Not the ideal start to the week.
I kept my face. The face had been my entire training since I was twelve years old. It had survived my father’s councils, three assassination attempts, one disastrous reception in Reykjavik, and the Duchess of Trondheim asking me, at seventeen, whether my father had taught me to smile like that or whether I had learned it from a mirror.
It wasn’t going to fail me now.
I shook Yuki Mendel-Ashenmere’s hand. I greeted the council. The translator from the State Department looked at me like she had me solved. I would remember that.
I kept moving even though the instinct under my skin was only interested in Catalina Cordero.
This was inconvenient.
I crossed the floor away from the translator without looking at her.
The not-looking was work.
I would’ve preferred never to look at anything else as long as I lived, which struck me as melodramatic, physiologically compromising, and absolutely true.
Bjorn was already at the bar with a glass of water in his hand. “Rhain.”
“Bjorn.”
“You saw that.”
“I did.”
He didn’t pretend not to know. He was old, and old shifters didn’t pretend. The calm eyes that had watched my father grow up were now watching me unravel.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I want to walk back across this room, claim her in front of the entire Ashenmere council, and start a war with the United States government.”
“That would be a choice.”
“The wrong choice.”
“It’s encouraging that you noticed.” He drank his water.
I didn’t have water. I should’ve had water. The handlers were going to get a memo about that.
“The Ashenmere enforcer,” I said.
Bjorn’s mouth didn’t move. His eyes did. “Yes.”
“He felt it too.”
“He felt something, though he has not declared it.”
“He isn’t going to declare tome, Bjorn.”
“No.But he hasn’t gone to his elders either.”
I glanced toward Yuki Mendel-Ashenmere. She was speaking to one of her councilors. Calm. Precise. Either she didn’t know, or she knew and was enjoying the private collapse of everyone’s planning.
With Yuki, both were possible.
“She doesn’t know,” Bjorn said.
“How can you possibly tell that from across the room?”