Page 21

“Why are you angry?”

The question caught him off guard. “What?”

“You’re angry. I can feel it. But it’s not aimed at me. At least not this time.” She tilted her head, studying him, reading him the way she’d accused him of reading her. “You’re angry at him.”

He couldn’t keep the scowl from settling on his face. “Of course I’m angry at him!”

“Why?”

“Because he hurt you.” The words came out before he could think about the meaning. “Because he’s still hurting you. Because you’ve been carrying this alone for years, and no one asked. No one noticed.”

Sloane pressed her lips together. Her eyes were bright, wet at the edges, and she blinked once, hard.

“No one’s ever been angry on my behalf before.” The admission left her lips quietly, almost as though she were ashamed to admit it.

Chris picked up the notes from the desk. Folded them and put them in his back pocket. She watched him do it without moving.

“I’m going to Kahn,” he said. “I’m going to tell him everything. That it’s him. An old pack member. Your father. I’m going to tell Viktor. I’ll keep the details about your childhood between us unless you give me permission to share them. But the name goes on the table. They need to know who they’re looking for.”

She turned away from him. Faced the window, her reflection caught in the glass. He could see her expression there, fractured by the morning light. She kept her composure despite emotion threatening to overwhelm her features. Her hands stayed at her sides.

“Fine,” she said at last.

He walked to the door. Stopped with his hand on the frame.

“Lock this behind me.”

She didn’t turn around. “Fine.”

He wavered for a few seconds, wanting to say more. He didn’t, choosing to leave wordlessly instead. Took the stairs two at a time, crossed the courtyard in the early light.

As he had expected, Kahn’s office was not empty. Viktor stood at the map table with his arms crossed. Kahn sat behind the desk, his ice-blue eyes steady on Chris as he laid the notes out, one by one, across the polished wood.

“Garrett Mercer,” Chris said as he walked in.

It took a second for the men to register what it was he was saying. Kahn looked at the notes. Viktor leaned forward, read the first one, then the second.

“I vaguely remember him,” Viktor said. “Banished under the previous Alpha. Territorial violations.”

“He’s Sloane’s father.”

Viktor’s head came up. Kahn’s expression didn’t change, but his hand, resting on the desk beside the notes, pressed flat against the surface.

“These have been arriving for three years,” Chris said. “He breached the wards to deliver them. He was inside her cottage two days ago. Last night, he was inside the inner compound, in her new room, while she was at dinner.”

“The same man who attacked her,” Kahn said.

“Yes.”

Kahn pulled the newest note closer. Read it. His thumb moved across the word sweetheart, the paper creasing under the pressure.

“He was inside the building,” Viktor said. “Past the wards, past patrol routes, into the residential block. That’s not a man who stumbled through a gap.”

“He’s been watching for years,” Chris said. “Learning the patterns. The gaps.”

The study door opened. Gideon stood in the threshold, grey-haired, unsmiling, a sheaf of patrol reports in one hand. He looked at the three of them, at the notes spread across Kahn’s desk.

“Am I interrupting?”