Ayla's hand froze an inch above the contract.

The candle on her desk hissed. Wax dripped onto the wood and she didn't notice.

Her eyes were locked on the seal pressed into the bottom corner of the page. Small. Careful. A shape she hadn't seen in five years.

Her pulse kicked hard against her throat.

She knew that seal.

The door banged open behind her. Rhett walked in carrying two cups, steam rising off both.

"Weird one, right?" he said. "No name attached. Three brokers just to hide the sender. Whoever it is really doesn't want to be found."

Ayla didn't answer.

Rhett stopped moving. "Ayla."

She kept staring at the wax.

"You're doing the thing," he said. "The quiet thing. I hate the quiet thing."

She picked the paper up slowly, like it might bite her.

"This is Ironveil's seal," she said.

Rhett's face changed instantly. His shoulders dropped an inch. "That's Caden's land."

"I know whose land it is."

"Then put it down."

She didn't put it down.

Her thumb traced the edge of the wax, the same shape stamped on a letter she burned in a fireplace five years ago. A letter she read exactly once and never spoke about again.

Rhett came around the desk and looked over her shoulder. "How much are they offering."

She flipped to the second page and pushed it toward him.

He whistled low. "That's not a job. That's a man begging."

"He needs the Grey Shadow." Her voice stayed flat. "He has no idea who that is."

"Ayla." Rhett set the cups down hard. One tipped over. Neither of them moved to fix it. "You walk in there, you're not walking in as a stranger. His wolf is going to know something's wrong even if his brain doesn't catch up."

"I know."

"So why."

She didn't answer right away.

Down the hall, two doors from where she sat, her son was asleep. Four years old. Dark curls. Grey eyes that weren't hers.

Rhett followed her gaze without meaning to. He knew where her mind had gone. He always did.

"He doesn't need this," Rhett said quietly. "He's got a good life here. Safe. Doesn't need his mother walking back into the one place that could take her apart."

"Nobody's taking me apart."

"You say that now."

She looked up at him, and for a second the mask slipped, just enough for him to see something underneath it. Then it was gone.

Rhett pulled a chair around and sat across from her, elbows on his knees. "Talk to me. Actually talk to me. Not commander to Beta. Just us."

She set the contract down flat on the desk between them.

"I built all of this," she said, gesturing at nothing and everything at once, the war room, the maps on the walls, the whole life she'd carved out of grief. "I have two hundred wolves who'd walk into fire if I told them to. I raised a son who doesn't cry when I leave anymore because he trusts I'll come back. And every single night I still burn a letter in my head that I already burned five years ago."

Rhett didn't say anything. He'd never heard her say that many words about it at once.

"I need to see what he became," she said finally. "What I left behind. Then I walk away from it. My own terms this time."

Rhett stared at her like he was trying to find the lie in that sentence. He couldn't. That was the problem. It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the whole truth either.

"And if seeing him doesn't fix anything," he said. "If it just rips the stitches back out."

"Then I sew myself back up again. I've done it before."

He shook his head slowly, not in disagreement, more like a man watching someone walk toward a cliff he already knows he can't stop.

She picked up her pen.

"Don't," Rhett said.

She signed it anyway.

The ink was still wet when something under the folded contract caught her eye. A second piece of paper, smaller, tucked beneath it like it had been slipped in without either of them noticing.

Same wax. Same seal.

Her stomach dropped before she even reached for it.

"What," Rhett said, watching her face change.

She didn't answer. She turned the paper over slowly, like it might burn her fingers.

One word was written on the front in handwriting she'd know anywhere. Looser than the contract, faster, like whoever wrote it had been in a hurry to get it down before they lost the nerve.

Eli.

Rhett leaned in to look and went completely still beside her.

"That's not possible," he said. "Nobody outside this outpost knows his name. Nobody outside this room, really."

Ayla's fingers tightened around the edge of the paper until the parchment creased under her grip.

"Somebody does," she said.

Rhett stood up fast, chair scraping hard against the floor. "Who brought this. Who delivered the contract."

"Same broker. Standard drop point."

"That means someone at the drop point knew to include it. Or someone along the chain read it and decided to pass it on." His voice had gone sharp, protective, the tone he only used when Eli's name came up. "I'm pulling the broker in tonight."

"No." Ayla stood too, holding the letter against her chest without meaning to. "If we spook him, we lose the only thread we have."

"And if we don't, whoever sent this already knows more about your son than we do about them."

Ayla looked down at the small, careful E written in handwriting that used to write her love letters.

Her hands were still shaking when she finally spoke again.

"I know."