Chapter 25 · Not a Vote

"Don't move." Cassian's hand closed around my wrist before I even got the question out.

His phone was still lit in his other hand, the screen dark now, call ended. But his jaw hadn't unclenched. Whatever came through that line, it hadn't left him yet.

"Who was that?" I pulled against his grip. He didn't let go.

"Elders' office." His voice came out flat, careful, the kind of careful that scared me more than yelling would've. "They're calling an emergency session. Tonight."

"About what?"

"About you." He finally looked at me. "About the clinic. Whether it stays in your name or gets reassigned to pack custody, effective immediately, pending — his words — 'concerns raised by the heir.'"

Ethan. Of course it was Ethan. He'd walked out of my clinic twenty minutes ago holding nothing but a fake sonogram and his own humiliation, and he'd already gotten to a phone.

"They can't just vote my building away." My voice cracked on the word vote. I hated that it cracked.

"That's what I told them.