I nodded, mute. The noise in my head was gone, replaced by a hum of shock.
"Good."
He ran his thumb over my lower lip, his gaze dropping to my mouth before snapping back to my eyes.
"You are forbidden from organizing anything else in this house," he declared. "If I see a label on the toaster, Rowan, there will be consequences."
"Understood," I breathed, my admin oriented brain fumbling to ratify the new directive.
"Your curiosity regarding your utility is noted," Juno said, stepping back slightly but keeping me boxed in. "But for the next eight hours, your output is set to zero. Your only Key Performance Indicator is pleasure. Sleep. Warmth. Safety. Can you manage that deliverable?"
"KPI is pleasure, sleep, warmth, safety," I repeated, the words feeling strange and heavy on my tongue.
"Correct." A slightly devilish glint sparked in Juno's gaze as he lifted me off the counter and set me on my feet. His hands staying just a little too long, but then when he removed them I swayed slightly, my knees feeling like water. He braced me lightly, making sure I wasn't about to fall, and once he was sure I was steady he let me go.
"Go to bed, Rowan," Juno ordered, pointing toward the hallway. "Before I decide to give you a performance review right here on the island."
I didn't argue. I didn't look at the unfinished spices. I turned and fled.
I made it to the guest room in record time, diving under the duvet and pulling it up to my chin. My heart was still racing, but the jagged edge of the anxiety was gone, smoothed over by the lingering shock of his mouth on mine and the heat of his hands around my waist.
I touched my lips in the dark.
It wasn't logistical. It wasn't efficient.
But god, it worked.
And the worst part was I liked how much it had worked. I had to remind myself that this was a business relationship and hehad just been resetting my anxiety, but part of me wished it was more than that.
SEVEN
Stephen
"Why her?" Mateo’s voice was a low rumble, barely audible over the hum of the servers that lived in the room, but it carried the weight of a granite slab.
He was standing by the reinforced glass wall that separated the command center from the hallway, his arms crossed over a chest that looked bulletproof even without the Kevlar vest.
I didn't look up from my tablet immediately. I let the question hang there, heavy and loaded.
"There are other managers," Mateo pressed, his dark eyes tracking movement in the shadows of the house. "There are activists with bigger platforms. There are politicians fighting the Wellness laws. We are risking the entire network, the safehouse, and our anonymity for a Beta mid-level manager who got caught on a hot mic."
He turned to look at me, his jaw set. "Is the risk profile justified, Stephen?"
It was a fair question. From a tactical standpoint, Rowan Quill was a walking liability. Her face was plastered across every tabloid in London, Vance was specifically hunting her, and she had zero combat training.
But Mateo was looking at the body. I was looking at the mind.
"Juno," I said, tapping the screen of my tablet to case the file to the main monitor on the wall. "Pull up the Riot Theory contract."
Juno, who was lounging in the ergonomic chair with the boneless grace of a cat, spun around. He typed a quick command. The screen flickered, replacing the heat map of London with a dense, multi-page legal document.
"Standard touring agreement," Mateo grunted. "So what?"
"Look closer," I directed. "Subsection 14.B. The Omega-Safe Rider."
I stood up and walked to the screen. To anyone else, this was just dense blocks of serif font. To me, it was poetry. It was a weapon made of words.
"Rowan managed a punk band called Riot Theory," I explained, tracing the line of text. "They had an Omega audio engineer. Zia Vale. Brilliant girl, but high-risk on the road. The industry standard at the time was to force Omegas to sign waivers allowing venues to isolate them during heats, or worse, mandate chemical suppression."
