Silas:Graham and I will be there soon. Saint’s already on his way.
I read it twice. He’s already on his way. My foolish heart does a little flip in my chest.
By the time I arrive, the entire lot is chaos. Police cruisers. Fire trucks. My stomach twists as I step out of the Uber, the smell of dust hitting me immediately.
“Ma’am, you can’t—”
“I own this property,” I say, already moving past the officer before he can finish. That gets me through.
I’m swept almost immediately into a conversation with a man in a Garden Brook Fire Department jacket. “Lark Jensen?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I’m Mike Davis, Fire Marshal. I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course.” My eyes flick toward the building, or what’s left of it. One side has caved in completely. My chest tightens.
“Did you have any indication the building was unstable?” he asks.
“No,” I answer immediately. “We had a full inspection done when I signed the lease. There were some recommendations for reinforcement, but nothing urgent. It was deemed structurally safe.”
“When were you planning to complete the recommended work?”
“A few months from now,” I say.
He nods, jotting something down. “And no one was inside at the time of the collapse?”
“No,” I say again, more firmly. “We don’t use Building 2 for daily operations. It’s mostly overflow storage. My office was the only other space in there.”
He nods again.
I hesitate. Something nags at me. A memory. Saint, walking through the building. His jaw tight. His eyes scanning everything, his thumbs pressing into the puckered cement. My stomach dips.
“Actually…” I say slowly.
The marshal looks up.
“My—” I hesitate, just for a second. Then push through it. “My alpha was concerned about it.”
The words feel strange. Too raw after everything that just happened. But not wrong.
“Your alpha?” he asks. He looks at my unmarked neck. I resist the urge to pull my T-shirt up to my chin.
“He’s a firefighter. In East Rock,” I add quickly. “He toured the building with me a few weeks ago.”
I let out a small breath. “I thought he was being overly cautious. A little doomsday, you know?”
The fire marshal’s expression sharpens slightly. “Do you know what specifically concerned him?”
I shake my head. “No. Silas, another of my alphas,he—”
A shout cuts through the air before I can say anything else.
“Lark!”
My head snaps up. There’s a disturbance near the edge of crumbled remains. Officers shifting. Someone pushing forward, being held back.
“Lark!”
