She turned to Lucian. “Don’t die while I’m gone. I just got used to arguing with you again.”
“I’ll do my best to accommodate your schedule.”
Percival got a different farewell. She crossed the clearing and stood in front of him. He looked up. She pressed her hand to his cheek, brief and warm, and said nothing. He leaned into it for half a second. Then she pulled back and walked toward the tree line.
I followed her to the perimeter. Standard protocol.
“Solomon.”
I stopped.
“The note.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “Under the rock. Did you find it?”
The note. The response to the message I’d thrown over the wall during her training session with Wyatt. The message that, in retrospect, was not standard protocol by any interpretation.
Every time the male’s name surfaced, my wolf offered the same suggestion: remove him. Snap his neck, drag the body into the forest, and resume the conversation as if nothing happened.
The impulse was irrational and I recognized it as such, but rationality had limited authority over a mated alpha whose bond was fractured and whose children were growing inside a woman he couldn’t fully reclaim.
The strained space between us made it worse. And every hour she spent training beside another man while that space remained unresolved fed a possessiveness I couldn’t reason away.
“I found it.”
“And?”
“You told me to stop throwing rocks. I’ve adjusted my methods accordingly.”
“I also told you Wyatt doesn’t stand that close.”
My jaw tightened. The tell she’d just identified, functioning on cue.
“He stands within arm’s reach during sparring drills.”
“It’s sparring. He has to be within arm’s reach. That’s how combat works. You know that.”
“Yes. I’m aware of how combat works. I’ve been conducting it for four centuries.”
“Then you should know the difference between tactical proximity and romantic proximity.”
“I know the difference.” The words came out before I could moderate them. “I simply don’t enjoy watching another male other than us occupy space near you. Regardless of the tactical justification. It’s one immaturity I allow myself.”
The amusement in her eyes shifted to warmth. She held my gaze and the wall between us thinned another fraction.
“I’ll be back in two days,” she said. “Try not to throw any rocks at Wyatt while I’m gone.”
“No promises.”
She turned toward the tree line and almost collided with Giselle.
The two women stopped. Giselle had materialized from the eastern perimeter, a water container in each hand, returning from the stream on a path that intersected Mira’s exit route. For a beat, neither moved.
Giselle recovered first. Her gaze swept Mira the way a soldier assessed a variable: head to boots, pausing at the stomach, then back up to her face.
“You’re leaving.”
“I am.” Mira’s voice stayed even but I caught the shift in her posture. Spine straightened. Chin lifted. A body language learned from a lifetime being evaluated and had learned to stand taller for it.
“Through the eastern drainage tunnels. The ones you used last night.”
