She leaned closer to her screen, dark eyes narrowing as she traced the permissions chain. The lighting in the secure office was low, designed to reduce glare. It cast her face in soft shadow, and the golden streaks in her hair caught it like mutedfire.
He shouldn’t have been thinking about herhair.
“Here,” Sera said quietly. “This is where it forks.”
Alaric moved to her side and leaned over her shoulder, careful not to touch. His forearm hovered close to her back. Her warmth filled the space between them like a physical thing.
She didn’t shift away.She didn’t lean into him either.She stayed steady.That steadiness was worse.
Alaric forced his focus to the code. “They’re using the vendor account asa mask,” hesaid.
“Yes,” she replied. “And they’re timing the probe to coincide with normal system noise. Like they know when we run internal reconciliations.”
“They know our rhythms,” hesaid.
Sera’s mouth tightened. “Which means it’s someone who’s watched us.”
The word us landed harder than it should have.Alaric straightened and moved back to his own station, needing distance. He didn’t allow himself to glance at her again until he’d locked his focus on the problem.
Minutes became an hour.
The house itself seemed to disappear around them, the rest of the rooms sinking into darkness while the secure office remained lit and humming. The world reduced to the sound of keys, the occasional low murmur between them, and the constant awareness of two bodies sharing a contained space.
Sera shifted her chair closer again so she could see his screen without asking him to angle it. The movement was practical.It still put her shoulder within a breath of hisarm.
Alaric adjusted his posture, angling away just enough to maintain discipline.Disciplinewasn’t optional.
Her voice changed when she concentrated, dropping lower, smoothing out. He caught himself listening to the cadence instead of the content. He forced his attention back to the screen.
“They’re mapping,” she said softly. “Not taking. Learning.”
“Which means patience,” he replied.
“And confidence.”
Her knee brushed his.The contact was brief. Innocent. It still sent a sharp jolt through him that had nothing to do with logic. He stilled, breath shallow for a heartbeat before he moved his legaway.
Sera noticed. Of course she did.She didn’t apologize. Didn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. She simply continued working, the awareness sitting between them like a livewire.
Alaric tried to tell himself it was nothing.It wasn’t.He wasn’t a man who reacted physically without permission. Not his own permission. His body didn’t get a vote.And yet, the smallest brush of her against him had lit something sharp and restless under hisskin.
He pushed harder into thework.
They traced the probe back through layers of misdirection. They found the dormant integration account, then the placeit had been repurposed, then the way it had been shielded behind normal reporting traffic. The cleverness of it was insulting.It meant someone believed they could move inside his world without beingseen.
Sera made a low sound of frustration. “They built this to survive audits.”
Alaric’s gaze cut to her. “They built it to survive you.”
Sera’s eyes lifted to his. Warm. Steady. Not offended.”Then we don’t let it.”
That should’ve been the end of it.It wasn’t.
Because the longer they worked, the more the professional alignment seemed like something else. Arhythm. Ashared language. Atrust that had been building for months in meetings and late-night calls and quiet wins no one else understood.
Sera didn’t ask him to soften. She didn’t try to pull warmth out of him like it was a trophy.She simply stayed herself.And somehow that made the air around her warmer.At some point, she tugged the elastic from her hair and let it fall loose down her back. The movement was unconscious, practical.
It did nothing to help hisconcentration.
