Selah had already gone to her dawn training session, her absence leaving the room quieter than usual and giving Dani the window she needed.

Dani knocked once, then let herself in the way she always did, the knock serving only as notice.

She had a folder under her arm.

"You had her info?" Soren said.

"I had everyone’s info," she said, setting the folder on the desk, "I just don’t usually tell you what I get."

Dani’s moth had been on the ceiling of the reading room for most of the monitor visits, and though Soren noticed it, he decided not to point it out.

He’d assumed Dani was reading the room.

"Sit," he said.

She sat on the edge of the bed instead of the chair, putting her close as she opened the folder across her knees.

◆◆◆◆

"She has a pattern," Dani said. "She doesn’t think she does."

"Everyone thinks they don’t."

"She arrives nine minutes early every time, not eight, not ten," Dani said, turning a page, "she sets the folder down closed and doesn’t open it until you’ve said the first real thing, because she’s already memorized the contents."

A field officer who performed reading her brief wanted you to think the brief mattered more than she did.

"Her ears move before her face does," Dani said, "when you mentioned Joan staying undesignated, they moved under her hair before she chose to write it down."

"She’s a tamer."

"She’s a tamer assigned to a tamer,"

Dani said, looking at him, "they sent someone who knows what a bond feels like because they wanted readings a clerk couldn’t take."

Hearing Dani confirm it from a different direction made it harder to dismiss as a coincidence.

"Here’s the part you don’t have," Dani said.

She turned the folder so it faced him.

The page was filled with her small, even handwriting, listing dates and times alongside a single column of marks.

"She files every night during the same window," Dani said, tapping the column.

"I clocked the moth on the relay traffic, and though I can’t read content, I can see where it’s going by how her frequency leans toward it."

"And Voss leans."

"Voss leans hard," Dani said, her finger stopping at the bottom of the page, "not toward the Council building, but toward a single office inside it, the same one every night."

"Whose."

"Vasquez," she said, sounding tired of carrying the name.

It wasn’t the father, whose name was over the door, but a specific office belonging to his son.

This was an office. One office. A son’s office.

"Lior," Soren said.

"The reports go to Lior," Dani said, "she thinks she’s reporting to the Council, but for her, the Council is just his door."

He stood and went to the window, watching the yard pale with morning as he ran the situation forward.

A monitor who didn’t know whose hand she was really in.

The classification fight and the voluntary cooperation offer had both been Lior’s traps, using the Council’s letterhead to take his people apart.

He’d answered with a third door two days ago, and now he knew the interest Voss showed had gone straight to the man who wanted him gone.

It had gone to one office and one man who already wanted him gone.

"She doesn’t know," he said.

"No," Dani said, appearing near him, "I read her when the request about Joan was flagged, and she was confused, she doesn’t know she’s a knife someone else is holding."

"That’s usable."

"I thought you’d say that."

◆◆◆◆

He turned and found her closer than needed, the folder held against her chest with both arms.

"You’ve been carrying this for a week," he said.

"Eight days."

"Why bring it now?"

She looked at the folder instead of at him.

"Everyone talked about the tournament like it’s the stake," she said, her voice level, "but the real stake is the man writing the reports nobody else is reading."

"You did the work nobody assigned you," he said.

"I assign myself." She finally looked up. "Someone has to log the logger."

He took the folder out of her arms and set it on the sill.

He put his hand on the back of her neck, under her moth-fine hair, and she went still as he watched her work out the difference between being read and being held.

"I see you," he said.

She pressed her forehead to his collarbone, and the moth came down off the ceiling to settle on his wrist, its wings finally folded shut.

He pulled her in the rest of the way.

Her body came against his without resistance.

The folder slid off the sill and hit the floor.

He walked her back to the bed and she went with him, sitting on the edge as he set the moth on the desk.

Then he pushed her jacket off her shoulders and she let it fall.

Her shirt came next.

Soren leaned down and took one of her nipples in his mouth.

She was sensitive there.

Her body jerked once and she let out a low groan but didn’t say anything.

He sucked harder on the other one.

She groaned again, quieter this time, and her hands tightened on the edge of the bed.

"I’m going to guess that you want me to continue," he said.

He got her skirt zipper open and down.

She reached for his belt.

He let her.

When he pushed his cock in she was ready and tight and she made the small sound again against his shoulder.

"Ahhh..."

Soren set the pace, a steady, deep pace, one hand in her hair and the other under her thigh as she tightened around him.

"Ummm..."

She came fast the first time, pussy clenching hard on his cock, and he didn’t stop, just watched her face as the bond opened wider than an indirect line had any right to.

[DING! — Bond alignment complete. Dani Sloan. Obsession Index: 38/100 → 44/100. Indirect pathway stabilized into direct channel. New function logged: moth relay now routes through bearer frequency. Physical alignment deepened the line.]

He finished inside her and stayed a moment, her breathing uneven against his neck, before pulling out to stand.

She stayed on the bed longer than she needed to. Her hands moved slow when she reached for her clothes.

The moth stayed still on the desk.

"Nothing yet," he said. "About Lior."

"He thinks his knife doesn’t know whose hand it’s in."

"I’d hate to correct him before it’s useful."

She nodded once.

The moth landed back on her shoulder, and though it looked the same, the established hierarchy line meant everything had changed.

[DING! — Pack structure update. Dani Sloan: indirect to direct. Hierarchy line established. Obsession Index aggregate: stable.]

Soren picked the folder up off the floor and put it back on the desk.