody else first.”