Page 24 of Guarded By The Alpha

They'd wanted me close to someone like Roan. The warehouse, the assignment, the late shift that left me alone with a man mid-change—none of it was an accident. Which meant the question I hadn't wanted to ask was sitting in the room with me now, and there was no walking around it:

Did Roan know?

The knock came before I could follow it anywhere. When I opened the door, his look told me Gideon had already reached him.

"You traced the supply trail," he said. "In four hours."

"It's not that different from reading a scene. They use the same fake-company setup for all of it—Drake's vehicle, the warehouse supply, the place they're holding her. Once you see the shape, it just keeps repeating." I stepped back to let him in. "Your people are mapping the wards now. My work cut six hours off the timeline."

Something shifted in my chest. Not quite warmth—more the feeling of being seen as something other than a problem to be managed.

"The logs," I said. "Their watching. They wanted me close to someone like you. Exposure to a strong wolf." I watched his face. "Did you know?"

He went still. Not the predator-stillness of danger, but the quality of a man holding something he wasn't sure how to carry.

"I didn't know until Gideon broke it open this morning." His voice was low, steady. "The warehouse job I was running—I thought it was an ordinary Council watch. I didn't know they'd built the whole thing to put you there." A breath. "They may have wanted you close to me, specifically. To see what your blood would do."

They'd used him too. Set him in the same warehouse, same night, because they wanted to see what would happen in the same room as him.

"We were both pieces on the board," I said.

"Yes."

I looked at the files scattered around us—the cold language of how they'd run my mother's life and set Roan down as the spark they wanted.

"I'm going to take them apart," I said. "Whatever it takes, whatever Caleb's timeline says—I'm going to make sure someone who can do something about it sees all of it."

The gold in his eyes brightened a fraction. "Then we do it together."

Something landed between us—not quite a promise, something more solid. The weight of two people who'd just found out they were standing on the same side of a fight neither of them had chosen.

The comm crackled. Gideon's voice, urgent: "The footage just updated. Drake's vehicle is back—pulled in seventeen minutes ago. He's at the holding site now."

Roan's hand found my arm, steadying.

The Cleaner was with my mother.

Everything just changed.

Chapter 8

Terms of Surrender

ROAN

The main room smelled like cold coffee and the particular tension that comes before a job nobody wants to rush. I stood at the head of the table with Gideon's map of the wards spread out, Jace's notes on the guard patterns layered over it, and the grainy footage of Drake's vehicle frozen at the south side of the place.

Nova was already there when I came in. First one in the room.

She hadn't slept past five since the warehouse. I knew it the way I knew everything about her hours now—not because I was keeping track on purpose, but because somewhere around day three the wolf had stopped telling the difference between guarding her and never looking away from her.

"The east window," she said without looking up from the stills. Her finger traced a line across the image. "Every forty minutes. Same guard, same pause. That's not a patrol."

I came to stand beside her. Close enough to catch the faint warmth off her skin, the scent the wolf had filed away under necessary. "Personal habit?"

"Nerves. Something he checks outside that window—something that matters to him, not to the job." She glanced up at me, gray-blue eyes sharp with the focus she brought to a scene. "A man with a tell you can set your watch by is a man you can get ahead of."

Jace came through the door in his usual silence, Gideon two steps behind with a tablet already going. Maddox followed, and the room filled with the weight of a team getting ready for real work.