“There’s more, and some of it’s ugly. You need all of it.” He goes to the cot and sits, forearms on his knees, so he’s not standing over me. “Someone called in a tip. Anonymous. Told Aurora to search your cubicle. They found a phone planted under your floor—loaded with texts you never sent. Routes. Rotations.” He holds my eyes. “One of the threads covers the night one of Viktor’s people was killed.”
The room spins. “They think I—?”
“They did. Until this morning.” He doesn’t let me spiral. “I gave Viktor your real phone. Set them side by side and made him look. Asked why you’d keep the harmless one on you, and leave the damning one where it could be found. He saw it. He knows the second phone’s a plant. Which means he knows someone inside Aurora tried to frame you. Someone who’s still there.”
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting. A dead man. They didn’t just make me a mole. They made me a murderer.
“Who died?” My voice comes out small.
“Samien Khalef. Tabitha’s mate.”
“God.” I drop my face into my hands. “I remember. They said it was Jericho. But they cleared him.” My voice is muffled by my palms.
“And now they pinned it on you. Or tried to.” Something crosses his face and settles. “The frame was built to make sure nobody ever looked past you. That’s how much whoever did this needed a door closed.”
I drop my hands, wrap my arms around my knees, and breathe until the shaking evens out. He stands as if to come to me, but then doesn’t. He waits. He doesn’t fill the quiet, and he doesn’t touch me, and both of those are him giving me room to process.
“Serenity,” I say, when I can.
“Aurora’s searching. Quietly. Viktor’s put his best person on it—one person, closed loop, no council, no paperwork. Your phone goes to her. The number that called you, the towers it used, the drop site. Those are real threads she can follow.”
“How long?”
“Days if she hasn’t been moved. Weeks if she has.” He doesn’t soften it. “He wouldn’t try to make it sound better, so I won’t either.”
Weeks. I don’t like it. But it’s a start, something concrete.
“And me?”
“That’s the part you’ll like least.” He inhales. “Viktor can’t clear you. If he does, the person responsible will know they’re still under threat, and they’ll disappear before anyone gets close. So on paper, you’re still the mole. Still a fugitive. You stay buried up here until the search is successful or the real mole slips. He’ll check in every second day with updates.” He pauses. “No telling how long.”
I wait for the rest. There’s a rhythm to how he reports, and something in it just changed—a half-second where he chose his next words instead of just saying them.
“That’s everything?”
“That’s what we can use tonight.” He holds my eyes while he says it, steady as ever, and I can’t find anything there to tell me there’s more. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe I’ve just spent so long hiding things that I see suspicion everywhere.
I let it go. Because things are better than they were.
Viktor knows. And I’m still free. Someone with real reach is hunting for my sister tonight; not a frightened woman whispering into a burner at midnight, but people who know how to do this. And the man who did that, who walked into a building where they think I killed someone and argued them around, is sitting three feet away.
“Thank you.” I cross the den before I’ve decided to. Both hands in the front of his jacket, my mouth on his—and everything I’ve been holding comes loose at once. The waiting. The fear. The months of keeping every part of myself locked down and calling it survival. I kiss him hard, and he meets me with the same heat, one hand coming up to the back of my neck. He tastes like road dust and coffee and him.
I suck in a breath, and he goes still for one second. The old care, checking.
I pull him closer. I’m done being checked on. “No more waiting,” I tell him.
“Okay.” Then his arms close around me, and this time he doesn’t stop.
Chapter 23
Grace
His mouth is warm. He folds me in, and I go. The bear’s heat comes through his jacket—deep and constant, a degree past what a wolf runs—and I press both palms flat to his chest to feel his heartbeat hammering against them.
His hands drop to my waist. He walks me back. One step. Two. The cot edge catches the backs of my knees, and I sit. I pull him down with me. Fabric comes away fast—my shirt shoved up, his jacket shrugged off, the rough slide of his palms over my ribs. His mouth follows, open and hungry, tongue tracing the line of my collarbone while his fingers hook the waistband of my jeans and yank.
I tug at his shirt until it tears at the seam. My hands map the heavy plane of his chest, the ridges of muscle that have no give, the broad span of shoulders that block the lantern light. He is all mass and heat. I press my face into the hollow of his throat and breathe him in until my head spins.
