How close?
Close enough for the cameras. She’s not approaching. She’s circling. Different route each time.
Lorraine was still pack. Still had every right to walk the territory. But circling the King’s estate at night, varying her routes, that wasn’t a walk. That was reconnaissance.
She was with someone last time. Male. Couldn’t ID from the footage.
George?
Possibly.
George Ashtor. Lorraine’s older brother, not the younger sibling most people assumed because Lorraine’s personality took up so much oxygen that people forgot George existed.
He’d been living in the northern territories for years, running security for a smaller pack, which was a polite way of saying he’d been pushed out of civilized pack life because he couldn’t stop picking fights with anyone who looked at him wrong. Bigger than Lorraine, meaner, with a protective streak toward his sister that bordered on obsessive. He’d never liked me, made no secret of it, thought I was soft for running a company instead of leading from the field.
If Lorraine had called him home, it meant she’d stopped crying and started planning, and George was someone who turned plans into action without asking questions first.
Double the patrol on the east side. Pull footage from all three nights. I want her routes mapped.
On it. You want me to bring her in?
No. She hasn’t broken any rules. She’s pack. She’s allowed to walk the territory.
For now.
For now. But keep watching.
I put the phone down. Andrea was still asleep on my shoulder, her hand curled loosely against my chest, her face open in a way I only saw when she wasn’t guarding herself. Beyond the estate walls, Lorraine was circling with George beside her. Two Ashtors with a grudge and enough desperation between them to do something stupid.
My wolf stirred, ears up, watching the dark beyond the window. I looked at Andrea’s face, at the bump where my son wasgrowing, at the book closed between us and the dog snoring at our feet. If anyone came for them, there would be no council ruling, no formal process, no second chance.
But not tonight. Tonight she was asleep against my shoulder, the reading nook smelled like paper and vanilla, and I wasn’t moving until she woke up.
37
— • —
Andrea
He asked at breakfast. Same question he’d been asking every morning since Whitebrook, delivered the same way, casual, no pressure, fork in one hand, coffee in the other.
“Date?”
I looked at him across the table. Grandma’s tea was in my mug because he still ordered it, had it shipped to the estate every two weeks without being asked. The peonies on the counter were fresh because he replaced them every Monday. He was in a t-shirt with his hair messy from sleep and he was asking the question he already knew the answer to because he’d been getting the same answer for months.
Except this morning I woke up and realized I didn’t want to say no anymore. I’d been saying it out of stubbornness, out of principle, out of the need to prove to myself that I was in control.But the truth was I hadn’t been in control since the night he read to me in the reading nook and I fell asleep on his shoulder and woke up with his arm still under me, not moving, holding still so I could rest.
“Okay,” I said.
His fork stopped. He looked at me.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Okay. One date. Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird.”
“You’re staring at me like I just told you the sun is purple.”
