But whose decisions?Conall asked.Vincent’s?His advisers’?The entire leadership structure?
All of them, potentially.Nadine’s voice carried implications none of them wanted to face.A completely compromised pack making decisions based on manufactured impulses.
We should call it a night,Chen said finally, rubbing his eyes with obvious fatigue.A fresh perspective in the morning might help us see connections we’re missing.
Conall nodded, though part of him was reluctant to stop.
The work was important, yes, but more than that—these hours of focused collaboration with Nadine had felt right.Natural.
He shoved down the thought.
I’ll lock up,he told Chen as the geneticist gathered his materials.Make sure all the files are properly secured.
Chen nodded and headed for the exit, leaving Conall alone with Nadine for the first time since Dr.Chen’s arrival.
Find anything else interesting?Conall asked, focusing on the scattered files to avoid looking directly at her.
This.She held up a clipping from the local newspaper, dated fifteen years earlier.Story about a missing Sunburst resident who was found weeks later with no memory of where he’d been.
Conall moved closer to read over her shoulder, catching her scent as he leaned in.
Jason Martinez,he read.Disappeared for three weeks, found wandering on the highway outside town.Claimed he couldn’t remember anything after leaving for a routine hunting trip.
But look at this part.Nadine pointed to a paragraph buried in the middle of the article.Medical examination revealed ‘minor surgical scarring consistent with outpatient procedures,’ but no record of Martinez having any surgery.
Their heads were close together now, both leaning over the old newspaper clipping.Close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, could see the way her pulse fluttered at her throat.
Close enough that when she looked up from the article, their faces were inches apart.
Time seemed suspended in the space between heartbeats.
He should step back.Should maintain professional distance, remember all the reasons this was complicated and dangerous and wrong.Should think about Quinton’s fears, about pack loyalty, about the investigation that demanded their complete focus.
Instead, he found himself cataloging the way her breathing had changed, becoming shallow and quick.The slight part of her lips, the golden flecks in her amber eyes.The way she smelled like coming home after years of wandering in the wilderness.
This is a bad idea,she said, but she didn’t move away.
Terrible idea,he agreed, but he brought his hand up to cup her cheek anyway, brushing his thumb across her lower lip in a caress.
In the fluorescent-lit archive room, surrounded by evidence of betrayal and manipulation spanning decades, the connection felt like the only honest thing in his world.
We shouldn’t,she whispered, but her hand was fisting in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer.
No,he agreed, and then his lips were on hers.
The kiss was electric from the first contact—desperate and hungry and full of all the tension they’d been fighting for days.
Her lips were softer than he’d imagined during the torturous nights when the mate bond had whispered fantasies he’d tried to silence, when he’d woken with his cock hard and aching, with her name on his lips.
The taste of her flooded his senses as her lips opened for him with a breathless gasp that vibrated against his mouth.
Nadine melted against him with a soft sound that made his wolf howl with satisfaction, her body fitting against his like she’d been made for this moment, for him.Every dangerous curve pressed perfectly into the hard planes of his chest.
Heat pooled low in his belly like molten fire, his body responding with an urgency that left his cock thick and hard and aching against her hip.
His hands tangled in her hair, loosening her severe braid until dark strands spilled through his fingers like liquid silk.The scent of mountain snow and pine that always clung to her intensified, mixing with the heady musk of arousal that made his head spin and his control fracture.
She tilted her head back, offering him the elegant column of her throat, and he traced it with his lips and tongue, tasting salt and sweetness and the pulse that hammered beneath her skin like a drum calling him home.
