Chapter 26 *

Chapter 26 *
Emery’s POV
The skids hit the pad and the rotor noise crested into something that rattled my back teeth.
"Let's go," Logan said.
I climbed out. The air smelled like salt and something floral that was already fading. My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.
Logan said, without turning his head, "Your phone."
I blinked. We were two steps from the helicopter and he had somehow heard my phone vibrate through a jacket over a flight suit over post-rotor wind. "How did you—"
"Your phone," he said again.
I pulled it out. The screen lit up.
Keaton Remington.
I hadn't even finished reading the name before Logan's hand came out, flat and unhurried, palm up. "Give me the phone, Emery."
"You can't be serious."
"Evaluation period. No personal calls during training windows." He said. "It's policy."
I stared at him for a long second. His expression was the same one it always was, entirely unmoved by my objection.
"This is insane," I said, and put the phone in his hand.
He declined the call without looking at the screen and put the phone in his jacket pocket.
The car they'd sent was waiting at the edge of the pad, engine already running. I got in. Logan got in. Damon, who had somehow beaten us to the ground, was in the front.
Rows of them, lining the boulevard on both sides. The trunks were bare. You could tell, from the shape of the branches and the faint violet-grey cast of the bark, that they'd been something recently. A few clusters of flowers still clung to the upper branches — small and blue-purple, scattered, the last of whatever had been there.
Jacaranda. I recognized them from a photograph somewhere, years ago.
They bloomed already, Yara said.
"Yeah." I watched one of the bare trees go past. Just branches now, and the occasional stubborn bloom hanging on past its moment. "We missed it."
That's sad.
"It's fine." I turned away from the window. "We're here to watch people fight each other. Not to admire the local flora."
You wanted to see them.
"I didn't know they existed until forty seconds ago."
And now you're sad.
"I'm not sad. I'm focused. I am a professional fighter in an evaluation cycle and I am here for very specific logistical and strategic—"
"The jacaranda peak was two weeks ago," Logan said, from the other side of the backseat.
I turned.
He was looking out his own window. "If you want to see them in bloom, you'd have to come back in spring. The whole boulevard goes purple." A beat. "It's worth it."
I looked at him for a second. He didn't look back.
He noticed you looking at the trees, Yara said.
I didn’t answer.
The building was the kind of place that didn't need a sign.
The moment Logan stepped out of the car, a line of people near the entrance moved. "Alpha Blackwell." The woman at the front inclined her head. "Welcome to Harrow."
The two behind her did the same.
I stood slightly to Logan's right and performed an expression I can only describe as politely neutral, which was the expression I defaulted to in situations where I did not fully understand what was happening but did not want that to be visible.
That's a lot of bowing, Yara observed.
"I noticed."
Easthaven never did that.
"Easthaven was a mid-tier pack with good landscaping and a structural honesty problem." I kept my mouth still. "This is different."
This is a whole different weight class, she agreed.
Logan said something brief to the woman at the front, and then he turned and looked at me with an expression that said stay with me, and then he walked toward the entrance.
I followed him.
The front staff tracked Logan the way people tracked a weather system — attentive, ready to move at a second's notice. Two of them glanced at me.
The glances were the particular kind that tried to be neutral and weren't quite.
They're trying to figure out who you are, Yara said.
"I'm nobody. I'm standing near a man."
You're standing near a man who owns a helicopter and makes an entire lobby rearrange itself, she said. You're not nobody in this room right now.
Logan stopped at the elevator. He pressed the button. And then — without explanation, without asking — he turned and waited.
For me.
I looked at the elevator. I looked at him. "I can just—"
"Emery." He tilted his head toward the open doors.
I walked into the elevator.
The space was, objectively, not small. But Logan stepped in after me and the doors closed — we were two people in a box, and the box was the right size for ten people but felt the size of a closet.
I looked at the floor numbers.
He was next to me. Close enough that I was aware of the warmth of him.
He did not move to the left. He did not move to the right.
He's not moving, Yara noted.
I know, I told her.
There's room.
I am aware.
He's just standing there.
Yara, I swear to Goddess—
I'm just making an observation.
The doors opened. I walked out first.
The reception coordinator — a woman in a blazer with a credential badge and the expression of someone who had handled a hundred high-stakes arrivals and found them all manageable — met us in the corridor and exchanged a few low words with Logan. He nodded once. Then he turned to me.
"I have a meeting. An hour, maybe less." His voice was even. "Damon will take you to the reception room. The fight card starts at eight."
"Got it."
The reception room was the size of a respectable apartment.
A staff member appeared from my left. "Ms. Hensley. Can I bring you anything? We have the full Harrow seasonal menu, or something lighter if you prefer — we also have a local sports nutritionist on call for athletes—"
"I'm fine, thank you."
"Of course. We also have a recovery massage suite available if—"
"I'm good." I smiled at her. "Really. Thank you."
She smiled back and retreated, and I turned back to the table and picked up the Ironridge fight card program that was sitting on the corner of it, and settled into a chair.
Behind me, near the door, I heard her voice, very quiet. And another voice answering, quieter still.
"…do you think she's his—"
"Has to be. Did you see the way he—"
"I know, but she's not—"
"Doesn't matter. Today she's whoever he says she is."
I turned a page of the program.
They think you're his girlfriend, Yara said, with a tone of profound satisfaction.
"They're wrong."
I know. But it's very funny.
"It's not funny."
I turned to the next page of the fight card. The bout order blurred slightly. I found the main event and read the names without absorbing them.