Dorian nods slowly, as if I've offered valuable nuance instead of a wall. "That clarity helps."
It doesn't feel like it helps. It feels like he's learned exactly where I'll flinch.
The working session lasts another hour. Victor apologizes twice more for "shorthand" and "transition language," then repeats the same pattern with deadline authority and approval routing. Dorian asks three questions that sound ethical until I hear them in his voice. My team watches me with the careful attention of people who know I'm being diminished and don't know whether naming it will make it worse. I keep my voice level. I correct the record. I make decisions. I don't let my hand shake when I reach for my water.
By the time Luther and Maceo stand for the separate legal briefing Victor's counsel requested, the room feels too thin.
Luther pauses beside my chair. His hand comes to my shoulder, warm and heavy, his thumb pressing once through the fabric of my shirt. "Come with us."
"I need five minutes." I keep my eyes on the tablet, syncing the marked-up files to the secure server so I don't have to lookat his face. If I look at him, he'll know too much. "I want the sprint notes saved before finance starts revising numbers around things they don't understand."
Maceo watches me from the doorway. His silver eyes move over my face, my hand, the shallow rhythm of my breathing. "Five minutes," he says.
I nod. "Five."
Luther doesn't like it. I can feel that before he moves, but Maceo's already stepping into the corridor, and the legal briefing isn't optional if we want to keep control of this mess. Luther's hand leaves my shoulder slowly.
"Lobby after," he says.
"Lobby after."
The door closes behind them with a soft, sealed click. For a moment, the quiet's almost a relief.
Then a shadow shifts at the far end of the table.
Dorian Vale hasn't left.
He stands near the windows with his coat draped over one arm, phone in his hand, looking down as if he's only just finished answering a message. It's such a plausible posture that my first reaction is irritation at myself for noticing the way my pulse jumps.
"Sorry," he says, glancing up. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"You didn't." The lie comes out too quickly.
His smile is small and professionally apologetic. He walks along the edge of the table, not fast, not directly toward me. Just close enough that the room begins to feel smaller with each step.
"It's a lot to carry," he says. "The company. The game. The sanctuary. The expectations around your family. I can see why the language matters to you."
I slide my tablet into its case. "Then use better language."
"I intend to." He stops a few feet from my chair, still outside any distance I could call inappropriate without soundingridiculous. "I also understand why transition language can feel personal when you've built so much of this yourself."
My Delta instincts sharpen under my skin. Not panic yet. Not exactly. Something closer to the moment before glass breaks, when the whole room seems to hold its breath.
Dorian's scent is mild at first, expensive cologne and something clean enough to belong in a hotel lobby. Then it deepens by degrees. Not a burst. Not an attack. Just a subtle pressure slipping into the sealed air of the conference room, bitter beneath the polished surface.
I sit straighter. "Is there something else you need?"
"Only to say that continuity planning isn't an insult." His gaze drops briefly, not to my chest exactly, not to the monitor under my shirt in any way I could prove, but close enough that my skin tightens. "With your medical history, I imagine your husband worries when you carry this much."
The wordhusbandin his mouth makes my skin crawl. He's not using it out of respect. He's measuring how I react when someone outside the pack names it.
"My husband isn't part of this conversation."
"Of course not. I only meant that continuity planning becomes more personal when there's a legal partner involved."
"That sounds like a branding problem," I say.
"It's a protection problem." Dorian's voice stays soft. That's what makes it worse. "You're clearly protective of Luca and Ember House. I respect that. I only hope you understand that the public already sees a symbol there, whether anyone intended it or not."
