The bond between us surges, warm and full.
“I’m prideful, as you know,” she goes on, “and very ambitious in my career. But you matter to me more than I know how to put into words.”
For a couple of heartbeats, I cannot trust myself to speak.
I pull her against my chest, one arm at her shoulders, the other under her ribs, my mouth pressed into the top of her head. Her cheek finds the place over my heart. Warm breath fans against my collarbone.
We remain like this, holding each other, for a long time.
Eventually, she stirs. She presses a kiss into the center of my chest and pushes up off me, hair falling forward, announcingthat she is taking a shower before the entire household assumes we have died up here.
I watch her go.
When the bathroom door has shut behind her, I sit up on the edge of the bed, rake my hand through my hair, and find the wine-colored bra on the floor where I threw it last night. The satin is ruined from my rough handling. I fold the bra with more care than it needs and lay it on the chair by the bed.
Sienna comes out in a robe with her hair piled on top of her head, sees the folded scrap on the chair, and laughs at me.
I look up from my cufflinks. “What?”
“You folded it.”
“I’m not letting any of the household staff handle it.”
She comes over and kisses me on the mouth. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m yours.” I kiss her back.
She smiles.
There is alwayssomething for the alpha of a pack to deal with besides emergencies. Prime example: the first few hours of my day pass with a pile of dull paperwork. Late morning, though, Monroe bangs through the door of my study without knocking, a large, rolled-up paper under one arm.
“Squadron’s back.”
I am out of my chair before he has finished saying it.
“Two days early. Team lead just gave me the report.” He spreads the paper across my desk. “They tracked the trail back from where Bauer’s section went down. Found a compound deep in the western buffer.”
The drawing is careful and exact, done by someone who watched a perimeter for hours. Patrol rotations marked. Fences. Outer guard positions, inner guard positions. Three structures around what looks like a central holding building.
“Six days of observation,” Monroe goes on. “Armed patrols on a coordinated shift rotation. Not amateur work.”
My finger traces the central structure. “Force estimate.”
“Sixty fighters in the perimeter. Maybe more inside. They couldn’t get close enough for a clean count.”
“Enhanced?”
Monroe nods. “One. Big. Seen on the perimeter twice, supervising patrols. The men say he moved weirdly. Lead couldn’t put a word to it.”
I straighten.
“Two hours. Darius, Violet, Lillian, Sienna, Lydia, Reese, and you. I’ll have Kain pulled in by video from Moonvale.”
“Yes, sir.” He leaves.
By early afternoon, my study is full.
Darius and Sienna on my right. Violet beside Sienna. Lillian in a chair drawn to the side, with her hands folded in her lap. Monroe and Reese standing along the wall. Lydia at the back. The lineage book sit at the corner of my desk where the whole room can see it. Kain is on the screen above the credenza, lit harshly in a Moonvale conference room.
