Page 226 of Maksym

Lucia sat to her right, immaculate despite the hour and the paper war around her. A pen moved between her fingers with idle precision. She had a folder open in front of her, but her attention was on Grace’s ledger. Maddie leaned over Lucia’s shoulder, one finger planted on a page.

“That one,” Maddie said. “The property with the rear access and no shared walls. If anybody wakes up scared and shifts, they won’t hurt themselves trying to get out.”

Juliet stood across from them, arms crossed, jaw set hard enough to make her beauty dangerous. The sharp-eyed Luna of Iron Valor had a document in one hand, and she read it as if the paper had personally offended her. There was no softness in her posture, but I had learned not to mistake that for lack of care. Some women made tenderness warm. Juliet made it tactical.

“Security rotation needs adjustment,” she said. “These people have been held by predators. I don’t care how gentle the guards are. Too many visible armed bodies will feel like another cage.”

Grace nodded once. “Agreed. Perimeter protection only, unless a resident requests closer presence. Interior staff trained in trauma response; no one entering bedrooms without permission, no feeding discussions anywhere near the residential wings.”

Devon sat farther down the table, pale and luminous in the dusk light. A list lay before her in careful columns. Clothing. Medical supplies. Blankets. Human identification recovery. She looked up at that last category with a small crease between her brows, as if the mortal cruelty of paperwork still bewildered her more than celestial war ever had.

Remy worked beside her, sorting folders into piles with quiet efficiency. Intake. Medical. Legal. Financial. Missing-person reconciliation. The labels had been written in Grace’s hand. I knew the shape of her letters now with an intimacy that still startled me.

Grace moved to the next figure. “Every cent pulled from Lucian’s dismantled corporate accounts goes into the network. Housing, medical care, legal identity restoration, counseling, relocation where needed, and long-term support. Not charity. Restitution.”

The word landed cleanly. Restitution.

I watched the room receive it. Lucia inclined her head slightly, approving. Juliet’s mouth tightened, not in objection but satisfaction. Maddie’s shoulders lowered by half an inch.

My mate had stood on a screen before the Supreme Council starved nearly past recognition. Two days later, she was redirecting the wealth of the man who had caged her toward the living remnants of his crimes.

There were rulers who would have made speeches first. Grace built systems.

She turned a page. “No one is required to stay in any house we fund. They choose. They can leave. They can refuse medical treatment. They can refuse supernatural contact entirely once they’re stable enough to understand their options.”

Maddie gave a grim little nod. “Choice has to be the damn point.”

“Yes,” Grace said, and something in her voice altered only enough for me to feel it through the bond. “It does. But we have to do everything with regard to keeping our world protected as well.”

I remained in the doorway, unwelcome only because my presence would change the air. Not badly, perhaps, but noticeably. The women had made this room into a field hospital, war council, accounting office, and sanctuary without asking any man to bless the arrangement. I had no wish to step into it merely because I could.

Grace looked up. Her eyes found mine.

For one suspended breath, the ledgers, the maps, the old house, even the waiting violence below us retreated from the center of the world. She did not smile fully. There was too much work on the table for that. But her face softened in the private way that belonged to me now, and the bond between us warmed, dark and steady.

Pride, I sent without words because the bond knew what language could not carry.

Her gaze answered with something drier. Don’t interrupt my meeting.

I inclined my head the barest fraction.

Then I continued down the hall toward my father’s office, leaving Grace at the head of the table with Lucian’s money beneath her hand and the future of his victims arranged in columns before her.

It was not enough. It was more than he deserved to see happen. And soon, he would.

My father’s office had always possessed the unpleasant talent of making centuries feel like witnesses.

Kazimir sat behind the heavy desk with both hands resting in his lap.

Bohdan occupied the chair to my left with a loose, watchful ease that fooled strangers and almost no one in our family. One ankle rested over his opposite knee. His fingers idly turned a ring on his hand. His eyes, however, missed nothing.

Taras stood near the window, arms folded, shoulders broad enough to make the tall glass seem narrow behind him.

Nikolay sat at the conference table, poring over an old book.

For a while, no one said Lucian’s name.

The room did not require it. He was beneath us in stone and chains, stripped of silk, influence, title, and the false dignity of untouched skin. Alistaire Crowe hung beside him, according to the last report, though from what the guards had said, Crowe had used silence as a refuge. Lucian had not. Lucian had been cursing every guard, every Kozlov, every law, and every god with a vocabulary that suggested fear had finally improved his creativity.