“Are you checking email or waiting for lab results?”
“It’s a professional correspondence.”
“You’ve opened and closed your laptop four times in twenty minutes.” Kael dropped into the chair across from him. “That’s not professional. That’s pathological.”
“I was reviewing the editorial schedule.”
“The editorial schedule doesn’t make your eye do that thing.”
“My eye doesn’t do a thing.”
“It does a thing. A very telling thing it does when you’re pretending you don’t care about a thing you obviously care about. The thing is happening right now.” Kael produced a muffin from somewhere—the man’s ability to conjure baked goods from thin air was supernatural and irritating. “She’s getting under your skin.”
“She’s a collaborator.”
“She’s a collaborator you email at midnight and sign with a single initial. I handle the company correspondence, Z. I’ve read the thread.”
Zeir’s gaze cut sideways. Kael had the decency to look unbothered by the alpha stare that made board members shift in their chairs.
“It’s my job to manage the collaboration.”
“It’s your job to manage the company. It’s my job to manage the collaboration. And it’s nobody’s job to write a four-paragraph essay about the inner lives of villains at eleven at night, but you did it anyway.” He bit the muffin. “So.”
“So.”
“You’re not just personally invested, Z. You’re —” he searched for the word, found it, “— oriented. Toward her. The pack is going to see it before you admit it, and when Brenn does, he’ll use it.” He set down the muffin. “I’m not telling you to stop. I’m telling you to be ready.”
The contract returned signed.
He sat at the drafting table, the autumn light fading through the industrial windows, the signed pages stacked beside the Nightbloom portfolio that had been on this table for over a week. It needed filing. He hadn’t filed it. It sat open to a page where Sable’s expression caught the last of the afternoon sun, and the inks glowed with a depth that hit him somewhere he wasn’t willing to name.
He didn’t draw her face. He drew her hands.
The paint on her knuckles. The way her fingers had moved through the air during the argument—fast, expressive, painting the conversation into the space between them. The tapered fingers that held a pen the same way his did—like a weapon, like a lifeline, like the only tool that told the truth. He sketched the curve of her wrist where the blazer sleeve ended.
This is character study for the collaboration. You’re building a visual reference for a creative partner’s working style.
He drew the arch of her hand reaching for his red pen on the drafting table. The gesture that was both deliberate and unconscious.
He locked the drawing away.
His phone sat on the table. Her last email glowed in the notification bar—a response to his question about how she developed Sable’s ideology, the one where she’d written three paragraphs so incisive, he’d had to set his phone down and stare at the ceiling for a full minute before he could form a coherent reply.
He typed: You see things most people don’t.
Shorter than intended. More honest than planned. The story of every message he’d sent her.
He pressed send. Set the phone down. The office was dark except for the desk lamp. Manhattan glittered through the windows—sharp and distant, a city that kept its own counsel. The signed contract sat beside the open portfolio, and somewhere across the East River, a woman was reading his words, and his wolf was quiet for the first time in weeks, and the quiet was the most terrifying sound he’d ever heard.
THIRTEEN
ZEIR
The workspace was ready before dawn.
Zeir stood in the center of it, adjusting the south-facing windows for the third time. The light had to be right. The ink bottles were arranged by manufacturer—then rearranged by color family—then put back, because the color arrangement revealed a preference he wasn’t prepared to examine. He’d tested both drafting chairs for height. Checked the lamp angles twice.
Kael found him at seven.
