Alaric didn’t argue.
He moved.
He took Sera’s coat and helped her into itwithout asking.
Up close, he noticed what he’d been trying not to see. Her hands were cold. Not metaphorically. Not just tension. The kind of cold that came from blood pulling inward, from a body bracing for impact before the mind was ready to admit it. He felt it when his fingers brushed her skin at the collar, asharp contrast against his ownheat.
The drive to warm her was immediate. Reflexive. He shoved it down just asfast.
This wasn’t about comfort. It was about containment.
He settled the coat around her shoulders with care, making sure the fabric closed the distance between her and the room, between her and the eyes still watching. The weight of it was grounding, abarrier as much as a shield. Something to hold her together until there was time to deal with what was breaking loose.
His fingers lingered a second longer than necessary, long enough to register the pulse at her throat, the tension coiled beneath her skin. Long enough for a flash of thought he refused to follow: what it would mean to pull her close instead of stepping back, to choose protection that had nothing to do with optics or timing.
He forced himself to withdraw.
Containment, not comfort.
Neithercommented.
The drive to Severin Holdings was a study in restraint.
Alaric drove. Sera rode beside him. Silence stretched, thick with everything they weren’t saying. The city slid past in bands of light and shadow, traffic thinning as they moved farther from everything normal.
The space inside the car seemed smaller than it should have. Too charged. Every movement registered. The way Sera sat perfectly still, shoulders set, hands folded as if motion itself might crack something open. The way her thigh hovered a breath away from his, close enough that the heat touched him without contact. He was acutely aware of it, aware of her, in a way that had nothing to do with distraction and everything to do with vigilance.
The Brand hummed beneath Alaric’s skin, not heat but pressure, like something bracing from the inside out. Atightening awareness that grew sharper the closer they got. It wasn’t desire. It was threat recognition, the sense that something essential was being pulled into alignment whether he approved ornot.
Halfway there, he broke the silence. “Who is it?”
The question didn’t sound like an interrogation. It soundedlike an opening.
Sera exhaled, long and tired, as if the fight had finally gone out of her. For a moment she stared at the windshield like it could give her another option.Then she said it anyway, quiet and flat. “My roommate.”Her fingers tightened around the seatbelt strap. “My best friend, Rebecca.”
The Brand responded instantly, the pressure spiking, awarning rather than a pull. Distance was no longer theoretical. Neither was the cost of losingher.
He reached for herhand.
Stopped.
The hesitation lasted a fraction of a second, long enough to acknowledge what crossing that space wouldmean.
Sera closed it for him, her hand settling overhis.
Warm. Certain.
The contact was electric without being overtly sexual, awareness flaring along his nerves anyway. The simple truth of her skin against his held him more firmly than any promise could have. Not impulse. Not escape. Partnership, chosen underfire.
Neither of them spoke.
The road narrowed. Thecity thinned.
And the tension between them tightened, coiled and waiting.
Severin Holdings rose ahead of them, lights deceptively normal, the building quiet in a way that felt wrong for reasons he couldn’t yetname.
Nothing was out of place. That was the problem. No visible disruption, no flicker of emergency response, no outward sign that anything had gone wrong. It looked untouched, sealed, as if whatever damage had been done had happened without leaving a mark. Alaric had learned to distrust that kind of stillness. Silence, in his world, usually meant someone had already moved first.
