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Drayce argued the situation was complicated.
The line was clear. He would not use the bond as leverage. He would not pressure her with a claim she hadn’t requested. He would not touch her with the full weight of what she was to him until she stood before him with full information and made a free choice. That line was intact.
The line was far from where his wolf wanted it.
He turned away from the water.
There was a supplemental report on the scouts to write. A briefing for the Alpha Council. A founding-line witch who needed someone to explain the full scope of her ward connection. That conversation was going to be his.
He started back toward town through the rain.
His wolf went quiet — not settled, not content, but focused and quiet, with the target identified, willing, barely, to wait.
Drayce walked faster.
Something was targeting the weak point her surge had created, and that weak point was tied to her, which meant she was already on someone’s radar on her first night in Spelltide Cove.
He was going to be close to her. Professionally.
He was working on it.
THREE
ALTHEA
The pipes were warm.
Not the ordinary warmth of pipes when a building is doing something reasonable with the weather. Warm because they’d decided to run hot through the night and were now sitting at a temperature that had no right to be in a bathroom wall at six-thirty in the morning.
Althea turned on the cold tap.
Hot water came out.
She turned it further toward cold. The water grew hotter. She stared at the tap with the flat, unimpressed stare she usually reserved for quarterly reports that didn’t add up and for wasted paper.
I’m a reasonable adult. There’s a reasonable explanation for this. Buildings do things.
The tap dripped cheerfully.
She called the maintenance line.
“My water is running hot. All of it. I can’t get any cold water from the tap, no matter which direction I turn it.”
“How hot are we talking, ma’am?”
“Hot enough that I can’t use it for anything you’d normally use cold water for.”
“Is there any visible damage to the fixtures?”
“No visible damage. Just — inexplicably, persistently hot.”
“And this started when?”
“Overnight. I went to sleep with a functioning bathroom and woke up with a sauna.”
She heard him stop typing. “Ma’am, I’m going to be honest with you. That’s not a plumbing issue.”
“Then what is it?”
