Chapter 187 Not Coming Loud
ADRIANA
Elijah dealt with Shawn before dinner.
I was not present for the conversation, which was Elijah’s preference and which I respected because some things were his to handle in his own way, but I heard the shape of it afterward from Martine, who had been in the corridor and whose hearing was excellent.
Shawn had argued. He had cited the elders, the formal appointment process, the proper channels through which such decisions were supposed to be made. Elijah had listened to all of it with the patience of a rational man. That’s one of the things that made him such a great king.
Even knowing someone was wrong. He gave them a chance to explain themselves. To defend their actions.
After everything was heard, he had told Shawn that his access to the palace was revoked effective immediately, that his formal dismissal paperwork would follow through the correct channels, and that if he was found inside the palace walls after tonight he would spend time in the cells.
Shawn had said something about the Alpha showing his bias because of his wife.
Elijah had said something in response that Martine declined to repeat verbatim but that she described as clear and final.
Shawn left.
I was in the sitting room with Hazel when the palace settled back into its ordinary evening rhythm, and I felt relief of a thing that should have been done eighteen months ago being done now. It did not fix what had happened during those eighteen months. It did not return the months of reports Shawn had buried or the parents he had turned away from the gate or the children who had spent additional weeks in a stone room because nobody with authority had known they were there.
But it was done, and Hazel was sitting across from me with a cup of tea and the focused expression of someone who had been thinking about a problem for several hours and had arrived at something.
“The facility is in the northern territory of Golden Blade,” she said. “Based on what Brianna described, the direction of travel, the hours on the road and the smell of the stone, I think I know the approximate location. There’s an old holding structure that was used during the border disputes twenty years ago. It matches everything she described.”
“Can we confirm it?”
“I have someone who can.” She looked at me steadily. “Aiden’s assignment in the southern territories have borders along Golden Blade. He has people in that region. If I send word now, carefully, he can have eyes on the location within two days.”
“Does the communication route go through anyone here?”
“No. I have a separate line. I’ve always maintained one.” She said it without defensiveness, simply as information. “Elijah knows about it.”
Of course he did.
“Send the word,” I said.
She nodded.
We sat for a moment in the comfortable silence that was one of the things I had missed most. The ease of being in a room with someone who had been through enough alongside you that conversation was optional rather than required.
“I owed you more than two visits,” I said the words that still weighed heavy on my heart.
She looked at me.
“You owe me nothing. You were a new mother three times over while managing a pack and your own powers and a political threat from within the council. I was recovering. Neither of us was in a position to be what the other needed.” She paused. “But I would have liked more letters.”
“I’ll write more letters.”
“Good.” She picked up her tea. “Now tell me about Lorain. Martine said she’s five.”
“She’ll be six in the spring. She’s…” I breathed out. “Hazel, she’s extraordinary. I don’t know how else to say it. She just walked into a room full of people last month and told the twins to stop arguing in a voice that stopped them both immediately. She’s five years old.”
Hazel smiled. It was the genuine kind, the one that reached her eyes.
“She sounds like you.”
“She sounds like Elijah.”
“Both, then.”
The door opened and Elijah came in and looked at both of us with the expression I hadn't seen in a few days. Not everything was settled but he’d done what needed to be done.
He sat down.
“It’s done,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“Hazel.”
“Elijah.”
They looked at each other with an understanding of two people who have known each other long enough that they can conduct entire conversations in silence.
“I’m reinstated?” she said.
“You never weren’t,” he said. “In my head.”
“In the practical sense.”
“Yes. In the practical sense.” He paused. “I’m sorry it took this long.”
She accepted it with a nod that was neither dismissive nor overly gracious. Just true.
“Tell me the plan,” he said.
We told him. The facility, Aiden’s line, the two-day window before we would have confirmed eyes on the location. The need to coordinate an entry that Leo could anticipate and work with from the inside, which meant establishing some form of communication before we moved.
“The letter,” Elijah said. “Landon is expecting a response.”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to say?”
I had been thinking about this since the letter arrived. What Landon expected was capitulation dressed as choice. Me agreeing to come to him, telling myself it was for Leo, arriving at Golden Blade with my guard down because I believed he would honor the trade.
What I was going to give him instead was something that looked exactly like that.
“I’m going to tell him I need time to make arrangements,” I said. “I’m going to ask him questions that will tell me more about the facility and his current state of mind. And I’m going to keep him looking at the letter and not at what’s happening around him.”
Elijah looked at me.
“You’re going to string him along.”
“I’m going to give him what he expects from the woman he thinks I still am,” I said. “Which is someone who can be managed. Someone who responds to the right kind of pressure.” I held his gaze. “He has no idea who he’s actually dealing with. That’s going to be the last mistake he makes.”
Hazel set down her cup.
“I’ll draft the reply with you,” she said. “Two heads.”
“Yes,” I said.
Outside, the pack was going about its evening. The twins were with Elijah’s mother, who had them engaged in something that was producing periodic loud laughter from the direction of the east garden. Lorain was probably already asleep, which was the one consistently reliable thing about her; she fell asleep at the same time every night regardless of what was happening around her. Her sleep was always non-negotiable.
And Leo was in a stone room in a facility we were going to have eyes on in two days, having dinner with a man he was carefully managing while he waited for us to come.
We were coming.
We were just not coming loud.