Page 78 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Five years. The same five years I've carried.

The number drops between us and lands with enough weight that, for one full second, I forget there's a government envelope on my desk at all.

Sawyer's smile holds — easy and warm and reaching nowhere near his eyes. For the first time, I see the locked door under all that Charleston charm, because I have the identical one.

I know a fellow architect when I meet one.

Cade starts to ask what happened. August turns his whole body toward Sawyer. Beckett's gaze narrows, and it isn't jealousy anymore.

It's assessment.

"No," I say.

They look at me.

"We have twenty-three hours, an appointment to secure, and a business being held hostage by an envelope. Sawyer's history is not today's emergency."

And frankly, none of them deserve to know something so intimate when they only acknowledge his existence when it comes to their possessive, jealous need to remind him that I “used” to belong to them.

I hold his eyes half a beat longer than the sentence needs, so he understands I am not closing the subject.

I am shelving it.

One crisis at a time. Government discrimination today. Mysterious Southern Alpha with an estranged pack on Thursday, over a drink, assuming any of us still have careers by then.

Priya, brisk, saves us all.

Sawyer qualifies, she says — certified wedding producer, licensed officiant, trained in designation-sensitive ceremony management, formally contracted to the Carroway-Reeve event.

His pack registration counts as a credential, even inactive, which the department will read as stability.

"I'll sign," Sawyer says, before I've asked him to.

The three of them react as one organism.

"Do you understand the legal exposure you'd be accepting?" Beckett asks.

"Why," Cade says, "would a man who met her yesterday sign a government responsibility declaration?"

August's is gentler and lands hardest. "Are you doing this for Paloma's contract, or for her?"

Sawyer looks at the three of them, unbothered.

"Those questions might carry more weight," he says, "if any of you had offered before I did."

That one goes in clean.

Oh this is going to get messy if I don’t interfere.

My heart,and I dare acknowledge my pulsing core,however, are thriving at the obvious intention of an Alpha standing up for me with no questions asked.

"Enough." I stand. "Stop measuring each other's intentions while the building burns. I need an emergency hearing reserved at Town Hall, Dr. Greene's safety confirmation, and this declaration filed before the deadline. That's the whole list."

"Then we walk over together." Sawyer straightens off the desk. "Coordinated matters as much as the paperwork. A department that thinks she's alone should see that she isn't."

"Agreed," Beckett says.

"I hate that I agree with him," Cade says.