Spencer's office smells like cedar and legal briefs and the specific absence of me. Walking through the door after three days feels like stepping into a room where the oxygen has been calibrated for my lungs—every molecule in a ratio my body recognises before my brain can object.
All three of them are here. Spencer behind his desk, sleeves rolled to the forearm in a way I have catalogued against my will and filed under evidence of personal failure.
Blake sits at the conference table with documents fanned like a war room. Miles is by the window, pretending to check his phone with the dedication of a man who heard my heels in the corridor thirty seconds ago and has been rehearsing nonchalance ever since.
Their combined scent hits me and my body commits treason—every muscle I've held tense for three days releases at once, shoulders dropping, breathing deepening, the ache behind my ribs quieting to a hum so sudden the relief nearly buckles my knees.
I hate how obvious it is. I hate more that I can see the same relief on Miles's face when he looks up—raw, unhidden, written across features that haven't been sleeping.
The shadows under his eyes match mine, and the recognition of that shared wreckage does something to my chest I refuse to name while maintaining a professional sitting posture.
"Bailee." Spencer gestures to the chair with the professional neutrality of a man whose scent is currently dismantling my composure from the inside out. "Thank you for coming in."
"You said the hearing was moved up." I sit, cross my legs, fold my hands—full armour. "I'm here for the prep. That's what this is."
"That's what this is." He holds my gaze one beat longer than professional, then opens a folder. "Blake, walk her through the strategy."
Blake starts the meeting like nothing happened—professionalism or self-defence, and knowing Blake, both in equal measure. He walks me through the legal framework with the precision of a man who has been building this case in the dark for three days.
"Celeste's team will argue standing first." He slides a document toward me. "No recognised bloodline, no pack status—same grounds, but they'll push for strict interpretation."
"And our counter?" I scan the page, and the quality of the work pulls me forward despite myself—thorough, sharp, every precedent annotated with the meticulous care of a man who channels what he can't say into what he can do.
"Historical precedent." He taps a highlighted passage. "Three prior cases where half-blood lineage was recognised for inheritance. Two overturned, one held—with almost identical facts to yours."
"Almost." I look up. "What's the gap?"
"The prior case didn't involve a contested will or a stepmother funded by personal vendetta." His mouth thins. "We're building around it."
Spencer adds context with controlled precision. "Seven council members vote. Three are sympathetic—Hargrove, Tanaka, and Bennett. Two are in Celeste's pocket. The remaining two are undecided."
"So Celeste needs to flip one." I do the math and it tastes like metal on my tongue. "That's not a margin, Spencer. That's a tightrope over a canyon."
"It's the tightrope we have." His voice carries the weight of a man who doesn't sugarcoat. "Bennett is our best angle—she argued for expanded bloodline recognition at last year's summit. If we present your case as precedent-aligned rather than exceptional, she'll carry the undecideds."
"And if she doesn't?" I ask, because someone in this room should say the quiet part.
"Then we appeal." Blake, from the table, without looking up. "But we won't need to." The confidence in his voice has the structural quality of a man who builds cases the way other people build bridges—to hold weight, not to impress.
Miles hasn't spoken. He's been watching me—not with Spencer's analysis or Blake's strategic assessment, but the open attention of a man trying to respect a boundary his body is screaming against.
When there's a pause between documents, he speaks. "I'm sorry. Not about the hearing—about everything."
The room shifts. Blake's pen stills mid-annotation. Spencer's eyes move to his brother with an expression I file under things I'll think about at three a.m. when I have fewer witnesses.
"I understand if you don't forgive us yet." Miles leans forward, elbows on knees, and his voice has the quality of something rehearsed so many times it's come back around to raw. "I'm not asking for that."
"I want you to know the waiting isn't a strategy." His hands are open on his knees, palms up, and the vulnerability makes my throat tighten. "It's because you asked for space, and I'm trying to be someone who respects what you ask for—even when it's the hardest thing I've ever done."
The silence after his words has texture—warm and raw in a way that makes my nails dig into my palms to keep from reaching across the distance.
Blake looks at Miles, then at me. "I'm not going to make a speech." Flat, direct, Blake at his most unadorned. "The vitamins were my idea, and I don't apologise for that."
Spencer says nothing. But his eyes hold mine across the desk and in the silence is everything he told me in the confrontation—the admission, the guilt, the refusal to dress it up.
Spencer Wallace's silence has always said more than most people's speeches. Right now it's saying something that compresses my ribs around my lungs until breathing requires conscious effort.
I don't forgive them. Not yet—the betrayal is still sitting in my chest beside the missing, two tenants occupying the same apartment, and neither one has agreed to vacate.
"I'm in the room." I look at each of them and my voice comes out steadier than the rest of me. "And that's where I'm staying. Can we get back to the hearing?"
Blake nods once and slides the next document across the table. The meeting continues—precedents, counterarguments, council seating arrangements, the specific choreography of how I'll enter the chamber and where I'll sit.
The professional rhythm of it settles around us like scaffolding. We lean against it without admitting that the structure we're really holding up is each other.
Midway through a precedent case about bloodline verification, I reach into my bag for my phone charger. My fingers brush something stiff and rectangular against the lining—the envelope, still sealed, tucked where I put it days ago.
My hand flinches back. I pull the charger out too fast, the bag shifting on the table, the flap falling open for half a second before I catch it.
Blake's eyes track the movement—quick, lateral, the reflexive surveillance of a man who notices everything and comments on almost nothing. His gaze drops to the bag, holds one beat, then returns to the document without comment.
I plug in my phone and stare at the precedent case until the words stop swimming. The envelope presses against the lining of my bag like a question with its own pulse.
Somewhere in that sealed paper is an answer that will change everything for one of the three men in this room—each of them pretending, alongside me, that we're only here for the hearing.
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