POV: Silas

The first time I walked into Vale Repairs, I left my name on the motorcycle.

My cut lay folded inside Evelyn's truck. The Blackwood wolf, the president's patch, and every strip of rank were hidden beneath the passenger seat. I had worn that leather through knife fights, border challenges, and my father's funeral. Taking it off should not have felt like removing skin.

It did.

Evelyn watched me through the windshield. “We can turn around.”

“No.”

“That wasn't a test.”

“I know.” I shut the door. “That's why the answer is no.”

Vale Repairs occupied a low brick building beside an abandoned rail spur. No sign announced a refuge. No fence carried silver wire. Three motorcycles waited beneath the awning, all ordinary except for the careful way they faced the road.

The woman standing in the open bay was not ordinary.

June Vale looked near sixty, with iron-gray braids and a welding burn across one wrist. She held a torque wrench loosely at her side. Two younger women watched from behind a stripped engine, neither pretending to work.

June looked at my bare denim jacket.

“Where are the colors?”

“In the truck.”

“Weapons?”

I placed my pistol, knife, and ankle blade on the hood.

Her eyebrow lifted. “Expecting to repair an engine or invade Canada?”

“Depends what you charge for labor.”

One of the younger women snorted. June did not.

“Wolf?” she asked.

“Still attached.”

“Keep him that way.”

Evelyn came around the truck holding the evidence envelope. June's attention left me immediately. She did not approach until Evelyn stopped several feet away and showed her empty hand.

“You called,” Evelyn said.

“You brought a Blackwood.”

“I brought Celene's son.”

June studied me again. This time she looked for a resemblance I could not hide beneath a different jacket.

“Those are not the same thing,” she said.

“Today they are,” Evelyn replied.

Something in my chest eased. Not because she defended me. Because she had not lied for me.

June unlocked a side door. “Your people stay outside.”

Ronan and Briar had parked half a mile down the road. June knew that. She had cameras angled toward both approaches and enough wolfsbane oil on the threshold to sting my nose.

“They stay where they are,” I said.

Inside, the public repair shop gave way to a narrower corridor. Old license plates covered one wall. Each had been bent cleanly in half. A child had painted flowers around a bullet hole in another.

Evelyn's fingers brushed mine once. She did not take my hand. That small contact steadied me more than a grip would have.

June led us to an office with no exterior window. An elderly woman sat behind the desk, knitting red yarn around a scarred index finger. She saw me and dropped the needles.

The chair legs scraped backward.

“Blackwood.”

I stopped in the doorway.

Her fear smelled old. Not weaker with age. Preserved.

“My name is Silas,” I said.

“I know whose face you have.”

My father's face. The one I had carried proudly until yesterday.

June moved between us. “Nora, he came without colors.”

“They took theirs off when they crossed county lines too.”

My wolf rose at the accusation, not against her but against the men she remembered. Heat pushed behind my teeth. Evelyn looked at my hands. I opened them.

“Then I stay here,” I said. “Evelyn can take the key wherever you need it.”

June's gaze sharpened. “You would let your mate walk out of sight among strangers?”

The word struck every animal instinct I owned. Mine wanted her close, behind me, surrounded by men who answered to me. That was precisely why June had asked.

“She decides where she walks.”

Evelyn turned her head. Her expression warmed, only briefly, but I felt it like sunlight reaching the bottom of cold water.

Nora sat down again.

“He can come,” she muttered. “If he keeps saying things like that, I want witnesses.”

June's mouth twitched.

We descended beneath the repair floor through a hatch hidden under a rolling parts cabinet. The basement smelled of oil, old paper, and cedar chips. Narrow lockers lined one wall. Most bore numbers. Three had names scratched into their doors.

MIRIAM.

NORA.

CELENE.

I forgot how to move.

My mother's name had been carved by hand, the final E slanting upward. I had seen that shape on birthday cards stored in Maeve's desk. For thirty years it had belonged to a dead woman.

Evelyn stood beside me without touching the locker.

“Silas?”

“Open it.”

“It's your key.”

“She left it where you would find it.” My voice sounded rough. “You open it.”