He stopped a precise three paces behind me. I caught his reflection in the window: black suit, white shirt, eyes that belonged on a sniper, not an executive assistant. The wolf in him was orderly. Everything about Ashe was built for function over flourish. That’s why he’d lasted longer than any beta I’d ever employed.
“Status.” I didn’t need to raise my voice.
He started in, deadpan. “Building secure. Staff cycling out as ordered. The pup’s cry has not repeated since he left.”
He meant “since the mate left.” Ashe wasn’t a sentimentalist, but I could hear the analysis between every clipped syllable. This was pack business, not just oddity. I kept my hand to the glass and let the city fill my periphery.
“We’re going to have guests,” I said. “Tonight, maybe tomorrow. I want faces for every door, and a dead zone around the garage entrance.”
“Done.”
“The men on bikes. You see their plates?”
He had. He always did. “Registered to a shell out of Troutdale. Rented under a false front, but the credit card backstops to a procurement office in DC.”
“Wolves?”
Ashe shook his head, fraction of an inch. “No scent trace. No visible tells. Human muscle, but disciplined.”
“Contractors, then.” It narrowed the universe of possibilities, but not enough. “Find out who hired them.” I didn’t have to say how. “And while you’re at it, find out what the hell a newborn wolf pup is doing in a liquor box on Belmont. If her parents are alive, I want them in this office by sunrise. If they’re dead, I want to know when, where, and why.”
“Understood.” He waited. He knew there was more.
I turned, finally, and met his eyes. “If you were me, would you leave her out there?”
He didn’t blink. “No, sir.”
“Good. The child stays with me.”
Ashe’s expression never changed. That was its own answer.
“Also,” I said, “get Vera on the line and have her bring up whatever passes for a crib and baby gear from the estate. If it’s not here by morning, I’ll make the call myself.”
He almost smiled. “It will be here.”
The pup would be safer here than in any clinic, and the best way to keep her breathing was to make sure nothing touched her without my say-so.
I let my hand fall from the window, palm tingling from the cold. “That’s it. Go.”
Ashe moved like he always did: one silent stride, then gone. The door caught on its automatic soft-close, clicking behind him.
Alone, the office felt bigger. Still smelled of cigar and cedar, but under it now, the faint ghost of cherry blossom—his scent—stuck in the air by the exit. Not strong, but persistent. The desk chair still held the impression of where I’d sat, knees almost brushing his when he’d squared off and refused to drop his gaze.
I closed my eyes, just for a second, and could see him there: jacket too thin for the weather, hair in disarray, a fucking lollipop in his cheek as if he could insulate himself from the world’s worst truths with sugar.
Maybe he could.
The city lights pressed against the window like a tide. I stood there longer than I needed to, watching the rain chase itself down the glass. There was a shape to this kind of silence, a contour you could only find in the minute after a thing you never wanted actually happened.
I set my jaw. When I finally moved, I made a list: the wolves who owed me, the humans who would kill for a shot at my pack, the parents who would never, ever abandon a pup unless the alternative was worse.
Somewhere in that list was an answer.
And, for the first time in a decade, I was invested in finding it.
I didn’t sit at my desk when I needed to think. But tonight, it fit. There was a baby in my arms—absurd, dense, and so out of scale with the rest of me that if a photographer had walked in, the image would’ve gone viral before sunrise. Two-twenty-five ofPrime Alpha, custom suit straining the shoulders, and a human infant the size of a football splayed boneless across my chest.
It would be humorous if it wasn’t me.
