“I need to know how it was done, whether it could have been done from inside Sera’s orbit, and what kind of access that would’ve required. Quietly. No conclusions. Just facts.”
The Brand didn’t flare, but Sera felt it anyway, tightening the air between them like a promise neither of them could afford to keep. She didn’t look away from him, because she suddenly understood something intoxicating and ruinous at the same time: whatever came next, he would never let her face it alone.
Chapter 8
ALARIC SEVERINhad learned long ago that catastrophe rarely announced itself.
It didn’t crash through doors or shout warnings. It arrived quietly, riding familiarity, wearing a face you trusted, stepping across thresholds it had been invited to cross. By the time most people realized what was happening, the damage was already done, and the people responsible were already planning their nextmove.
That was why the knock at his secure mansion door landed wrong in his chest even before he stood.
This house was built to absorb impact. Physical, financial, political. It had been designed to seem impenetrable, the kind of place where trouble hit stone and slid off. The fact that his instincts were already tightening told him this wasn’t that kind of threat.
He opened the door himself.
Lily Dante stood on the other side, coat open, eyes sharp, posture careful in a way that had nothing to do with fear. Pregnancy had softened her body only slightly. It hadn’t touched her presence. If anything, it had sharpened it, as if the knowledge that she was protecting something irreplaceable had stripped away every last tolerance for error.
Alaric clocked that immediately, and not just as a tacticalnote.
Lily Dante was not simply a forensic asset or a convenient ally. She was married to Dante blood, into power that understood escalation. The Dantes didn’t ask whether something was dangerous. They asked who would bleed if it wasn’t contained fast enough.
And Lily didn’t come in person unless containment was already the objective.
She could have sent analysts. She could have routed the data through layers of proxy and distance, kept herself insulated from the blast radius. Instead, she was standing in his doorway, pregnant, exposed, choosing proximity over safety. That wasn’t curiosity. That was a calculation.
It told Alaric she had already decided this situation had crossed out of the technical lane and into one that required judgment, leverage, and authority. It told him she was here to decide how far this couldspread and who needed to be pulled inside the circle before itdid.
That alone told him the margin for error wasgone.
Behind him, Sera straightened.
He sensed it rather than saw it. The way her spine aligned, shoulders settling back as if she were bracing for inspection. Not fear. Readiness. Discipline under pressure.
Lily registered it atonce.
Not the movement. The tension.
Her gaze flicked between them once, precise and assessing, then she stepped inside and angled herself so she could see both of them without turning her head. Adeliberate choice. She didn’t comment on it, but she never lost sight of either of them after that. Even her placement in the room seemed intentional, subtly blocking one exit while leaving another open. Containment, not escape.
Alaric sealed the door.
“So,” Lily said mildly, setting her work tote down on the table as if she weren’t walking into a room already vibrating with restraint. “You sounded careful on the phone. That usually means you’re sitting on something volatile.”
Sera didn’t look at him when sheanswered. “I am.”
She began explaining.
She kept it clean. Technical. She talked about residue and access paths, about an anomaly that shouldn’t exist and a deletion that hadn’t behaved like a true erasure. She explained why she hadn’t routed it through corporate systems, why she’d insisted on isolating the data, why she’d trusted her intuition enough to stop instead of smoothing itover.
As she spoke, Alaric watched Lily watch her. Not like an examiner waiting for a mistake. Like a woman mapping terrain. Lily wasn’t just listening for facts. She was assessing resilience, stress tolerance, the likelihood of fracture.
Alaric stood a step behind Sera, hands loosely clasped behind his back. He was acutely aware of the space between them. Of how easily it could disappear. Of how much effort it was taking not to close it. The restraint wasn’t performative. It was structural. If he touched her now, even briefly, the room would change.
He did not move.
When Sera finished, Lily stepped closer and leaned in over the tablet, close enough that the heat of Sera’s body shifted. Her shoulder brushed Alaric’s forearm. Barely there. Enough to register. Enough to narrow his focus until the rest of theroom fellaway.
Lily didn’t comment onit.
