Sera was close enough that he could see the individual golden threads in her hair when the streetlights flashed across her profile. Close enough that the faint scent of her shampoo mixed with the clean leather of the interior. Close enough that if she moved, even slightly, he’d feelit.
Alaric kept his eyes forward.
He was cold and logical. That was what people said about him. That was what his own family said when they thought he wasn’t listening. It wasn’t an insult. It was a description.
His twin brother, Magnus, had been born with fire in his blood.Magnus smiled too easily, spoke too easily, moved through rooms like he belonged to everyone. Unless they pissed him off. Then the Severin Captain exploded.
Alaric belonged to no one. He belonged to outcome. Where Magnus burned hot and loud, driven by instinct and fury, Alaric survived by calculation, by restraint, by never letting emotion make a decision forhim.
Sera broke the silence first, not with chatter, but with another piece of the problem. “If it’s a vendor integration account, we need to confirm whether it was reactivated or whether it never fully died.”
“Assume it never died,” Alaricsaid.
She nodded. “I am.”
“Which vendor?”
“On paper, it’s tied to an old reporting program that was shut down years ago,” she replied. “But the account exists in a place that suggests it was repurposed. That’s what bothers me.”
Alaric’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Someone hid it in plain sight.”
“Yes.”
He cut the car through a turn and caught her reflection in the window,her eyes on him for half a second before she looked away.That look wasn’t flirting. It wasn’t invitation.
It was awareness.
She knew exactly what bringing this problem to his house meant. Not the logistics. Therisk.
Alaric’s voice stayed even. “If this touches you, you tell me.”
Sera’s lips parted, then curved faintly. “It already touches me.”
He didn’t like the warmth in her tone when she said it. Not because it softened the danger. Because it softened him.”You don’t get points for bravery,” hesaid.
“I’m not trying to earn points,” she replied. “I’m trying to keep your company from being compromised.”
His gaze stayed on the road. “And yourself.”
A beat of silence.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “And myself.”
The answer lodged somewhere he didn’t wantit.
The city slid past as dusk deepened into night. Alaric drove with the same meticulousness he applied to everything else, hands steady on the wheel,eyes forward. Control mattered to him in ways most people never fully understood.
Sera sat beside him, posture relaxed, gaze on the road ahead. She didn’t fill the silence. Didn’t fidget. She was comfortable with quiet, with thought, with herself.
That awareness crept in anyway.
The subtle scent of her. Clean. Warm. Human. The curve of her profile caught in the dashboard lights. He cataloged it without meaning to, then shut it down with practiced discipline.
The city thinned as they moved farther out, streetlights stretching into longer, darker gaps. His neighborhood didn’t advertise itself. It didn’t need to. Wealth didn’t always shout.
Sera shifted, crossing one leg over the other. The movement was simple, but it changed the air anyway. He caught the barest hint of her knee angled toward him, the line of her calf, the flash ofskin.
His reaction was immediate and unwelcome.He tightened his focus until it was painful.
