When Sera stepped onto her floor, she saw him immediately.Before she could stop herself, her awareness flared outward. The floor sounded louder than usual, sharper. The hum of conversation. The muted ring of phones. The steady click of keyboards. It allpressed in on her at once, as if the office itself had shifted a fraction off balance.
She felt exposed.
Not because anyone knew what had happened—but because she did. Because every movement seemed methodical now, every breath something she had to monitor. She straightened her shoulders automatically, aligning her posture with the version of herself she presented here every day. Calm. Capable. Unremarkable.
Alaric stood near the center of the open space, deep in conversation with her supervisor,Vidar Johnson. Alaric stood tall. Immaculate. Watchful. Helooked nothing like the man who had stood barefoot in his kitchen hours earlier. He was impeccable with his jacket on. Shirt crisp. Expression composed. Every inch of him the executive his staff expected him tobe.
His gaze lifted and their eyes met.The moment stretched.Not longing. Not denial.Recognition.An understanding that something had happened and would not be acknowledged.
Sera forced herself to look away and walk to her desk, Rebecca following several paces behind. Each step was managed. She sat, logged in, and focused on her screen even as awareness hummed beneath herskin.Because wanting him didn’t mean she could have him.It only meant that pretending otherwise was going to be the hardest thing she’d everdone.
Chapter 4
ALARIC SEVERINrubbed his thumb slowly across hispalm.
The skin there was still tender. New. Afaint, raised lightning-bolt scar sat just beneath the surface, as though it hadn’t quite decided whether it belonged to him yet. It had appeared two weeks ago, without warning and without permission, in the aftermath of a night he had no intention of revisiting.
He knew exactly what itwas.
His mother had been a Dante by blood, even if his name was Severin. The legacy hadn’t meant much to him growing up. One family line absorbed into another, aname folded into a different empire. Until the Brand appeared, dormant no longer.
A Dante Brand didn’t mark ownership or conquest. It marked recognition. It surfaced only when a Dante touched their soul mate. Not on sight. Not on desire. On contact.
The logic of it was brutal and simple. Once the Brand appeared, it meant the match existed. Somewhere. Someone carried the other half ofit.
He had assumed he would never know. Or that if he did, it would be a stranger he would have tofind.
Instead, the timing had been precise enough to be… unsettling. And suspicious.
He lowered his hand, expression unchanged, and returned his attention to the world he could still manage. Or tried.
But the truth sat deeper than he liked to admit. He thought about Sera more often than he should have. He noticed her absence from his immediate orbit. And beneath all of it ran a quiet, persistent irritation at himself for having allowed someone close enough to matter.
Alaric stood behind his desk, jacket unbuttoned, one hand braced on the edge of the glass surface as he reviewed a quarterly risk brief. The office was silent except for the muted hum of the building’s climate system and the distant city noise filtered through triple-paned windows. His world was ordered. Predictable.
The door opened without a knock andVidar Johnson stepped inside.
Alaric didn’t look up immediately. He didn’t need to. He knew the cadenceof Vidar’s footsteps, the weight distribution, the tempo that suggested alertness rather than urgency. Vidar favored stillness, but it was the kind that listened rather than rested.
“Close the door,” Alaricsaid.
Vidar did. Quietly.
Alaric lifted his gaze then, light blue eyes sharpening. Vidar stood in front of the desk with an ease that bordered on casual, shoulders relaxed, posture loose. His dark hair was neatly cut, his expression composed, eyes so dark they reflected almost no light at all. He held a slim tablet in one hand, not clenched, not brandished, as though it were simply another report.
“What is it?” Alaric asked, toneflat.
Vidar’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You’re going to want to see this.”
“I’m already looking,” Alaric replied. “Speak.”
Vidar stepped forward and set the tablet on the desk between them, aligning it with the edge before releasing it. No force. No emphasis. The screen lit instantly, displaying system logs dense with timestamps, access pathways, and credentialidentifiers.
“Sera Carrington accessed a restricted file,” Vidar said calmly.
Alaric’s eyes dropped to the data, scanning automatically. The motion was automatic, ashield as much as a habit, giving him a fraction of a second to lock down the spike of awareness that had punched through his chest at the sound of her full name. He let nothing show. No tightening of his mouth. No change in his breathing. Only the quiet absorption of numbers and timestamps, as though this were any other report.
“Which file?”
