“Your office is a twenty-minute walk from mine.”
“I’m accustomed to a certain degree of comfort that your office cannot provide.” He was already reaching for something off screen, already done with the conversation in the way he always was—completely, and on his own schedule.“Message my secretary the details.”
The screen went blank.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the empty call window for a moment.
My parents had a lot to answer for.
Kael stirred somewhere at the back of my mind, dry and unhelpful.
You did kick him.
“I know,” I said to the empty office.
Lorcán and Croía Gallagher were remarkable parents.
They’d let us run wild when we were younger—not spoiled, never spoiled, but free in the way that mattered. Our wolves had been allowed to develop naturally, at their own pace, without being forced into submission or rank before we were ready for it. Some packs pushed their young hard and early. Our parents understood that what grew slow grew strong.
Once we were on our own two feet though, once the business was built and the territory established and two fully grown alpha sons stood before them needing nothing—they’d handed us the reins without ceremony and gone home to Ireland.
Every time we saw them now they were worse.
Worse being relative. They were happy. Disgustingly, privately, completely happy in the way of two people who had found the one thing that made the rest of the world make sense. Newly mated wolves, even after all these years—still reaching for each other across a room without thinking, still speaking in the shorthand of two people who had long since stopped needing full sentences.
It was remarkable.
It was also a stark and persistent reminder that my brother and I were without ours.
We’d tried every part of the United Kingdom. Cities, coasts, highlands. Every pack gathering, every introduction, every carefully arranged meeting that Cuán had complained about and attended anyway because even he wasn’t above hope.
Nothing.
Perhaps we needed to travel further. Cast wider. The world was large and fate, in my experience, had a poor sense of urgency.
Now?
Now we sat in separate offices twenty minutes apart and bickered over laptop cameras like two old women with nothing better to do.
If Cuán found his mate before I did—
No.
It was unthinkable. I refused to entertain it. The fallout alone would last decades. He would never, not once, for the rest of eternity, let me hear the end of it.
I closed the laptop and got back to work.
My brother was a client and I needed to find out what was happening with his software system. The last thing I needed was for a delay to reflect badly on Kilcullen Tech’s name.
Or worse.
He would never let me live it down. Every Christmas. Every birthday. Every phone call for the rest of our very long lives.
Fuck that.
I lifted the phone and asked for Claire.
Chapter 10
