I let the observation land without comment.Alice had earned the right to her opinions.She had raised my mother, had outlived my mother, and when I had found her decades later and offered her a room in this house, she had come without a single question.If she wanted to tell me I was handling this badly, she could say it in Morse code and I would still hear the message.
“There will be guests this afternoon,” I said.“Viktor.Dmitri.Two of the Pakhan’s soldiers.”
Alice’s hands paused over the eggs.She turned and looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen since I was nineteen and bleeding on her kitchen floor, newly brought in from the streets.
“She’s not ready for that.”
“It’s not optional.”
“Raphael.”
“The Pakhan’s directive.”I kept my voice flat.Controlled.The voice I used in meetings when the numbers were bad and the room needed to believe I had a plan.“She needs to be seen.Assessed.If the inner circle doesn’t accept her, the alternative is worse than a dinner party.”
Alice turned back to the eggs.She cracked one with more force than was necessary.“Then I’ll set the formal dining room.”
The morning moved in fragments.I showered, dressed, tended to the claw marks with antiseptic and fresh gauze.The scars were raised and pink against my ribs.A message carved in flesh.I had taken the punishment standing.Hadn’t made a sound.My wolf had howled so loud inside my skull I had tasted blood.
I was buttoning my shirt when I heard her on the stairs.
Her scent reached the kitchen before she did.That familiar sweetness sharpened by the astringent bite of resentment that had become her baseline since the courthouse.My wolf went quiet.Then surged, pressing against the inside of my skin, flooding my senses until the edges of the room blurred and the only clear thing in it was her.
She appeared in the doorway.Dark circles beneath her eyes that her concealer didn’t quite hide.Navy dress, different from yesterday’s, but the same high heels, the same strand of pearls warm against her collarbone.Her mother’s pearls.She wore them like a talisman, and I wondered if she knew that every time I saw them, I thought about the woman who had died too young and the daughter who had been left behind to navigate a world that wanted to swallow her whole.
Her hand went to her throat as she walked to the coffee.A brief touch, fingers skimming the bare skin above the pearls where my collar used to rest.She probably didn’t even realize she did it.But I noticed.My wolf noticed.The training had worked too well.Her body still remembered me, still reached for the claim I had placed on her, even while her mind burned with hatred.
“Good morning.”She crossed to the coffee, poured a cup, took her place at the far end of the kitchen island.Maximum distance.The same routine as yesterday.A choreography of avoidance so precise it could have been rehearsed.
Alice set a plate of eggs and toast in front of her without being asked.Lena thanked her with a warmth she never aimed at me.
I wrapped both hands around my coffee mug.The ceramic was hot against my palms.“There will be guests this afternoon.Some of my associates.They’ll arrive around two.”
Her fork paused between the plate and her mouth.“Associates.”
“They need to meet you.”
“Why?”
Because if they don’t, the man who runs us all might decide you’re easier to bury than to tolerate.Because I chose your life over my standing and they need to see what I bought with my blood.Because every one of them is a wolf and they can smell that you’re mine and they need to confirm it before the Pakhan loses patience.
“It’s not optional,” I said.
The fork went down.Her jaw set in the way I had learned meant she was choosing between several cutting responses and selecting the one with the sharpest edge.
“Like the security detail you stationed at my hotel without asking.”
“The security stays.”
“You don’t get to control my building.”
“I’m not controlling it.I’m protecting it.”
“From what?Your own associates?”
The truth pressed against my teeth.From whoever left a dead dog in your lobby.From whoever sabotaged your heating in January.From whoever is photographing your building from the parking lot across the street, which Viktor reported to me at five this morning.From the fact that you are married to a man whose enemies would use you as leverage without a moment’s hesitation, and the person who should be your greatest ally is the one you hate most.
“The security stays,” I repeated.
She stood.Picked up her coffee and her phone and her composure and walked out of the kitchen.Her heels hit the tile in sharp, measured beats, each one a small detonation of the silence between us.
