Chapter 11 · On Record

"Give it to me." Callum's hand closes over mine before I can slide the drawer shut.

The metal bites into my knuckles. I don't let go.

"It's archive property," I say. "Which makes it my property, technically, since I'm the one who has to catalog it, seal it, and hand it to the council when they ask."

"They're not asking yet."

"They will. The petition's filed, Callum. Somebody's going to want to know why the Alpha's own voice is on a tape saying he rejected his mate to save a shipping contract."

His jaw ticks. That's the only tell he ever gives me now — the jaw, and the way his knuckles go white around my wrist instead of the drawer handle. Three feet of archive shelving between us and a hundred years of pack record, and somehow he still smells like cedar and salt, like the night he stood in the glass chapel and told an entire congregation I was a mistake.

The mark under my collar heats up like a struck match.

I hate that it still does that.

"Let go of my hand," I say, "or I scream loud enough that the clerks upstairs come running, and