Chapter 24 *

Chapter 24 *

Emery's POV

The air outside was so cold. I followed Damon out the back door of the Pack House, expecting maybe a gravel lot, maybe a line of black SUVs, maybe nothing at all. Instead, the second we rounded the west side of the building, I stopped dead.

There was a helipad back there.

I stared at it for a full two seconds before I found my voice. "Wait. Has that been there this whole time?"

Damon barely glanced at me. "More or less."

I turned to him. "I've been staying here for days."

"Yes."

"And no one thought to mention that there's a helipad behind the Pack House?"

He opened the side gate for me. "You didn't ask."

I hated that he had a point.

Then I saw Logan.

He was already beside the helicopter, halfway through what was obviously a pre-flight inspection. He checked the doors, the skids, the rotor assembly, the body of the aircraft, all of it with smooth, efficient motions.

"Don't tell me," I said slowly, "he can fly that."

Damon gave me a look. "He can."

"Of course he can," I muttered. "Why wouldn't he? Are all the men here contractually obligated to have at least three deeply irritating hidden talents?"

Damon just inclined his head toward the aircraft.

Logan looked up. "If you want to get there before sunrise," he said, "get in."

I walked closer, my gaze moving from him to the helicopter and back again.

"For the record," I said, "I had you pegged as the kind of man who drives an expensive SUV and terrifies people with silence. This feels excessive."

His hand stayed on the open door. His face didn't change. "Don't be disappointed. I can do that too."

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. "Wow. I really hate that that was a good answer."

"Get in, Emery."

I climbed up and ducked into the cabin. The interior was tighter than I expected, the seat firmer, the air carrying that clean-metal-and-machine-oil smell. I reached for the seat belt, found the buckle, and immediately managed to tangle the strap.

Before I could fix it, Logan leaned in from the other side and pulled the belt flat with one quick motion.

The back of his hand brushed my sleeve.

It was barely a touch. Nothing, really.

My lungs reacted like it was something.

"Buckle it," he said.

"I know how."

"It was upside down."

I looked down.

It was, in fact, upside down.

I lifted my chin and corrected it without comment. "I was testing you."

He looked at me, unimpressed. "And?"

"Marginal pass."

That almost got a smile. Almost.

Then the cabin door shut, sealing out the worst of the cold. The headset settled over my ears. A second later, the engine came alive under us with a deep mechanical thrum that I felt first in my feet, then in my ribs, then everywhere. The rotor started to turn overhead, slow at first, then faster, then fast enough that the sound became a force of its own. Wind tore across the pad. Dust and loose leaves spiraled up into the floodlights, flashing in and out of the beams.

The helipad sank away beneath us. The Pack House got smaller by the second. Beyond it, scattered lights stretched into thin ribbons. The entire landscape flattened and blurred.

Once we leveled out, the vibration softened into something steadier. I kept my eyes on the ground disappearing below us and asked, as casually as I could manage, "So. How long have you been flying this thing?"

Logan's hands stayed easy on the controls. His attention stayed on the dark horizon ahead. "Long enough not to risk your life."

I turned to look at him. "That is not a number."

"It answered your question."

"No, it absolutely did not."

A beat passed.

Then he said, "You still sound reassured."

I hated that he was right about that too.

I looked back out the window, watching the scattered lights below drift by like distant sparks.

Logan's POV

I ran a scan across the instrument panel — altitude holding, heading clean, fuel consumption tracking exactly where it should be. My right hand rested easy on the cyclic. Outside, the night was clear enough that I could see the faint orange smear at the horizon.

I glanced left.

Emery had her face turned toward the window. The cabin lighting was low and the angle was wrong for reading her expression.

"Is this Albion?" Her voice came through the headset.

"Yeah," I said.

She didn't answer right away. She kept looking out the window. "There's a story about this place," she said. "I read it somewhere. Three packs used to share the boundary here. Right at this point." She paused. "During full moons, supposedly — fate-bonded pairs who hadn't found each other yet would lose control when they crossed into range. Like the land itself was running the signal." A beat. "I know how that sounds."

"How does it sound?"

"Like something someone made up around a fire." She turned from the window. "But I think some places are just — built for it. For believing in things." Her voice was easy, like she was thinking out loud more than making a case. "This feels like one of them."

I glanced at the altimeter. Everything steady.

"You believe that?" I said.

She turned her head, just slightly. There was something in her expression I couldn't quite catch from this angle — somewhere between amusement and something less comfortable.

"Did it work on you?"

My fingers stopped. Something in my chest did a thing it had no business doing.

Four years ago.

The inheritance dispute had been settled for eleven days when I boarded the flight back to Blackstone.

My father had thought he'd done it cleanly. That was the part that kept surfacing in the days afterward, the part I couldn't put down. He'd thought he was being discreet. A private arrangement. A woman. A son. A plan to absorb the boy into the bloodline inheritance structure quietly.

He'd thought my mother would accept it.

He'd known her for thirty-one years.

Mates who fade — the phrase existed because the thing it described existed. It was a specific unraveling that happened when a mate bond was broken not by ceremony or rejection but by something slower, something that didn't announce itself.

My mother had stopped eating eleven days before I got there.

She was gone before I landed.