Page 76 of Warded By His Wolf

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Protected By The Pack

Pack Guard Agency — Book 5

Chapter 1: The Bond Awakes

TESSA

The bond wakes before I kill the engine.

I sit in my car at the edge of the Pack Guard Agency lot, hands steady on the wheel while my magic presses outward like breath against glass. Four years of telling myself the tether was dormant, buried deep enough that it no longer got a vote. The flutter beneath my ribs is professional focus. That's what I call it, the lie I allow myself until I open the door.

October air cuts across my face, sharp with pine and the metallic bite of old workings. My life-weaver senses slip past the agency's perimeter before I consciously release them.

I make it six steps before I stop. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

I close my eyes and let my magic sink deeper. The wards are thinning where they should be strongest. Containment lines have gaps hidden beneath layers of patched magic. Some of the deterioration is natural. Some of it isn't. And beneath every fracture, pouring power into the failing structure faster than it can bleed out, is a signature I would recognize anywhere.

Caleb.

My chest tightens. He's feeding his own reserves into the building. Of course he is. Even after four years, I know exactly what kind of man Caleb Thorne is: the kind who'd bleed himself dry before admitting he needed someone else to hold the line.

I open my eyes and keep walking. The front entrance rises ahead in glass and steel, modern and immaculate, every line built to give nothing away. That feels like him too.

A young lobby guard checks my credentials, and his eyes flick up to my face and go careful.

"Tessa Wynn." Not a question. "They said you were coming."

"Word travels."

"You have no idea." He hands the badge back too fast, like it might bite him. "Whole floor's been on edge since Director Thorne cleared your contract personally. He doesn't do that. Ever." He catches himself, like he's said too much, and straightens. "Third floor. He's expecting you."

"Does he usually clear contracts himself?"

"Not in three years I've worked here." A beat, weighing whether to say more. "Good luck up there."

Good luck. Not welcome, not congratulations. A warning dressed as courtesy. I file it and head for the elevator.

The car carries me up, and I use the ride to slow my breathing. The bond is not dormant. It never was. I've simply become very good at pretending I can't feel it.

The doors open. Six dominant wolves hit my senses at once, power filling the corridor like weather moving in. Field commander. Intelligence. Tracker. Two signatures I don't recognize.

And then... him.

Everything inside me goes still. I walk into the briefing room.

Caleb Thorne stands at the head of the table, and for one dangerous second, I forget how to breathe. Dark hair threaded with more silver than I remember. Broad shoulders beneath a black shirt. The scar cutting across one side of his face catches the overhead light, a pale reminder of violence survived. He looks harder than he did four years ago. More dangerous. More tired. Still devastating.

His hands are braced against the table as if he's holding something enormous perfectly still. I remember those hands differently: warm against my skin, steady at my waist, the way he used to loosen beneath my touch, as if I were the only person he trusted enough to stop guarding himself around. The memory lands low and warm before I can stop it.

Then his eyes find mine, and every wolf in the room goes silent.