The penthouse was quiet in that specific way expensive buildings get quiet—not empty, just engineered to absorb sound before it hits the walls. But my brain, which had never fully stood down from active duty, was already running a full sensory scan of the space beyond the guest suite door.
Low hiss from the kitchen: espresso machine, probably the one that cost more than my first car. Soft drag of leather soles across hardwood—Braham, moving from the living area to the kitchen with the unhurried pace of a man who owned every square inch of the floor he walked on, a large body moving through a space it knew intimately, the way pressure changes when someone that size shifts position in a room.
I knew exactly where he was. I’d known for the last twenty minutes, which was a fact I refused to examine with any kind of intellectual honesty.
Grace grabbed my thumb the second I lifted her. Her grip was getting stronger. She babbled something that sounded suspiciously like a question, eyebrows raised, waiting for my reply.
“Your timing is criminal,” I told her. “But your enunciation is improving. Solid progress.”
She blew a spit bubble in response.
Fair.
I got her sorted with the efficiency of a man who’d been doing this long enough to develop muscle memory, but not long enough to stop being impressed by his own competence.
Fresh diaper: thirty seconds, one-handed, no leaks. Clean onesie: pale blue, with little wolves printed on the feet because someone in this building had a sense of humor I was choosing to appreciate rather than resent.
I checked her temperature against the inside of my wrist—warm, not feverish—and ran a quick visual for rashes, weirdcolors, any sign that the universe had decided today was a good day to introduce a new complication.
All clear. For now.
The kitchen smelled like espresso and warm bread. Vera had left a fresh loaf on the counter overnight, wrapped in a cloth that probably cost more than the bread.
Grace’s bouncy seat was already set up on the island, the toy bar dangling brightly colored shapes at exactly the right height for tiny fists to swat.
I settled her in, clicked the safety buckle, and watched her go immediately for the red circle with the focused commitment of someone training for the Olympics.
“Go for gold, kid,” I said, and reached for my laptop.
The manuscript was due in six weeks. Petra, my editor, had the kind of attention to detail that turned misplaced commas into personal insults. She’d reduced a senior publicist to tears last year over an em dash that should have been an en dash, and she’d done it with a smile that suggested she’d enjoyed every second.
I respected that.
I also respected the fact that she would not accept “I got kidnapped by werewolves and now I’m raising a baby” as a valid extension request.
The document loaded. Chapter fourteen. The love scene I’d been avoiding for three chapters because writing sex while living in a glass penthouse with a six-foot-three alpha wolf and an infant felt like performance art of the most embarrassing variety.
I scrolled to the last paragraph I’d written before the alley, before Grace, before my entire life had detonated and reassembled itself into something I didn’t recognize.
Drew reached for him across the bed, hand finding the line of his jaw in the dark, and for a moment neither of them moved. The city outside the window was just a smear of orangeand white, forty floors down, and in that suspended quiet, Eli did something Drew had never seen him do before: he went perfectly, utterly still, honey-brown eyes fixed on Drew’s mouth with an attention so complete it felt like being touched.
I stopped reading. My jaw tightened.
I scrolled back. The male lead—Eli, who was supposed to be a brooding architect with trust issues and a bad knee—had somehow acquired honey-brown eyes. And a habit of going very still when he was paying close attention. And the other one—Drew, who was supposed to be the chatty one—had started making dry remarks in short, punchy sentences that landed like punctuation.
None of that was in the character bible. None of that had been there three weeks ago.
I closed my eyes. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
Grace batted at the red circle and missed, which made her frown with the intensity of someone who had just discovered gravity was a personal attack.
I opened a cherry sucker, shoved it between my teeth, and started typing. Four hundred words in twenty minutes. Not my best pace, but respectable given the circumstances.
The love scene progressed. Drew’s hand on Eli’s chest. Eli’s voice, low and rough, saying something about not having done this in a long time. The dialogue felt real. Too real. I could hear Braham’s cadence in every line, the way he measured each word before he let it go.
I kept typing. Jaw set. Lollipop clicking against my molars. Grace occasionally connecting with the red circle and making a sound of pure triumph that should not have been possible from a creature with lungs that small.
By seven-thirty, the east-facing windows were full gold, Mt. Hood a pale cutout against a sky the color of a bruise healing. My books were on the shelves in the living room—spine-out,alphabetical, the way I kept them. My knives were in the top drawer of the dresser, nested in fabric, handles visible. The largest one, the one with the checkered grip, was sitting on the nightstand because some habits died harder than others.
