Two days passed in surprising peace and routine, an oddity for how Riordan’s life had been lately. He played student, focusing on his meditation and foundations under Frankie’s tutelage, and kept his head down while Vera’s anger over Mark’s actions rumbled through the pack. The whole time, he waited for the next blow to land, bracing for disaster.

Riordan recognized it as a trauma reaction, but so fresh out of the crisis, he couldn’t relax his hypervigilance. Gloria was out there, escaped and pissed off. And whoever set her free. And whoever gave them the grimoire in the first place. And a bunch of surviving cult members.

Fuck. Was it really paranoia when people were truly out to get him?

The shifter leadership kept him largely contained and out of sight like some sort of unruly child. Frankie mostly assigned him different meditation and energy practices in order to lay the groundwork for more efficiently applying his will. They interspersed that with discussions on how he wanted to establish conditions on his casting. He could use words, gestures, items, drawing, whatever, as long as he forged a mental link between the action and the magical condition it would apply. Riordan knew he was likely to want a combination of methods available to him, established from the beginning, in order to handle different situations.

The last thing Riordan wanted was to be unable to cast just because he was tied up. He didn’t trust his luck enough.

In between his lessons, Riordan battled loneliness by talking with Daniel–when the ghost wasn’t busy reconnecting with his aunt–or by texting either Annie or Quinn. Daniel and Annie gave Riordan normalcy he hadn’t even known he’d been craving, settling some old battered piece of his soul, but it was Quinn who Riordan really leaned on.

Texting Quinn was good for venting. They both had to censor themselves–Riordan could feel it in the tone of their exchanges–but they shared an otherness to the very groups that they supported. They also shared their death affinity. While they couldn’t get into full details over text, Riordan enjoyed their conversations about the emotional and spiritual impressions of death, ghosts, the Veil, and everything else related to their affinity. The agents wouldn’t let Quinn visit in person, but he texted regularly, sometimes complaining about his co-workers or work.

Quinn: Why am I stuck doing paperwork and process interviews? I mean, Vergil got stuck with asset assessment and redistribution, victim resources, and a shit ton of legal documentation that makes me blank out to consider, but still.

Quinn: It bothers me that I’m not being properly used. If I’m not here as a specialist anymore, why haven’t I been reassigned?

Quinn: There’s always more jobs waiting for me.

Quinn: So what are they waiting for?

Riordan: They probably want a death mage around to deal with other death mages.

Quinn: In that case, they need to get off their asses and collect Helena like they said they would.

Riordan: Helena isn’t the only death mage around.

There were legitimate reasons to keep the Department’s top death mage around. Somewhere out there was a group that gave out grimoires and helped Gloria escape custody. A group that had some sort of backdoor into the Department, whether an insider or some other form of surveillance and control. This was a major threat. Quinn was a good counter for them, having handled Gloria before.

And yet, Riordan suspected it wasn’t the cult death mages that Quinn remained her for. It was the tree spirit and Riordan, those death-touched wildcard variables. If Quinn was ordered to subdue Riordan, would he? Could he even refuse? Riordan hated that he had no idea how flexible Quinn’s restrictions were.

For all his tension and waiting, in the end, it wasn’t even Riordan that was the source of trouble.

It was Mark.

Honestly, Riordan should have seen that coming. While Riordan availed himself of some much needed education, the pack had informed the Department that the tree spirit and its protection was now under the jurisdiction of the shifters and no longer their concern.

That, of course, went over like a lead balloon.

When the pack told the agents why the tree spirit was now shifter jurisdiction, explicitly that Mark was now its Guardian and was helping it establish a protected territory, the Department responded by charging them with what boiled down to an illegal land grab.

Oh, they didn’t dispute that Mark was the Guardian; that was the tree spirit’s choice. Changing that would require a spirit mage and some serious magical negotiation, if they could even get the spirit to bother. Instead, they disputed that the pack, of which Mark is a member, had acted in poor faith, not following the proper channels for the allocation and protection of a new place of power.

Mark’s actions broke a section of Morgan’s Code, one that kept the shifters and mages from going to war over territory, and the Sleeping Bear pack was being held accountable.

Of course, no one bothered to tell Riordan. He first became aware of the dispute because Special Agent Heeran was allowed back on pack land. Since Riordan wasn’t a real pack member, apparently it wasn’t important to warn him about that, even though he was the one she’d breached hospitality upon.

He simply entered the kitchen to grab lunch, having waited until most of the pack itself had gone through because people watching and judging him still made his skin crawl, and there she was, sipping coffee.

Heeran raised her mug to him. “Good morning, Mr. Kincaid.”

Riordan was too surprised to even feign politeness. “What the fuck are you doing here? You were banned from pack land.”

“My job, of course,” she explained. “I am the lead agent in the area, which makes me the ranking neutral party for arbitration. The Department is collecting data and documentation before the current situation is formally brought to the Regional Council.”

Riordan frowned, stepping further into the kitchen cautiously. “Why would the Regional Council be involved with the clean up of a Department investigation?”

Heeran paused, mug halfway to her lips. Her expression softened into sympathy. “Ah, they didn’t tell you? This isn’t about the ongoing investigation. One of the official shaman apprentices of the Sleeping Bear pack made unauthorized contact with the spirit of a new place of power, establishing territory before it could be properly assessed and arbitrated according to Morgan’s Code.”

“Fuck,” Riordan grimaced. “Right.”

Morgan’s Code was a legal code, full of dense rules. Riordan forgot a bunch of them over the years, even with the magic that made the rules easier to remember, just because he never thought they’d apply to him. After all, when would he do something like, oh, be involved in the ascension of a new greater spirit, creating an unclaimed place of power?

Heeran smiled kindly. “With the open investigations and assessments related to the death mage activity, assessments that directly influence you, this is likely distressing. I know we got off on the wrong foot before. I apologize for my methods. I fear I have gotten too used to expediency since my work largely deals with covering up threats to our secrecy or revealing dangerous secrets. You have the potential to be very dangerous, but not the intention.”

He hadn’t been expecting an apology. Riordan wanted to argue that he was dangerous out of pride and sheer orneriness, but the truth was, he wasn’t dangerous, not in the way she was measuring. He had no intention of using his death magic to go on a mass killing spree or any such nonsense. Riordan was honestly pretty safe unless provoked. Because he wasn’t a fucking sociopath and didn’t delight in causing suffering. Geez. The bar was low for death mages.

“Without the corruption issue, death magic is just another affinity,” Riordan said shortly. “It can be used for good or bad just like any other. I ain’t a perfect person and I’ve done bad in my life, but most people mess up if they live long enough. I hope to do more good than harm. All I can do is try.”

“That’s true. It will just take time to adjust to the concept of a death mage who isn’t a ticking time bomb.” Heeran sighed and drained the rest of the coffee in her mug before rinsing it out and setting it in the sink. “I need to get back to the meeting. Just think about everything, okay? The pack isn’t your only choice for safety. Neither is the Department, for that matter. The Regional Council delegates will be here tomorrow.”

“I’ll… think about it,” Riordan said carefully. He even meant it at that moment. Being kept in the dark by the pack, treated as an outsider, left him feeling unsatisfied and bitter. It would pass–he understood their reasonings after all–but that didn’t change his immediate emotional reactions.

Heeran studied him but then just nodded. She disappeared back into the depths of the pack house, leaving Riordan with a whole new list of thoughts and worries.

When Riordan asked Frankie about Heeran’s presence and the Regional Council that evening, the shaman acknowledged the issue before bluntly telling Riordan to stay out of it. She made it quite clear that Riordan getting involved would only make things worse. He was a whole separate diplomatic issue in himself. A problem, not a resource.

There were pack members and not pack members. A line had just been drawn in the sand. Riordan’s shifter instincts ached, being on the wrong side of the line, old longing loneliness welling up inside to mix with anger and frustration.

Riordan brought warning at the risk of his own life, while being chased by killers and death mages. Mother Bear had declared his exile over, his crimes repaid. He cooperated with their investigations, bent to their authority, and handed himself over to the enemy to gain a chance to save their pack members. What did he need to do to get respected as a pack member? He’d nearly died for them, multiple times.

No, that was not fair. The main reasons he wasn’t being welcomed into the Sleeping Bear pack were matters of incompatibility. The pack had roused to deal with the death mages, but it hated every minute of it and wanted to return to sleepy sun-drenched normalcy. Riordan, meanwhile, forged himself for specialties that had no place in a safe world. He’d be bored off his ass, restless and useless, or expected to take on roles that did not suit him. The average pack member just had nothing in common with him.

That didn’t stop him from feeling just a bit bitter.