Vincent sat across from me at the narrow table, the leather journal open between us.
I didn't ease into it. I laid it out the way I'd lay out a patrol report — clean, sequential, no editorializing. Two partial marks. Two Alphas. Corroborating scent reports from four separate sources, wolves with nothing to gain from the story. Dates that placed Kayleigh at Ironveil gatherings while she was already carrying Tristan's scent.
Vincent listened without moving. No interruptions. No reactions I could read. Just that absolute, focused stillness that I'd learned — over the past several days — meant he was processing at a level most wolves never reached.
When I finished, I closed the journal. "Double-bond violation carries automatic exile under pack law. Neither man can expose her without exposing himself. They've been holding the stalemate for months."
"Until you," Vincent said.
"Until me."
He was quiet for a moment. Outside, wind moved through the trees. The fire in the shelter's corner burned low.
"The evidence is solid," he said finally. "Solid enough for the Lycan Council to open a formal inquiry."
"Good. Then I take it to Ironveil directly and—"
"And Kayleigh moves the moment she knows you have it." His voice was calm. Exact. The same tone he'd used on a training field six years ago when he told me I was about to get gutted. "She's been managing this stalemate for months. She's good at it. The moment she senses pressure, she doesn't freeze — she attacks."
I looked at him. "So your advice is patience."
"My advice is formal process."
"I'm not interested in patience."
"I know." A pause. "Your instinct to charge is excellent. Your timing is catastrophic."
I sat back. The words landed with the same infuriating precision as every training correction he'd ever delivered. Not cruel. Just accurate.
"What would you do?" I asked.
He reached across the table and turned the journal toward him. Studied it for a moment. Then he told me.
It was not what I would have done. It was better. A sequenced approach — Lycan intelligence channels first, to establish a formal record before anyone could claim the evidence was fabricated. Then a quiet notification to Paul Chapman's Luna, who Vincent's sources indicated had already begun to suspect something. Let the internal Ironveil pressure build. Bring the formal accusation to the Council only after the corroborating sources had been formally deposed.
"You want to build a wall around the evidence before Kayleigh can touch it," I said slowly.
"I want to build a wall she can't knock down even when she tries."
I looked at him across the table. The fire crackled. The journal lay open between us, my handwriting filling the pages — dates, names, details I'd gathered piece by careful piece over three days.
"How long?" I asked.
"Forty-eight hours to establish the record. Another twenty-four to reach the Luna through a channel she trusts."
"Seventy-two hours is a long time for Kayleigh to stay quiet."
"Yes," Vincent said. "It is."
We sat with that for a moment. Then I pulled the journal back toward me and opened it to a fresh page.
"Walk me through the sequencing again," I said. "I want to write it down."
He did.
We worked for two hours. Heads bent over the journal, voices low, trading information and counterarguments across the narrow table. He knew things I didn't — Council procedure, Lycan intelligence infrastructure, the precise legal language that would make the formal accusation airtight. I knew things he didn't — the names of the wolves who'd given me the scent reports, the specific gatherings where the double mark had been visible, the social patterns Kayleigh used to manage her exposure.
We fit together like two halves of a tactical problem.
I didn't think about that. I wrote it down instead.
---
Vincent brought me the news himself.
He didn't soften it. He walked into the shelter the following afternoon, set his phone on the table in front of me, and let me read the intelligence report.
Kayleigh had moved in less than thirty-six hours.
She'd stood before the Ironveil Pack Council and accused me of crossing into their territory as a rogue and physically attacking her. The accusation was detailed, specific, and delivered with what the report described as "credible distress." A bitter, rejected she-wolf targeting the woman who'd replaced her. Packless. Bondless. Dangerous.
If the Council upheld it, the Lycan protection decree was void. I'd be legally killable by any pack warrior who found me in their territory.
Paul Chapman had backed her story.
The Council had ruled against me in absentia.
I set the phone down. My hand was steady. My jaw was tight.
"She moved faster than your seventy-two hours," I said.
"Yes."
"Paul backed her."
"He has more to lose than she does if the double mark surfaces."
I looked at the journal in my lap. All that careful, methodical evidence. All those names and dates and corroborating sources.
"So the wall isn't built yet," I said. "And she just lit a fire under it."
Vincent looked at me steadily. "The wall is still buildable. But the timeline has changed."
I stood. The hollow scar on my neck pulsed cold — not warm, not this time. Cold and hard and furious.
"Then we build it faster," I said.
