Page 29 of Guarded By The Alpha

"I know that too." Tara set her cup down. "What I don't know is whether you've actually sat with what happened last night, or whether you're doing what you always do—filing it away and functioning anyway."

The directness of it hit harder than I expected. I'd spent seven years being good at filing. Good at functioning. Good at keeping everything at arm's length so it couldn't reach in and take anything I wasn't prepared to give.

Last night, on that briefing table, I'd stopped filing.

"I sat with it," I said.

"Did you?"

I looked at her—really looked, the way I look at scenes when I need to see what's actually there instead of what I expect. Tara Quinn was calm under pressure and impossible to rattle, but she was also something else: someone who'd decided I mattered enough to be honest with.

"I chose it," I said quietly. "I chose him. That's the part I'm still learning how to carry."

Tara's expression softened into something that wasn't quite a smile but lived in the same territory. "Good," she said. "That's a better answer than 'I'm fine.'"

"I don't do 'I'm fine.'"

"I noticed." She picked up her cup again. "I also noticed you haven't asked me about yesterday's bloodwork."

The change of subject was deliberate, and I appreciated it. This was ground I could walk—information, data, evidence. "Gideon said what's waking in me was speeding up."

"It is." Tara's voice went level, the way it always did when she was handing me facts she wanted me to hear clearly. "What's been asleep in your blood is answering to steady closeness to wolf magic. Roan's, specifically. The change is significant but not dangerous."

"What does significant look like?"

"It looks like your body learning a new language faster than it should be able to. Whatever you are—whatever your blood carries—it's waking because something in you recognizes something in him."

I took that in the way I take all hard information: by turning it into evidence I could examine. "The bond."

"Probably. The connection between a wolf and a matching bloodline leaves marks we can track. Yours are... pronounced." Tara paused, choosing her words. "I don't have the whole picture yet. But I can tell you what's happening to you isn't just from being near him. It's both ways. Your blood knows his, and his wolf knows you."

The warmth in my chest pulsed in agreement, and I resisted the urge to press my hand against my sternum.

"Does he know?" I asked. "About it speeding up?"

"He knows where it started. I haven't given him yesterday's results yet." Tara met my eyes. "I wanted to give them to you first."

I understood what she wasn't saying. The information was mine before it was anyone else's, even the man whose biology was apparently tangled with mine in ways neither of us had chosen.

Even the man I'd chosen anyway.

"Thank you," I said, and meant it.

Tara nodded once and stood, collecting her cup. "The 0700 briefing's in forty minutes. Eat something first—you'll need the fuel." She paused at the door. "And Nova? Whatever you're carrying from last night, whatever you're still figuring out—you don't have to figure it out alone. That's the part that's different now."

She left before I could answer, which was probably deliberate.

I sat with the coffee and the quiet and the warm thread in my chest that pointed east, toward a man who was using the routine as armor against something he didn't know how to carry either.

The 0700 briefing moved with the precision of a team that had done this before.

I watched from my spot at the table as Roan reworked the timeline—forty-eight hours down to twenty-four, delivered in the calm voice of a man who'd made harder calls in worse spots. Jace took the change with a single nod, already recalculating. Maddox asked three questions about how we'd move and then started prepping without being told. Gideon confirmed the footage they had was enough to go.

They moved like a single organism. Like wolves who'd run together long enough to read each other without words.

Roan's gaze passed over me once during the briefing, a brief sweep that marked where I was and that I was fine and then moved on. Professional. Controlled.

The bond said otherwise. The bond said he was aware of exactly where I was sitting, exactly how I was holding myself, exactly how much distance he was keeping between us.