[Miles’ POV]
Eleven refreshes. Eleven times I've opened my inbox like a man who has lost every shred of dignity he once possessed and is devastatingly aware of it.
Two a.m. and sleep isn't happening—not because of the espresso at four, though that was a choice my therapist and I will discuss. The laugh is what's keeping me vertical, replaying on a loop I didn't authorise.
That one sound she made in my office—her whole face cracking open in a most devastatingly beautiful way. I could play it on repeat forever, which is information I'm actively choosing not to examine.
Then the nausea hit and the window slammed shut. She came back from the bathroom wearing someone else's composure, the same excuse delivered both times with identical inflection—"skipped breakfast, rookie mistake"—rehearsed down to the syllable.
I notice things I have no business cataloguing. The coffee she won't touch, the hand that keeps drifting to her stomach when she thinks nobody is looking.
Underneath her usual scent—amber, warm, honey-edged—something new has been building for weeks. Sweeter, richer, a thread I keep catching between breaths and losing before my brain can file it anywhere safe.
My wolf knows what that thread is. My wolf has been pacing behind my ribs with an urgency that has nothing to do with territory and everything to do with the woman who beat me at cards at sixteen and hasn't stopped winning since.
Sleep is a lost cause, so I stop insulting it with my performance. Shower, wet hair, the office by six-fifteen—the kitchen on twenty-two should be empty because that's my whole thing, the early-bird-catches-the-existential-crisis routine.
Blake is standing at the counter with a coffee and a perfectly knotted tie at six in the morning, because apparently this day has chosen violence. I'm the target, and the tie is exhibit A.
"Well, well." I reach past him for a mug, voice cranked to its brightest setting. "Blake Wallace lingering over coffee like an actual human person—should I check for a pulse, or is this a scheduled anomaly?"
"I'm reviewing documents." His jaw does that micro-clench he thinks is invisible, the one that's louder than most people's actual screaming.
"Reviewing documents in the kitchen at six a.m. with your phone face-down." I pour coffee and let the observation land with a grin that's ninety percent performance. "You look like you’re waiting for an email, brother."
"And you look like you haven't slept." His grey eyes cut to mine, sharp enough to draw blood through politeness. "But we're not doing that."
"Oh, we're absolutely doing that." I lean against the counter, mug pressed to my sternum like a shield. "The rotation ended yesterday and she hasn't picked, and we're both standing here pretending this is about anything other than refreshing our inboxes like idiots."
"Speak for yourself." Blake sips his coffee with the composure of a glacier that has personally decided to ignore climate change.
"I am speaking for myself—and for you, because somebody should." My back teeth find each other hard enough to register. "I hope we're not treating her as a recruitment target, Blake, because that's exactly what this is starting to feel like."
"Your version of caring looks a lot like hovering." He sets the mug down like placing a chess piece he's already won with. "Have you considered she might find it suffocating?"
"Have you considered your version looks like surveillance from a slightly better-dressed distance?" My spine straightens. "You watched her for three weeks without saying a single word—that's not restraint, brother, that's a nature documentary."
"At least I gave her room to breathe." Flat—that terrifying Blake-flat where every syllable is a closing argument. "You orbit her like she's a campfire and you're freezing, and she's carrying things you can't fix by ordering her lunch."
"Maybe she wants someone to order her lunch." My fingers tighten around the mug until ceramic protests against bone. "Maybe after twenty-four years of surviving alone, someone giving a damn without a price tag isn't hovering—it's the first kindness she hasn't had to earn."
"Or maybe you're confusing what she needs with what makes you feel useful." Blake delivers it without raising his voice, which is always the worst sign.
My mouth opens and nothing exits, which has literally never happened—I always have something, a quip, a redirect, an emergency joke pulled from the wreckage. The kitchen compresses to the exact dimensions of that silence.
"Both of you." Spencer materialises in the doorway just in time, as always, restructuring every molecule of air with his mere presence. I almost envy this ability of his. "Stop."
"We're having a conversation," Blake says, which is absolutely his version of admitting to a knife fight. His mug stays perfectly level, because even mid-confrontation Blake Wallace does not spill.
"You're competing." Spencer crosses his arms, and the temperature evacuates the room like it received a formal eviction notice. "For a woman who has spent her entire life being treated as a prize—by her father, by this pack, by the will."
The coffee maker gurgles into the quiet, breaking the heavy silence. Spencer pours his cup, unhurried.
"You're doing the exact same thing she's endured her whole life, just with better lighting." He leaves, and the sentence stays behind like shrapnel lodged in the walls.
Blake stares at the doorway. I stare at my mug while something behind my sternum rearranges—furniture being dragged across a room I thought I'd finished furnishing years ago.
I carry Spencer's words through every hour. Meetings, code reviews, a product demo where I perform at full wattage while the real version of me replays them on a loop.
My rotation email—Why Technology Is Objectively the Best Choice (With Data)—reads like a campaign ad now. My stomach turns every time I picture her opening it.
After hours, the building empties and I tell myself I came back for the laptop on my desk. The laptop is a lie, and my feet know where they're headed before my brain files its formal objection.
The stairwell on nine—her lunch spot, no cameras, bad acoustics, the place she vanishes when the building gets too loud and too wolf. I stand outside the door and her scent reaches me through the gap, as in those silly cartoons from the last century.
Amber and warmth and that new thread—sweeter tonight, richer, a note my wolf recognises with a certainty that makes my jaw ache. My palm presses flat against the steel, and on the other side sits an empty step where she eats sandwiches she never finishes.
The nausea, the scent, the hand on her stomach—every piece assembles behind my ribs into a picture I’m not ready to acknowledge. My wolf paces with the sureness of something already named while I stand here pretending I don't understand the translation.
My phone buzzes—Blake, one line: Did she respond? I type back No and pocket it without looking at the screen again.
Then I press my forehead to the cold steel and breathe her in—amber and sweetness and the thing I can't name. It settles behind my ribs with the permanence of something that has already decided it lives here now.
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