Page 17 of Guarded By The Alpha

I walked the last round myself at two in the morning.

Not because it needed the man in charge—Jace had the east, Maddox the south, the wards were solid. But six years had taught me that the night before things get worse is exactly when the person with the most to lose should be the one checking the locks.

The courtyard was clean.

I stood in the cold longer than the round called for. The night air did something useful with the tension that had been winding tighter since the warehouse—didn't kill it, nothing killed it, but gave it something outside myself to push against instead of the inside of my own walls.

I walked back in.

The east corridor was dark except for a thin line of light under the door at the far end.

Still awake.

I stopped outside her door just long enough for the wolf to find her heartbeat—steady, a little quick but not frightened, the rhythm of someone working, not someone scared. Then I walked to my own post, because that was the right call.

Sometime before four, the light under her door went out. Her breathing slid into the long, even rhythm of real sleep.

Something in my chest eased by about the width of one breath.

I wasn't calling it relief.

The seven o'clock briefing brought the whole team into the main room.

Caleb was there in person. Not a screen. Not a written order. There.

That's how you read where things stood. Caleb in the room meant we'd crossed the line where keeping his distance was no longer enough.

Gideon opened with the flag he'd pulled the day before. "That Council chatter sorted itself out overnight into something I can read."

He put it on the main screen.

"Someone working for the Council has reached us. Through a channel they shouldn't even know exists. Which settles the question of whether there's a leak and opens a much worse one in its place."

Their terms came up on the screen.

Caleb read them out in the flat voice he uses when he won't let anyone hear his reaction before he's decided what it should be.

"You go on as you are. No fighting. No exposure. One condition." He paused. "Hand her back. Willingly."

The room went quiet.

The specific quiet of people waiting to hear what I'd say before they let themselves think anything.

I didn't let Caleb draw the breath to answer.

"She's under our protection." My voice was level. Certain. The flat tone of a man stating a fact about the world. "That's not on the table."

No qualifier. No per the rules. No pending review.

The weight in it wasn't professional, and every wolf in the room—trained to hear who's in charge in the sound of a voice before the thinking part even catches up—heard exactly what it was.

Gideon's face didn't change.

Jace, who hadn't looked up from the table since the terms were read, went very still for a second and then nodded once. The small, exact movement of a wolf who'd just had a question answered.

Maddox lifted his eyes to nothing in particular with the look of a man who'd seen this coming for two days.

Caleb looked at me a long moment. Not challenging. Not approving. Reading.