I leave before she can say any more. Before the tip of my cock pokes through the waistband of my pants.
The directive arrives through official channels before the kitchen has delivered Maeve's meal. My father's seal. Formal language. Command beneath every phrase.
The investigation into the enforcer deaths will be handled internally. The human medic's involvement is to cease immediately. All findings are to be reported directly to Lord Vorath before any action is taken.
He frames it as protection. The investigation is sensitive. Involving an outsider creates vulnerabilities. House Draven handles its own problems internally. This is how it has always been done.
Maeve has already identified the poison his internal methods missed for months. Removing her now would cost weeks. Would cost lives.
I send acknowledgment of the directive. Confirm compliance. That findings will be reported through appropriate channels.
The deception slides into place without resistance. I expected this moment to feel like betrayal. His blood, his house, his trust, however conditional it’s always been. Instead it feels like exhaling after holding my breath for years.
The cage door has been unlocked longer than I realized. I simply hadn't tried to push it open.
I don't examine what this ease implies. Don't calculate how many small surrenders preceded this moment, how many buried disagreements built the distance that makes deception feel like relief rather than rebellion.
There will be time for examination later.
Now, there is work to do.
Teshra intercepts me in the corridor outside the medical bay, her expression carefully neutral. “I thought you should be aware of your contract-holder’s brother.”
Tomás. The chaos of the investigation has pushed him from my thoughts entirely. The male whose debts brought Maeve into my compound, whose weakness set all of this in motion.
“How is he?”
“The withdrawal has run its course. He's eating again, sleeping through the night. Cooperative with the rehabilitation work.” She pauses, and something softens at the edges of her mouth. “He asks about her. Every morning. Wants to see her, or at least receive word that she's well.”
The brother who gambled away his freedom and hers, reduced to begging for scraps of information about the sister who saved him. There's a bitter symmetry in it.
“Tell him she's occupied with duties that serve House Draven. Nothing beyond that.” I consider the female waiting in the medical bay, the one who traded her life for a brother who didn't deserve the sacrifice. She’d want to know about her brother and it’s cruel not to keep her updated. “I'll speak to Maeve myself. She should hear how he's progressing, and that he's been asking for her.”
Teshra inclines her head and retreats down the corridor. I file the conversation away, one more thread in a tapestry growing more tangled by the hour.
The knock on my office door arrives two hours later, and I know who stands on the other side before the panel slides open to reveal her. She carries the scent of the medical bay's antiseptic wash and a sharper edge underneath, the focused energy of someone who has found a thread and needs to follow it before the trail goes cold.
“I need access to the pharmaceutical storage.” She doesn't wait for an invitation, stepping into my office with the same certainty she brings to everything, as though the space belongs to her as much as it belongs to me. “The compound that killed Torvin wasn't synthesized from standard ingredients, and I needto cross-reference the restricted supply logs against the access records from the past eighteen months.”
“The pharmaceutical storage is in the restricted section.”
“I'm aware.” She stops three feet from my desk, and her unique scent carries to me. “That's why I'm asking instead of simply going.”
I should summon Veth to escort her, should assign any of the dozen guards available to provide the access she requires. The investigation doesn't need me walking those corridors beside her, breathing the air she breathes, existing in a proximity that burns against my awareness like a brand pressed to bare skin.
I won't allow Veth, or any other male for that matter, anywhere near her.
“I'll take you.”
We descend through the compound's lower levels, her footsteps matching my stride despite her petite frame. She asks questions about security and access logs, her mind working through the investigation as my mind works through different calculations.
Vezra rounds the corner at the junction to the supply corridor, datapad clutched against her chest. The pale scar that curves from her jaw down her throat catches the corridor light, a souvenir from a smuggling interdiction gone wrong years before I took over enforcement.
Her gaze tracks from me to Maeve and back again, assessing. “My lord. I wasn't informed you'd be accessing the restricted levels today.”
“I don't require your coordination, Vezra.”
Her attention lingers on Maeve for a beat too long before she inclines her head and continues past us. “Of course.”
