Page 58 of Guarded By The Alpha

I lifted her onto the narrow desk against the wall—supplies scattering, neither of us caring—and her legs wrapped around me as I settled between them. The heat of her through the layers still between us was unbearable and not enough.

"I need—" I started.

"Yes," she said. "Stop asking."

I stopped asking.

The rest of her clothes came off with more urgency than finesse. Mine followed. When I finally pressed into her, she made a sound that was half relief and half demand, her nails scoring my shoulders as she pulled me deeper.

"Don't be careful," she said against my throat. "I'm not fragile."

I stopped being careful.

The desk creaked beneath us with each thrust. Her breathing went ragged, her sounds climbing as I found the angle that made her gasp. Through the bond I could feel what she felt—the coiling tension, the edge she was chasing—and I used it, adjusted, drove her higher.

"Come for me," I said, low against her ear. "Nova. Come for me."

She shattered with my name on her lips, her body clenching around me in waves that pulled me over the edge with her. The bond flared bright between us—not completion, because we'd done that on the safe-house roof—but confirmation. Certainty. The physical proof of a choice we kept making.

Afterward, I held the mark on her shoulder with my palm flat against it. Not possessive. With the steadiness that felt like a vow.

She traced the scar on my forearm—the one from Harrow—and I let her.

"Six years," she said. "You've been carrying that for six years."

"Yes."

"I spent thirteen not knowing if my mother was alive. Seven not letting anything be necessary, because of what that absence did to me." She met my eyes. "And I walked into a warehouse on a Tuesday night and ended up here."

Through the bond I felt her—not fixing, not softening, just present beside the weight I carried.

"Where's here?" I asked.

She considered. "Somewhere I'm not bracing anymore. Or starting not to."

The comm chimed—Caleb's summons to the main room, ten o'clock, the tone that came before things changed.

We dressed in a silence that wasn't uncomfortable. When we left the small room and walked toward the briefing, her hand found mine for three seconds before we reached the corridor where others would see.

Three seconds was enough.

In the main room, Caleb waited with the look that came before decisions that couldn't be taken back.

"The Council's full session meets in forty-eight hours," he said. "Gideon has the location. If we're going to take this network apart for good instead of just managing it, that's the window."

He looked at me. Then at Nova.

"Her crime scene work. What woke in her blood. Her catching both informants." He paused. "She's the reason we can. Not because of what's in her blood. Because of what she sees."

The room held the weight of a decision not yet made and impossible to unmake once it was.

Through the bond I felt Nova's stillness—not fear, something more careful, a woman reading a room and counting the cost.

I didn't speak. This wasn't mine to decide for her.

Nova Hale, who had spent her whole adult life trusting her own evidence, looked at Caleb across the table and said: "Tell me what you need."

Chapter 19