I sucked on the lollipop, let the sugar numb my tongue, and said, “You ever going to explain what happens now, or is this all just improv?”
He leaned in, close enough to steal my breath, and said, “I’ll show you, if you let me.”
It was the worst line I’d ever heard.
It worked.
I stepped back, but my heel caught the base of the table and I had to grab the edge to keep from going down. He didn’t smile, didn’t mock, just waited while I reassembled my dignity.
The baby, now snoring, shifted and curled her fingers around my little finger, locking me in place. I looked down at her, then up at him.
“Fine,” I said. “But if you ever pull this alpha shit on me again, I’m going to introduce you to my knife. Up close.”
He smiled, wide and wolfish, and for the first time I felt something like safety in the room.
“Deal,” he said.
The tension snapped, and I laughed—a real, ugly, undignified bark.
Braham Wolfe, Prime Alpha of the Pacific Northwest, reached past me, lifted the baby as if she weighed nothing, and tucked her into the crook of his arm. She slept on, perfectly content.
He looked at me, waiting for the next move.
I didn’t have one.
So I just stood there, breathing, letting the silence fill in the spaces where words used to go.
Eventually, he said, “You should go home and rest. The sun will be up soon. The pup should sleep until morning.”
I nodded, too tired to argue. I walked to the door, let my hand linger on the frame for a second, and said, “You’re a bastard.”
He didn’t deny it. “You’ll come back.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong. I wanted to slam the door, or throw something, or just run until the world shrank down to a size I could handle.
But all I could do was walk away, knowing I would come back, and that it wasn’t weakness.
It was just what happened.
I hit the elevator, stabbed the button, and waited. The last thing I saw was Braham, holding the baby, watching me with a look that said everything was still possible, and maybe even allowed.
The elevator doors closed, and the city took me back.
Chapter Four
~ Braham ~
The elevator’s echo didn’t fade. Not really. Sound traveled differently at the top of a city, and the glass sucked up whatever decibels survived the forty stories between here and the wet, sodium-lit streets.
I stood at the window, my left hand braced to the cold glass, fingers splayed. Portland’s grid worked west in a hundred pulsing veins, rain on the glass smearing every headlight and office lamp into something less than real. If you wanted to pretend you owned it all, this was where you’d start.
Behind me, the office was all sharp edges and old smoke. My desk—more battlefield than workspace—held the residue of the last hour: empty water glass, a slick of coffee cooling in the mug, the folder on my mate. Flynn. Jai. Small, sharp, and impossible to ignore.
He’d taken the exit with his chin up and his pulse running just north of calm. If he was coming back, he’d make it look like his own idea, and I respected that.
Hell, I banked on it.
The elevator had made it halfway to the ground before Ashe came back. No knock, just the hinge-click and the soft, even tread of shoes across my imported carpet. I didn’t turn. There was no point.
