The interview room had been built for humans.
That was the first problem.
The second problem was the chair.
Thane sat in it anyway, shoulders hunched forward, brown fur brushing both sides of the cheap plastic backrest while his knees crowded the underside of the table. His blue eyes stayed fixed on the mirror across the room, the one everyone pretended was just a mirror and not a window with three cops standing behind it trying to decide whether he was a suspect, a witness, or a problem they did not have a large enough cage for.
Beside him, Gabriel looked entirely too comfortable.
That was Gabriel’s gift. Black fur, blue eyes, lean posture, one ankle crossed over the other as if they were waiting for a table at a bad diner instead of sitting in a police station at six in the morning. He had found the one chair in the room that did not squeak under werewolf weight, which Thane suspected was less luck and more quiet arrogance.
Mark sat on Thane’s other side, gray and white fur neatly groomed despite the hour, brown eyes moving with careful precision from the camera in the upper corner, to the recorder on the table, to the detective’s notepad, to the door, and back to the recorder.
“Everything in this room is recording,” Mark said quietly.
Gabriel glanced up at the camera. “Even the chair screaming under Thane?”
“It may become evidence,” Mark said.
Thane growled low in his throat.
Gabriel smiled without looking at him. “See? Audio confirmed.”
The detective across from them did not flinch.
Thane gave her that much credit.
She was maybe in her mid-forties, dark hair pulled back tight, sleeves rolled to the elbows, badge clipped at her belt instead of displayed on her chest. Detective Mara Voss had introduced herself five minutes earlier with the tired calm of someone who had already seen too much before sunrise. She had not offered them coffee.
That was probably wise.
The man beside her, Detective Owen Rusk, looked older and heavier in the eyes. He had the gray skin of a man who had lived under fluorescent lights and bad news for too long. A file folder sat closed in front of him. His hand rested on top of it.
Not gripping.
Not guarding.
Just there.
Thane did not like the file.
He knew what was in it. Maybe not every detail. But enough.
Detective Voss folded her hands on the table.
“Let’s talk about the little girl,” she said.
The room changed.
The jokes stopped.
Even Gabriel’s expression lost its lazy edge.
Mark went very still.
Thane’s claws flexed once beneath the table, the tips clicking softly against the underside. The sound was small, but sharp enough to make Detective Voss’s eyes drop for half a second.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Good detective, Thane thought.
Bad morning for it.
“What little girl?” Gabriel asked.
His voice was smooth. Almost bored.
Thane did not look at him. Neither did Mark.
Detective Rusk’s mouth twitched, but not into a smile.
“Careful,” Rusk said. “That answer only works if you don’t care whether we believe you.”
Gabriel tilted his head. “I care deeply. That’s why I’m trying to establish which little girl you mean. There are, sadly, several missing persons cases in this county.”
Mark breathed out through his nose.
“Technically accurate,” he murmured.
“Not helping,” Thane muttered.
“Usually my line,” Mark said.
Voss opened the folder.
There was a photo on top.
She did not slide it across the table. Thane appreciated that more than he wanted to.
The girl in the picture was five years old. Maybe just barely. Blonde hair, round cheeks, missing front tooth. Pink shirt with a cartoon unicorn on it. She was smiling at someone outside the frame with the absolute trust of a child who had not yet learned the world had teeth.
Thane looked away first.
Not from guilt.
From anger.
“Emma Kincaid,” Voss said. “Five years old. Missing for fifteen days. Taken from her grandmother’s backyard while her mother was inside packing her lunch.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened once, very slightly.
Mark’s ears angled back.
Thane stared at the mirror.
Voss continued, voice even. Professional. Thin at the edges.
“She was found at three-seventeen this morning sitting on her parents’ front porch wrapped in a green wool blanket. Dehydrated. Malnourished. Bruised. Scared half out of her mind.” Voss paused. “Alive.”
No one spoke.
The word sat between them.
Alive.
That was the only word in the whole room that mattered.
Rusk leaned back in his chair.
“Her parents found her after she rang the doorbell,” he said. “Security camera caught the porch. She comes into frame from the left, climbs the steps, rings the bell, and sits down. No car. No adult. No visible escort.”
Gabriel’s eyes flicked to Mark.
Mark said nothing.
Voss drew another photograph from the file and placed it on the table, still closer to her side than theirs. It was a still image from a doorbell camera. Grainy. Night vision. A tiny girl wrapped in a blanket too large for her, hair tangled, bare feet dirty, one hand pressed to the doorframe.
Thane’s stomach twisted.
He had seen that porch.
He had seen her feet.
He had seen the way she had clutched the blanket like letting go would make the dark take her back.
Voss watched him.
Thane did not look at her.
“She told her parents someone brought her home,” Voss said.
“Good,” Gabriel said softly.
“Very good,” Rusk agreed.
The older detective tapped one finger against the folder.
“She also told them who.”
Thane kept his breathing steady.
Gabriel did not move.
Mark looked down at the table.
Voss slid a printed transcript forward. Not all the way. Just enough for the top lines to be visible.
Thane saw childish words typed by an adult hand.
Big wolves.
Bad man.
They carried me.
One had blue eyes.
The room became too small.
Gabriel exhaled through his nose.
“Well,” he said, “blue eyes. That narrows it to half the people at a rodeo and every husky on the internet.”
Mark closed his eyes.
“Gabriel,” he said.
“What? It’s a valid statistical point.”
Thane finally looked at him. “Shut up.”
Gabriel leaned back. “That’s his indoor voice.”
Rusk gave the smallest huff. It was almost a laugh, but too tired to make it all the way.
Voss did not laugh.
“She said there were three wolves,” Voss said. “Big ones. Bigger than people. One brown. One black. One gray and white.”
Gabriel looked down at himself, then at Mark, then at Thane.
“Unfortunate,” he said.
Mark’s ears flattened. “Please stop talking.”
“I’m handling the tension.”
“You’re manufacturing evidence.”
“I am absolutely not. I’m manufacturing plausible annoyance.”
Voss leaned forward.
“Emma said the wolves saved her from the bad man.”
That ended Gabriel’s performance.
For a moment, the only sound was the faint buzz of the fluorescent light overhead.
Thane could hear the people behind the mirror breathing. Three of them. One had a cough he was trying to suppress. One smelled like coffee and wintergreen gum. One smelled like old rain, gun oil, and a grief that had gone stale from being carried too long.
Thane knew that smell.
Every cop in the building probably did.
Voss closed the folder halfway.
“Do you know who the bad man was?” she asked.
“No,” Mark said.
Too fast.
Thane looked at him.
Mark’s face remained composed, but his claws had curled lightly against his palms.
Gabriel answered more carefully. “We know what everyone knows.”
“And what does everyone know?”
Gabriel’s smile came back, but there was no humor in it now.
“That Harold Caine had very expensive attorneys.”
Rusk’s eyes lowered.
Voss did not react.
Harold Caine.
The name did what names like that always did. It took a monster and dressed him up like a taxpayer.
Developer. Donor. Businessman. Church volunteer when cameras were around. Friend of judges. Friend of commissioners. Friend of anyone who liked campaign checks and steak dinners. A man who had been too close to too many missing children and too far from enough evidence to matter.
Cases had been built.
Cases had fallen apart.
Witnesses had gone quiet.
Search warrants had come too late.
Evidence had disappeared, been mishandled, been ruled inadmissible, or been buried under the weight of lawyers who wore five-thousand-dollar suits and spoke in polished circles until truth became a technicality.
Everyone knew.
Nobody could prove.
Until the forest proved something in a language no court wanted to translate.
Voss turned a page in the file.
“At four-fifty-two this morning, deputies located a cabin eleven miles north of Lake Carl Blackwell. Remote property. Registered through two shell companies and a trust connected to Caine’s business manager.”
Mark’s eyes sharpened despite himself.
“That fast?” he asked.
Rusk looked at him.
Mark shifted slightly in his chair, suddenly aware he had said it out loud.
Voss answered anyway.
“Fast enough when a missing child comes home after fifteen days and gives us enough to start looking.” Her gaze stayed on him. “You always notice details like that, Mark?”
Mark’s ears angled back.
“I notice when people skip over the important parts.”
Gabriel glanced at him. “He also notices when restaurants alphabetize the dessert menu wrong.”
“They shouldn’t do that,” Mark said.
For the first time, something almost like amusement touched Voss’s face.
“Good,” she said. “Then notice this. That cabin wasn’t a rumor anymore. It was real. And everything inside it mattered.”
Rusk pulled another photo from the file, then stopped.
He looked at the three werewolves. Really looked at them.
Then he placed the photo facedown.
Thane appreciated that too.
“We found Caine in the woods about two hundred yards from the cabin,” Rusk said.
He did not say shredded.
He did not say pieces.
He did not say the blood had frozen black into the leaves or that the trees around the clearing still smelled like terror, rage, and old copper.
He did not need to.
“Animal attack?” Gabriel asked.
Rusk looked at him.
“Medical examiner hasn’t made a ruling.”
“Coyotes are getting ambitious.”
Mark made a small sound. It might have been pain.
Voss’s gaze cut toward Gabriel. “You think this is funny?”
Gabriel’s eyes went cold.
“No,” he said. “I think if I stop making jokes, I may say something honest. And I suspect that would be inconvenient for everyone in this room.”
Silence.
Good answer, Thane thought.
Dangerous answer.
But good.
Voss held his stare for a few seconds, then looked back at the file.
“The cabin had restraints,” she said. “A small bed. Children’s clothing. Several locks installed on the outside of interior doors.” Her voice remained level through force alone. “We found evidence connected to at least three open cases.”
Rusk rubbed both hands over his face.
Thane heard the scrape of stubble against palm.
“Three confirmed so far,” Rusk said. “Maybe more once the lab gets through it.”
Thane wanted to bite something.
He wanted the table between them gone. He wanted the mirrored glass gone. He wanted the whole clean little room gone so everyone could stop pretending the world was built out of paperwork and start admitting some men only understood one language.
Mark’s hand touched his arm under the table.
Not hard.
Just enough.
Straight and narrow, that touch said.
Thane drew in a slow breath.
He smelled Mark’s worry. Gabriel’s controlled anger. Voss’s exhaustion. Rusk’s grief.
And beneath it all, under the bleach and stale coffee and rain-damp coats of the police station, he smelled relief.
No one wanted to say it.
But it was there.
Harold Caine would never touch another child.
No lawyer could undo that.
Voss slid one final page across the table.
This one came all the way to their side.
It was a blurry trail camera image.
Three shapes moved between trees.
Huge.
Low.
Almost impossible to define in the grainy dark.
One darker than the rest. One broad and brown. One pale gray-white blur near the rear.
No faces. No scale reference. No timestamp visible in the crop.
Just ghosts with claws.
Gabriel leaned over it.
“Could be bears,” he said.
Mark stared at him.
Gabriel shrugged. “Large, organized, morally outraged bears.”
Thane snorted despite himself.
Rusk looked away.
The detective behind the mirror with the wintergreen gum coughed once, poorly disguising what might have been a laugh.
Voss pressed her fingers against her forehead for half a second.
“Do you three understand how serious this is?”
“Yes,” Mark said immediately.
“No,” Thane said.
Gabriel and Mark both looked at him.
Thane leaned forward. The chair protested under him.
“I understand that a little girl is home,” he said. “I understand that you found the cabin. I understand that you found proof he was what everyone said he was. I understand Harold Caine is dead.” His blue eyes locked on Voss. “What I don’t understand is why you sound disappointed.”
The room held its breath.
Voss did not blink.
“I’m not disappointed he’s dead,” she said.
Thane’s ears angled forward.
Rusk looked at her, but she did not look back.
“I spent eighteen months trying to build a case that would survive his attorneys,” Voss said. “I watched parents sit in rooms like this while men in suits explained why their pain had insufficient evidentiary value. I watched a mother vomit in a courthouse bathroom after a judge threw out the one piece of evidence she thought would finally matter.” Her voice tightened. “So no, I am not disappointed Harold Caine is dead.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
Voss leaned in.
“I’m disappointed that I can’t put him on trial.”
That landed differently.
Thane felt it, though he did not want to.
Mark looked down.
Gabriel’s expression shifted, the sarcasm fading into something more thoughtful.
Voss tapped the folder.
“You think death is the only justice that counts because it’s clean. It’s final. It feels honest.” Her eyes hardened. “But there are parents who needed to hear him sentenced. There are families who needed his name dragged into daylight. There are other victims who may never know if he was the reason their child didn’t come home. And now every answer we get depends on what survived in that cabin and what the lab can pull from it.”
Thane’s jaw worked.
He had no answer ready.
He hated that.
Rusk spoke next, quieter.
“And there’s another problem.”
Gabriel glanced at him. “Only one?”
Rusk ignored it.
“You three keep showing up near things you shouldn’t know about. Domestic calls where the suspect suddenly decides moving to Texas sounds healthy. Drug dealers with broken hands and improved manners.”
Thane’s eyes narrowed.
“Sounds like you’ve had a productive year.”
“Sounds like we’ve had civilians interfering with police work,” Voss said.
“Sounds like people needed help.”
“Both can be true,” Mark said quietly.
Thane looked at him.
Mark did not back down.
The room went still again, but this time for a different reason.
Gabriel turned his head slightly, watching Mark now with interest.
Mark folded his hands on the table.
“If someone helped that girl,” Mark said carefully, “then she is alive because of it. That matters.”
Thane stared at him.
“But?”
Mark’s ears tilted back.
“But people who decide they’re the only ones allowed to fix things usually become dangerous. Maybe not at first. Maybe not when everyone agrees the bad guy deserved it.” He glanced at the folder, then back at Thane. “But eventually.”
The room went quiet.
Thane’s jaw tightened.
“You taking their side?”
“I’m saying there’s a difference between protecting people and becoming something people need protection from.”
The words hit harder than Thane expected.
Gabriel looked between them and gave a quiet, humorless smile.
“Well,” he said. “That was unpleasantly mature.”
Mark sighed. “Thank you.”
“It was not a compliment.”
“I know.”
Rusk watched them with an unreadable expression.
Then he closed the folder.
That sound felt final.
“You’re not under arrest,” he said.
Thane’s eyes shifted to him.
“Should we be?”
Voss answered.
“If we had enough to arrest you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Gabriel spread his hands. “Refreshing honesty.”
“We have a traumatized five-year-old talking about wolves,” Voss said. “A blurry trail camera. No usable tracks because the ground was frozen and half the search team contaminated the area before anyone knew what they were looking at. No witness who can place you at the cabin. No murder weapon because the alleged murder weapon would apparently be teeth.”
Gabriel raised one finger. “Allegedly.”
Mark put his face in one hand.
Thane almost smiled.
Almost.
Voss’s eyes flicked toward Gabriel. “You’re very funny.”
“I get that a lot.”
“Not from people who like you, I’m guessing.”
That time, Gabriel smiled for real.
“Detective, I’m wounded.”
“Not according to the medical examiner,” she said.
Rusk made a sound into his fist.
Thane decided he liked Voss a little.
That was annoying.
Voss stood.
“So here’s where we are. We can’t prove you were there. We can’t prove what happened to Caine. And frankly, there are people in this building who do not seem especially motivated to try.”
The mirror remained silent.
“But,” she continued, “if you keep doing this, eventually you’ll make a mistake we can prove. Or you’ll get someone killed. Or you’ll ruin a case. Or all three.”
Thane rose slowly.
The chair scraped backward.
Rusk’s eyes flicked to Thane’s hands, then back to his face.
Voss did not move.
Thane towered over her. He knew what he looked like. Brown fur. Blue eyes. Teeth too visible when he spoke. A predator shape wearing a man’s anger.
“You think we’re the problem?” he asked.
“No,” Voss said. “I think you’re a solution with no rules.”
That stopped him cold.
Gabriel uncrossed his ankle.
Mark looked up.
Voss reached into the folder again and pulled out a thin packet of papers. She set it on the table.
Not evidence.
Forms.
Thane looked at them like she had dropped a dead rat between them.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Information on CLEET certification,” Voss said.
Gabriel blinked.
Then he laughed once.
“Oh, that is funny.”
Mark leaned forward despite himself.
Thane did not.
“CLEET?” he said.
Rusk nodded. “Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training. State certification. Academy. Firearms. Law. Procedure. Defensive tactics. Reports. All the boring things that keep people out of prison for the wrong reasons and put them in prison for the right ones.”
“I know what CLEET is,” Thane said.
“Good,” Voss said. “Then you know it exists for a reason.”
Gabriel picked up the packet and flipped through the first few pages.
“You’re recruiting us?”
“No,” Voss said.
Rusk shrugged. “A little.”
Voss shot him a look.
He lifted both hands. “What? We are.”
She looked back at the werewolves.
“I am telling you that whatever happened last night cannot become a pattern,” Voss said. “Not for you. Not for us. Not for this city.”
Thane’s ears angled forward.
“You got a better idea?”
“Yes,” Voss said. “Stop working from the dark.”
Gabriel gave her a thin smile. “We weren’t aware we were working.”
“No,” Voss said. “I’m sure you were just out for a peaceful moonlit stroll near a hidden cabin connected to a missing child.”
Mark looked down at the table.
Thane’s jaw tightened.
Voss let the silence sit for a moment.
“You want to understand why we do things the hard way? Learn it. You want to help without making every cop in this building pretend they don’t know what they know? Learn it. You want to prove you’re more than teeth in the dark?” She tapped the packet once. “Learn it.”
Gabriel glanced at Mark. “She’s good.”
Mark was already looking at the packet despite himself.
Thane did not touch it.
“You think a classroom fixes what’s wrong out there?”
“No,” Voss said. “But neither do claws.”
Thane’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
Gabriel’s eyebrows lifted.
Mark looked almost impressed.
“She’s not wrong,” Mark said.
Thane turned on him. “You enjoying this?”
“No,” Mark said. “I’m deeply uncomfortable. But she’s not wrong.”
Rusk stood too, slower than Voss.
“There’s a captain who thinks this is insane,” he said. “There’s a deputy chief who thinks it’s political suicide. There’s a city attorney who may actually burst a vein if this conversation becomes official.”
“And you?” Gabriel asked.
Rusk looked toward the mirror.
For a second, the tired mask slipped.
“I think Emma Kincaid is home.”
No one spoke.
Rusk swallowed.
“I also think Detective Voss is right. We can’t have shadows doing police work. Even shadows with good intentions.”
Voss picked up the CLEET packet and held it out.
Mark took it first.
Of course he did.
Thane stared at him.
Mark adjusted the papers neatly against the table edge.
“There would be prerequisites,” Mark said. “Background checks. Psychological evaluations. Physical standards. Agency sponsorship depending on route. Field training after certification.”
Gabriel stared.
“You read one paragraph.”
“I skimmed.”
“You skim like a tax auditor hunts prey.”
Mark ignored him.
Thane looked at Voss.
“You really think a police academy is going to know what to do with three werewolves?”
Voss’s mouth twitched.
“No,” she said. “I think it’ll be the best entertainment law enforcement training has seen in years.”
Gabriel nodded slowly. “I’m listening.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Thane said.
Rusk walked to the door and opened it.
The hallway beyond was busy in the way police stations were always busy: phones ringing, printers coughing, radios murmuring, boots crossing tile, someone laughing too loudly at something not funny enough because exhaustion made everything either hilarious or unbearable.
Voss stepped aside.
“You’re free to go,” she said.
Thane moved first.
He had to turn slightly to clear the doorway. Gabriel followed, packet now stolen from Mark’s hands and held loosely at his side. Mark immediately took it back without looking, which made Gabriel smile.
The three of them stepped into the hall, clawed feet quiet against the tile despite their size.
The station noticed.
Not obviously. Cops were too practiced for that. But conversations dipped half a beat. Eyes moved. A young officer at a desk pretended to study his report while watching over the top of his monitor. A dispatcher looked up, then away, then back again.
Werewolves were rare enough to draw attention anywhere.
Three fully-shifted werewolves walking out of an interview room at dawn drew more than attention.
They drew questions no one wanted answered on paper.
Halfway down the hall, Thane caught the scent from behind the mirror.
Old rain. Gun oil. Stale grief.
A man stood outside a side office, one shoulder against the doorframe, coffee untouched in his hand. Late fifties maybe. Brown skin weathered around the eyes. Mustache gone mostly gray. Tie loose. Shirt wrinkled. Badge on his belt.
The kind of detective who had not gone home because going home meant the case might follow him there.
His eyes met Thane’s.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then the detective gave a single nod.
Small.
Controlled.
Not gratitude.
Not approval.
Not anything that could be written in a report.
Just a nod.
Thane felt it more than he wanted to.
Gabriel saw it too. His expression softened, only for a second.
Mark lowered his eyes respectfully as they passed.
No one said a word.
Outside, dawn had turned the sky pale gray. The parking lot smelled of wet asphalt, exhaust, and the weak coffee someone had spilled near the steps. The city was waking up like nothing had happened. Like a little girl had not come home wrapped in a green blanket. Like a dead man had not been found in the trees. Like three werewolves had not walked out of a police station with their freedom, their secrets, and an application packet none of them had asked for.
Gabriel stopped beside Thane’s truck and looked down at the papers in Mark’s hands.
“So,” he said. “Police academy.”
“No,” Thane said.
Mark looked up. “No?”
“No.”
Gabriel leaned against the truck. “That was quick. Very open-minded.”
Thane pointed toward the station. “They drag us in, dance around accusing us of killing that piece of filth, then hand us homework?”
Mark’s ears angled forward.
“Technically, it is not homework until we enroll.”
Gabriel nodded. “Comforting distinction.”
Thane glared at both of them.
Mark held up the packet.
“She was right.”
Thane’s growl returned.
Mark did not retreat.
“She was,” he said. “Emma is alive. That matters most. But if there are other victims tied to that cabin, evidence matters too. Procedure matters. Reports matter. The law matters.”
“The law let him walk.”
“Yes,” Mark said. “And maybe if people like us understood it better, we could help make sure the next one doesn’t.”
That one landed.
Thane looked away.
The station doors opened behind them. Voss stepped outside, hands in her coat pockets. She did not approach at first. She let the cold air move between them.
Then she came down the steps.
“Forgot one thing,” she said.
Gabriel looked at her. “If it’s coffee, apology accepted.”
“It’s not coffee.”
“Then this relationship is already strained.”
Voss ignored him and looked at Thane.
“You were right about one thing in there.”
Thane waited.
“I’m not disappointed Caine is dead.”
Her voice was quiet enough that it did not carry to the officers smoking near the far end of the lot.
“But I have spent my whole career trying to prove that monsters don’t get to decide what justice is.” Her eyes held his. “That includes the ones I agree with.”
Thane said nothing.
Voss pulled a business card from her pocket and tucked it under the clip on the CLEET packet.
“There’s an informational session next week,” she said. “If you show up, ask for Sergeant Hale. He owes me a favor and has bad judgment.”
Gabriel looked delighted. “Our kind of man.”
“He’ll hate you,” Voss said.
“Also our kind of man.”
Mark studied the card.
Voss turned to leave.
Thane stopped her with one word.
“Detective.”
She looked back.
He wanted to say a lot of things.
That Caine deserved worse.
That Emma had cried without making a sound.
That the cabin had smelled like fear layered over fear.
That when they found her, she had asked if the bad man could still find her, and Thane had promised no because in that moment there was no law in the world stronger than the promise of a wolf to a child.
He said none of it.
Instead he asked, “How is she?”
Voss’s expression changed.
Not much.
Enough.
“She’s with her parents,” she said. “Doctors say she’ll recover physically.”
Physically.
The word did a lot of work.
Thane nodded once.
Voss held his gaze a moment longer.
Then she said, “For what it’s worth, she told her mother the brown wolf had kind eyes.”
Gabriel turned slowly toward Thane.
Mark’s ears lifted.
Thane stared at Voss.
“She was traumatized,” he said.
“Obviously,” Gabriel said. “No reliable witness would say that.”
Mark made the mistake of smiling.
Thane bared his teeth at both of them.
Voss actually smiled then.
Barely.
“Try not to get arrested before next week,” she said.
Gabriel put a hand over his heart. “Detective, we’ll do our best.”
“That’s what worries me.”
She went back inside.
The glass doors closed behind her.
For a while, none of them moved.
Traffic hissed on the street beyond the lot. Somewhere nearby, a siren wailed once and faded. The city kept breathing. The world kept turning. Bad men still existed. Lost children still needed finding. Rules still stood between rage and justice, thin as paper and twice as easy to tear.
Mark looked down at the packet again.
Gabriel looked at Thane.
Thane looked at the police station.
“No,” he said again.
Gabriel waited.
Mark waited.
Thane hated them both.
He held out his hand.
Mark gave him the packet.
Thane glanced at the top page. Training requirements. Application steps. Standards. Dates. Deadlines. A whole ugly machine of rules, tests, instructors, reports, and people telling him when he was allowed to use his teeth.
He imagined Detective Voss across an interview table.
He imagined the old detective’s silent nod.
He imagined Emma Kincaid on her porch in a green blanket, tiny hand on a doorbell, alive because the dark had teeth too.
Thane folded the packet once and tucked it under his arm.
Gabriel smiled.
Mark wisely did not.
Thane opened the truck door.
“We are not becoming cops,” he said.
Gabriel climbed in on the passenger side. “Of course not.”
Mark opened the back door. “Absolutely not.”
Thane started the engine.
The truck rumbled awake.
Gabriel looked out the windshield at the station and said, “But hypothetically, if we were not becoming cops, we should probably attend the informational session for the thing we are not doing.”
Mark buckled his seatbelt.
“Purely for research.”
Thane pulled out of the parking lot.
Behind them, the police station shrank in the mirror.
Ahead, the morning opened gray and cold and full of things that did not care about the law.
Thane drove for almost a full minute before he spoke.
“If either of you tells anyone about the kind eyes thing, I’m biting you.”
Gabriel looked at Mark.
Mark looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel smiled.
“Noted, Detective Fluffy.”
Thane growled so loud the dashboard vibrated.
And for the first time since the cabin, Gabriel laughed.
Not because any of it was funny.
Because the girl was home.
Because the monster was dead.
Because the line between justice and vengeance had just been drawn in front of them, and all three of them knew they were going to spend the rest of their lives trying not to cross it.
The packet slid against Thane’s arm as he turned east.
CLEET.
Training.
Rules.
A badge.
He hated the idea.
He hated even more that Mark was right.
And somewhere behind his anger, buried under the growl and the grief and the memory of a child’s shaking hand tangled in his fur, something else stirred.
Not excitement.
Not yet.
Purpose.
Thane tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Gabriel watched the road with a faint smile.
Mark was already reading the packet in the back seat.
The sun broke over the city in a thin line of pale gold.
The night was over.
Their shift was just beginning.