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“As serious as you were—until this morning.”

“I told you why.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You ever have a dream that makes you see things in a new way? That lets you release some of the troubles weighing you down?”

My jaw twitched. “No.”

He watched me quietly. “Well, I hope you do one day.”

I gave him a look and resolved not to let him delay me further. Gods, this shifter had a way of unsettling me from the moment he’d opened the door. Was it a tactic? Setting me off for a delayed ambush?

Yet, I didn’t feel any sense of danger around him. Especially not by the way he looked at me, with a hint of longing…

What I needed to do was focus, get back on track. Act like the well-trained field operative who was sent here on an order.

I exhaled through my nostrils. “Conan Lockridge. Lockridge pack. Alpha. Verification begins.” Stating this aloud was bizarre in itself. I would do a quick verification mentally to match him to my description, to ensure I’d found the correct target.

The humor left his gaze, almost making me regret my words. “Go on.”

I stood and walked over to him on the other side of the table. His nostrils did that flaring thing again, as if sniffing me. His scent reached me, one of soap and male musk. I resisted the urge to inhale it more deeply. But it wasn’t one of the checkpoints, so I made myself ignore it.

“Checkpoint one,” I said. “The eyes.”

He tilted his chin up and didn’t blink. I moved around, glancing into the eyes to observe the color. “Amber in color. Gold around the black,” I said, confirming what was in the documentation. Why I was vocalizing the verification was another question. Perhaps a reminder to myself to stay on task. “Observed and stated.”

“So that I can see you,” he said, voice now low and serious.

Why did he say that? Those words gave me pause, but only for a moment.

I forced myself to ignore it as I moved to his side. “Checkpoint two. The ears.”

This one involved dropping my voice to a whisper, and then below it, until it reached a place that a human wouldn’t hear, but a wolf would. I shaped words until they had the barest breath behind them, and I could no longer hear my voice.

I leaned toward his ear and dropped my voice until it was only breath.

If you knew why I was coming, why didn’t your pack kill me?

“So that I can hear you,” he said into the quiet between us.

A shiver ran along my forearm. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second before reopening them.

All humor from breakfast had vanished. He was holding something back. Despite the stillness of his position sitting in the chair, I could see it in the quickened pulse in his throat, the way his jaw worked, and the eyes. The gold circle brightening around the black.

His hands remained on the table, in front of me, not threatening. Not making a single move.

“Checkpoint three. The hands.”

He turned them over on the table in front of me, palms up, then back down. This checkpoint required contact. I took his wrist in my hand and noted the warmth of his skin. Consistent with his species. I observed the scar lines along his forearm, consistent with the documentation.

His pulse came up beneath my fingers as he watched my face. I stared at my hand holding him.

“So that I can hold you,” he said.

Now my pulse skittered upward. What was he doing?

And what was I doing? I was holding his arm for much longer than necessary.

Nothing about this verification was going as it should. I needed to get myself together.

“Checkpoint four,” I declared louder than I’d intended. “The teeth.”