[Miles’ POV]
The call comes at four-seventeen—I know because I've been staring at the clock since four-twelve wondering if it's too soon to check whether Bailee's eaten. Pack elder's wife, Marguerite Holt, voice like honeyed poison.
"Miles, darling." Already a red flag—nobody who calls me darling means anything good. "I hope I'm not interrupting. I just had the most curious conversation at the luncheon."
"Marguerite." I lean back, smile already in place because smiling changes the shape of your voice and I learned that trick at fourteen. "Always a pleasure."
"There's been some chatter." She pauses for effect—I can hear the tea cooling in her porcelain cup. "About whether all three Wallace brothers are personally involved with the Reed girl."
The Reed girl. Like Bailee is a footnote and not the most extraordinary person to set foot in this building since my father. My jaw tightens behind the smile.
"The company's personnel decisions aren't pack gossip, Marguerite." Warm enough to pass for polite, sharp enough to end the conversation. "I'd hate for anyone to confuse curiosity with something less flattering."
She recovers quickly—women like Marguerite always do—and I hang up already pulling up the delivery app.
Here's the thing about me: I can't fix the pack or the hearing or the fact that Bailee looks at me like I'm a beautiful disaster she's deciding whether to survive. But I can make sure she eats.
Her usual. No onions, extra pickles, ginger tea because coffee makes her nauseous now. She thinks nobody noticed the switch—I noticed the first day, the way she pushed the mug away with two fingers like the smell alone was a personal attack.
I walk the bag to Spencer's office where she's been buried for six hours. She's not there. Chair pushed back, laptop dim, pen sitting on an open file like her body made a decision her brain hadn't approved.
It takes forty minutes to find her. I'm not proud of this—those forty minutes involve three floors, the break room, the lobby, and a text to Blake I delete before sending because ‘have you seen her’ reveals a level of monitoring I'm not prepared to have on record.
Fifteenth floor, conference room B. She's asleep at the table surrounded by paperwork in a system only she understands—colour-coded notes, margin annotations so small they look like secrets she's keeping from the document itself.
One hand curled around her stomach. The other still holding a pen, because even unconscious this woman won't put down a weapon.
I stand in the doorway longer than I should. The rise and fall of her breathing is rearranging the architecture of my chest—moving walls, building something permanent in a space I didn't know was empty until she filled it.
She looks smaller when she's not performing competence. Younger, exhausted in a way that goes deeper than missed sleep—bone-level tired, the kind you accumulate from carrying things nobody offered to hold.
I set the food down with surgical care. Shrug off my jacket—the good one, the navy one Spencer says makes me look like I'm trying too hard. I drape it over her shoulders, and the tenderness would embarrass me into next week if anyone were watching.
Nobody is. So I pull a chair to the opposite end and work quietly, pretending like I’m definitely focused on projections and not watching a sleeping woman breathe over my laptop screen every forty-five seconds.
She stirs at six-twenty. Eyes snap open, body goes taut—the reflexes of someone who has never woken up feeling safe. Then the calculations cross her face: jacket, food, me pretending I wasn't counting her inhales.
"How long have you been here?" Her voice is rough with sleep and something underneath that makes my pulse misbehave.
"Couple hours." I close my laptop with rehearsed casualness. "You missed dinner, which—and I say this with zero judgment and maximum concern—means you've had one granola bar since nine a.m."
She looks at the bag, then at me. "You tracked my food intake."
"I noticed you abandoned a granola bar." I keep my voice light because light is what I do when everything underneath is serious enough to drown in. "There's a difference."
"There really isn't." But she reaches for the bag, and the fact that she's eating is a victory I will celebrate internally for the rest of the evening.
"I didn't want you waking up alone in an empty building." I say it simply because I mean it simply, and the simplest things I say to Bailee always land heaviest.
She pulls my jacket tighter around her shoulders—doesn't take it off, doesn't hand it back. I file that gesture somewhere so deep in my chest I will never stop accessing it.
"I don't know how to do this." She's looking at the paperwork, not at me, and her voice has the quality of someone admitting what they've held behind their teeth for days.
"Do what?" I ask, even though I know—because she needs to say it, and I need to hear which version she means.
"Any of it." She waves one hand at the table, the documents, the careful distance between us. "The hearing. The baby. The three of you circling me like I'm something that needs protecting."
"You are something that needs protecting." It comes out before I can filter it, raw and honest and entirely too much.
"That's the problem, Miles." Her eyes find mine and hold. "I've never been someone anyone protected. I don't know how to stand inside that without waiting for it to disappear." She pauses. "And the envelope—I still can't open it."
"You don't have to do any of it alone." Everything in me wants to cross the distance and take her hands, but she asked for space and I am going to be someone who listens. "That's not a strategy. Not a claim. Just a fact I'd like you to carry."
She nods. Doesn't speak for a while—just sits with my jacket around her shoulders and the food getting cold and paperwork fanning between us. The silence is the most honest thing either of us has said in weeks, and I let it sit because some silences are load-bearing.
I walk her to her car at seven because the parking structure at night makes my wolf pace. She's two steps ahead, keys in her fist, and the distance between us feels negotiated—not hostile, just careful.
Then I see it. Far end of the lot—a vehicle parked nose-out, engine off, lights off, positioned with a sightline to the building entrance so clean it could only be deliberate. Dark sedan, tinted windows, the kind of anonymous that costs money.
My stride doesn't change. My smile doesn't drop—the smile is the armour, always has been, and right now it's doing the heaviest lifting of its career.
I memorise the plates in one sweep—a habit Spencer drilled into me at sixteen—and say nothing to Bailee. She's carrying enough, and this particular weight is mine to hold.
I watch her drive away. Then I text Blake three words and a plate number: we have company.
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