The door clicked shut. Silence pooled between the three of us. Heavy, loaded, and waiting for someone brave enough to touch it.

"Daddy, I know you're mad," said Giselle, her voice started soft but grew in strength as she went along. "But you do need help. And Allison is nice."

I sighed. "I may be nice, but this?" I gestured vaguely at the contract disaster surrounding us. "This isn't something you sneak around and organize behind your Alpha's back."

Gordon leaned against the desk and crossed his arms. "Giselle," he started, shaking his head in disbelief. After a moment to find his words, he added, "I'm disappointed."

The poor girl deflated like a balloon. "I was trying to help," she said, voice thick with emotion. For a second she didn't look like a stubborn preteen. Just a kid who'd been holding up too much for too long.

"And I appreciate that. But this," he waived a hand at me before sighing. "Giselle, this is too much. I agree with Allison, this isn't something you just do on your own. Remember what I told you about where strength comes from?"

"From others," she said glumly before perking up, eyes ablaze. "But that's exactly what I did, I reached out to others. And that's why Allison is here."

I kept my mouth shut, worrying my lip with my teeth. I mean, she has a bit of a point by twisting his own logic back at him. She's gonna be a force when she's older. Hell, she already is.

"No Giselle, you start internally first then you go external," explained Gordon, raking a hand through his hair in exasperation.

"But no one here has been any help! They either want to replace Mommy or are as dumb as a frog."

Gordon growled in warning. A tone his eldest daughter promptly ignored as she continued.

"Allison knows her stuff, I called references. And she's not planning to replace Mommy since it's a business."

I choked and cleared my throat to try and cover the sound. Hot damn, I'm going to have to remember about the references bit since that shouldn't have been so easy for her to reach out.

With another exasperated sigh, Gordon wearily said, "Go to your room. You and I will talk about this later."

The girl huffed and all but stamped her foot before storming out of the office. She slammed the door so hard the picture frames rattled. The unmistakable, teenage "fuck you" without the vocabulary.

Gordon groaned and rubbed his face with both hands as I took a seat on the couch.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into this," he said finally, taking a deep breath and spinning a chair around to face me. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and when he looked up again, the softness of "dad" slid off his face like a mask. What was left was the Alpha, sharp-eyed, guarded, assessing me like I was a threat he hadn't decided how to categorize.

"It's an odd situation," I admitted with a shrug, "probably the oddest but shit happens." I was silent for a moment before adding, "What happens next is your decision." The irony of the situation wasn't lost on me. Being tied to Gordon Hale for six months minimum because of something neither of us had actually wanted, especially after he had told me that he viewed consultants as parasites. My stomach did an uncomfortable flip.

He leaned forward to rest his embows on his legs, hands clasped together in thought. "I'm assuming that cancelling the contract would be breaking it with monetary repercussions."

"More than likely."

"And the fact I unknowingly signed doesn't void the contract?" he asked, looking into my eyes for the first time since Giselle left.

I furrowed my brow. "You know, I'm not sure," I admitted. "But we can certainly call my legal department if you like." Gordon raised a skeptical eyebrow and I added, "I pay them to keep me on the right side of the law, not to make me money. If it's a legal out, it's a legal out."

He studied my face a moment before nodding. "Fine, I don't really have much to lose at this point."

I nodded and pulled my phone from my pocket. "I'll put it on speaker so you know exactly what's being said," I said, finding Legal's number and hitting the 'call' button. The phone rang once before I placed it on speaker and set it down on the table in front of me.

Two rings later, the call was connected. "Luna's Compass Legal Team, this is Sara," said the voice on the other line.