Chapter 134: MIGUEL’S SUMMONS

She let go.

Her fingers peeled from Puck’s coat one by one, the coarse wool slipping free while the surge in her chest stayed stubbornly loud, trapped with nowhere left to spend itself. He stood fixed in the doorway; amber irises had gone flat and subdued, but the furnace heat of his skin still pushed outward into the draft between them.

"Okay," she whispered to the floor before turning around.

Mandi sat perched on the sofa cushions with elbows propped on her knees; Liam pushed away from the plaster corner where he had spent the last hour holding up the drywall. Neither showed surprise because both had caught every word through the thin walls. Georgia demanded proof, and Mandi answered instantly, insisting Darcy was not untouchable and that reckless oversights were waiting to be found.

"We’ll find them," Liam said; the flat certainty behind the promise became the first solid anchor offered all evening.

Georgia held her breath, cataloging the sudden stillness in her quads and the steady return of blood flow to her knuckles. She started to ask about the Council angle and how much paper they needed to establish before an offensive move stood a chance, but a single sharp vibration cut through the floorboards.

Puck’s phone gave one hard buzz against his hip.

He inspected the screen the way someone checks a medical chart when the diagnosis is already fatal; his posture seized into that absolute, predatory lockdown where muscles lock before the brain commits to striking. Georgia stepped across the floorboards to read the glass above his shoulder.

The summons was brief and formal: Miguel Hale’s name was stamped across the header, the pack grounds listed below, and the phrased demand for her presence tonight was worded in terms that permitted no debate.

"That’s..." she started.

"Yeah." Puck lowered his arm.

Georgia had seen him feral and cornered, stripped of restraint until nothing remained except teeth and blunt momentum, but this calculating silence felt far more dangerous because he was actively counting odds he knew he could not balance.

"He knows," she said.

Puck slid the phone away, explaining Miguel had known for days and was simply waiting to see how she handled the leverage before making his move. Mandi and Liam went dead silent on the rug behind them, tracking the shift in air.

"So this is him deciding," Georgia said.

"This is him deciding." Puck turned, handling his own bulk with deliberate, clinical restraint as he told her to stay silent upon arrival, to let him run the conversation entirely, and never to contradict him unless the error jeopardized their lives. "He’s not going to be happy, Georgia. About any of it."

"Is it a request?"

He looked at her, his set mouth answering the question long before sound left his throat.

"No," he said. "It’s not."The pack house sat at the end of a long gravel drive that crunched under every footstep, loud enough to announce arrivals long before anyone reached the porch. Georgia tracked the rhythm of her own shoes against the stone and stayed quiet; Puck walked half a step ahead, not quite leading her, just angled enough that his shoulder broke the bitter bite of the wind.

The entrance hall smelled of cedar, dust, and cold iron, lit by a single overhead fixture that threw the wood paneling into flat relief. Miguel Hale stood waiting in the center of the floor.

Georgia had expected someone built like Puck, all raw edges and kinetic agitation, but what she found was someone broader across the chest, anchored in place with total physical economy. The same predator density lived in his blood, compressed over decades into bedrock.

He didn’t check Puck. He looked straight at Georgia.

"You know what he is," Miguel said.

Puck drew breath beside her, his posture shifting into that slight forward lean that meant he intended to step in front of her. Her mother had spent years doing that exact thing, positioning her, managing rooms, answering on her behalf until her own voice felt thin from disuse; Georgia broke the habit right then and stepped forward.

"I know," Georgia said, meeting the older man’s gaze without blinking. "I’ve known for a while."

Beside her, Puck went rigid. Miguel ran an unhurried, calculating inventory over her face, cataloging her pulse, the set of her chin, and the stillness in her hands.

"And the consequences," Miguel said, flat and direct. "You understand those too."

She didn’t hesitate. "The Council, the Valentine pack, and the simple reality that knowing makes me a target, which drags Puck straight into the crosshairs beside me."

Silence followed her answer; the bare bulb overhead hummed against the quiet.

"He told you to let him handle this," Miguel said, his tone daring her to lie about it.

"He did."

"You didn’t listen."

"No."

Something tightened around Miguel’s mouth, a deliberate recalibration of what he was dealing with in this room. He turned to Puck, their shared look brief, heavy with history, and entirely closed off from her.

"I’m not angry that she knows," Miguel said, addressing Puck without dropping his awareness of Georgia. "I’m angry because every choice you make puts her in danger, and you knew that before you opened the door." He paused, letting the silence stretch thin. "The bond isn’t the problem; it’s irreversible."

Georgia filed the word away in the tally she kept behind her teeth.

Miguel let the silence settle, then his posture shifted - less interrogation, more tactical assessment. "What I need to know," he said, turning back to face her fully, "is what you intend to do about Darcy Valentine."The question hung in the air between all three of them, and Georgia felt Puck shift beside her, his lungs expanding as he mapped out their next tactical angle.

He began outlining their plan to target the evidence, his tone measured and deliberate as he argued that Darcy had left gaps when accelerating the timeline, gaps Bella had confirmed before disappearing.

"I’m not asking you." Miguel’s gaze cut sideways to Georgia. "I’m asking her. Do you really believe you can survive this?"

Puck went rigid beside her; she recognized that absolute, locked stillness as something far more dangerous than sudden movement.

An old reflex rose in her chest, familiar and automatic from years of conditioning: step back, surrender the floor, let the person with more authority manage the conflict. Her mother had reinforced that habit over years of relentless repetition, positioning Georgia just behind her shoulder until Georgia had stopped noticing the retreat.

She noticed now.

"Together," she said. "We face Darcy together. I’m not stepping back while Puck takes the exposure alone, and I won’t let him carry the target for me."

Miguel offered no immediate reaction. He took her inventory instead, cataloging the sudden jump of her pulse against her collar, the rigid line of her shoulders, and the hard angle of her chin as he ran his private calculations to determine whether an outsider was worth the resources required to keep her alive.

"Six years ago, a boy in the Bitterroot pack brought a human inside their treaty line," Miguel said, his voice flat, devoid of theatrics, cutting through the cold room like iron. "The Council did not negotiate. They sealed the compound, took the human’s memories down to the nerve, and left the pack broken into three fragmented cells. If Darcy uses you to force an inquiry, the Council will not stop at Darcy. They will strip Puck of his bloodright, strip his rank in this territory, and drag him before a trial that ends in exile or worse. That is what you are dragging behind you, Georgia. Not paperwork. Not politics. His life."

Air thinned in the center of the space. Puck remained motionless at her side, his muscles locked in that specific strain that signaled he was waiting for her to flinch, retreat, or qualify her position into something far safer.

"I understand," she said.

Miguel held her gaze for several seconds, then shifted his attention toward Puck, his mouth flattening into a thin, bloodless line; whatever silent assessment passed between them was dense with years of shared history she could not touch.

"My father will tear this apart," Puck said, the pitch dropping low and tight. "The whole arrangement."

Her shoulders squared before conscious thought could stop them, an older instinct overriding the panic.

"I spent three years letting my mother stand in front of every hard room I should have walked into myself," she said, keeping her tone perfectly level. "I won’t hide again; not from your father, not from the Council, and not from whatever comes next."

Miguel stayed silent.

Above them, the naked bulb hummed against the ceiling; outside, the gravel drive held the dark silence the way the pine forest always did, absorbing sound without returning an echo. She braced her weight through her heels, centered her breathing, and held her ground.