Page 6 of Alpha Charmed

I invited him for exactly this conversation. There’s no reason to hesitate now—except that letting him past the doorway feels like letting him past every other boundary I’ve spent eight years maintaining.

I step back anyway.

“Come in, Alpha Sternwolf.” My voice is steady. My composure is flawless. Inside, everything shifts—realigns—recalculates. “It seems we have things to discuss.”

He steps across my threshold.

The wards recognize him—they don’t flare, don’t resist, don’t so much as shiver in warning. As if they’ve been waiting for this moment. As if they knew before I did that this was coming.

Magic. Unstable magic. That’s all it is.

Nothing to do with the wolf who’s just entered my territory.

Nothing at all.

TWO

CAIUS

She invited me in.

I’ve been in Anouk Darkwater’s apothecary before. Twice. Both times for official Protection Network business, both times standing in the main shop area with a counter between us and three feet of professional distance carefully maintained. Both times lasting approximately seven minutes before she found a polite way to end the conversation.

This is different.

She’s leading me through the shop, past the counter, into the back rooms where the real work happens. Her territory. Her space. The part of herself she doesn’t show anyone.

After years of careful distance, she’s letting me past the threshold.

Her workroom is exactly what I would have expected and nothing like it at all.

The lavender bundles are releasing scent in waves that seem to pulse with an invisible rhythm.

Small signs. Tiny cracks in the careful facade. She probably thinks she’s hiding.

She isn’t.

I noticed the flicker at the funeral. The candles. The mist brightening around her for half a heartbeat before she clamped down on whatever was escaping. Anyone else might have missed it.

Her magic is unstable. Has been since she lost her familiar, if I had to guess. The owl died six months ago—Corwin, she called him. I know because I left a package at her door the next day. Treats that owls prefer. I didn’t sign the card. Didn’t wait for thanks. Didn’t even know if she’d realize they were from me.

She did. I know because she didn’t speak to me for two weeks afterward. Even less than our usual minimal contact.

Anouk Darkwater doesn’t accept comfort. She endures. She controls. She survives. The idea that anyone might want to ease her burden is apparently more offensive than the burden itself.

I want to comfort her anyway.

I don’t have that right. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if she has anything to say about it.

“You can sit.” She gestures to a stool near the main workstation. Her voice is the same controlled tone she uses in council meetings—pleasant, professional, utterly closed off. “Or stand. I don’t care.”

I choose to stand. Sitting would put me below her eye level, and I’m not interested in ceding that ground. She notices the choice. Her mouth tightens fractionally.

Good. Let her be aware of me. Let her feel the same hyperawareness that’s been plaguing me for nearly a decade.

She turns to gather papers from a shelf—a letter, documents, her movements quick and economical. My attention tracks the line of her spine, the elegant architecture of her updo, the single strand of dark hair that’s come loose to brush the nape of her neck.

Years of knowing with absolute certainty that she’s meant for me—and respecting her complete lack of interest in that fact.