Page 74 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

The Pack Compliance Notice

~AMBER~

You can survive almost anything in this business if you see it coming.

Rain on a garden ceremony. A groom who faints at the word "forever." A cake that decides, at the worst possible moment, that gravity is a suggestion.

The disasters that actually end a woman are the ones that arrive looking like paperwork.

I don't know that yet.

It's nine on a Wednesday, and I'm at my desk pretending that agreeing to one drink with Sawyer Devereaux did not send three grown Alphas home to glare at banquet tables as though the furniture had personally wronged them.

Sawyer is already here. Paloma made it official at dawn — secondary planning producer, contract signed, my objection noted and outvoted. He sits across from me in dark trousers and a rolled white shirt, gold watch, no jacket, his magnolia-and-bourbon scent kept low and warm.

There's coffee on my desk.

He brought it.

He asked Priya for everyone's order instead of guessing mine.

He asks before he decides things for people.

Stop noticing that.

"You've color-coded a transportation emergency," he says, studying my wall board, "that has not happened."

"Preventative panic is the foundation of the entire wedding industry."

"Ah. I assumed the foundation was linen samples and a professionally concealed homicide."

I laugh.

It's real, and it's out of me before I can file it under unprofessional.

He looks unreasonably pleased with himself, so I go back to the seating grid to deny him the satisfaction.

The bell over the door ruins it.

Niall comes in with the morning mail and a bakery bag, sorting envelopes onto my desk as he talks. Invoice, invoice, a thank-you card, a heavy cream envelope with a wax-look seal. He taps that last one.

"No envelope with the word 'compliance' on it has ever once contained good news," he says. Then he sees my face, and the joke dies in his mouth.

The seal readsNational Department of Designation Welfare and Pack Compliance.

"It's a certification renewal," I say. "They send these."

Sawyer's expression changes before mine does. He isn't looking at the seal. He's looking at the red code stamped in the corner and the little printed line beneath it that requires signed acknowledgment of receipt.

I open it.

Well…this is a new challenge in the midst.

I read the first paragraph, and the office goes very far away.

Golden Hour Vows' designation-sensitive event certification has been placed under emergency provisional review following a credible safety complaint. Because I offer scent-managed coordination, bonding ceremonies, heat-cycle contingencies, nest preparation, crowd stabilization, and designation-specific guest accommodations, I am required to prove I maintain an adequate registered emergency-support structure.

Not within thirty days. Not within a week.