Page 35
Yet.
“No scarf this time.”
“No. I gave you my last one.” She met his eyes. “Which you still have, I assume.”
“In my truck.”
She let out a laugh she hadn’t planned — the managed version dropping, the real one underneath. “For someone with an incident report system, you’re remarkably bad at handling returns.”
“The return window hasn’t presented itself.”
“The forest was a return window. The meadow —” She stopped, pressing her lips tight. “I’m getting distracted.”
“You brought up the scarf.”
“I did. You’re deflecting from the blood situation.”
“The blood situation is resolving.”
“I can see that.” Her eyes stayed on the wound — skin knitting back together fast, like she’d seen on the cliff after the last fight. She wasn’t alarmed by it anymore. “That is still extremely unsettling, for the record.”
“Noted.”
She raised her eyes. The humor left her face, and what lay beneath it was what he’d been trying not to see since he’d walked across the cliff and found her here. There was nothing left to hide behind, and holding steady cost him. “You shifted. The full one. I was on the residential street when the ward line rang, not the usual hum but a struck bell, and I knew it was you before I knew it consciously.”
“Alpha authority interaction with the ward system. It’s documented.”
“I know it’s documented.” Her voice was steady. She had practice with steady. “I’m telling you I ran two blocks before I decided to.”
“Mirelle —”
“I’m not asking you for anything.” Clear. No wobble. “I’m telling you what happened because you said you wanted me to tell you things, and this is one of them, so I’m saying it out loud.”
He stayed still. The wound had closed. The cold air came off the ocean, and she was two feet from him. He was not processing anything except her. Behind him, Pike studied the ward stones in the opposite direction. Drayce moved to the cliff’s edge to review data that conveniently needed his immediate attention. Maelin conducted a thorough shoulder assessment, as if nothing else in the world were happening. “I’m going to find the schedule breach and the source. I’m going to close this.”
“I know.”
“I want you to know that’s already happening.”
“Tor.” One step toward him. The gap between them, still there, but smaller. “That was never what I was worried about.”
“What were you worried about?”
She held his eyes, no social distance. “You. I came here in the dark because I was worried about you. Not the ward. Not the creatures.” He had a larger problem than the incident report.
He wrote the incident report at 2:00 AM. Maelin was off rotation pending a medical scan. Right flank uncovered. Modified creatures deliberately found the gap. The schedule went to four people — none of whom Tor believed was the leak. He added his own injury. The full-shift deployment. He stared at that line for a moment. He’d never once lost track of a contact injury during a fight.
The ward line rang. She’d heard it. She’d known it was him. She’d run two blocks.
The scarf was still in his truck. He still hadn’t moved it.
Tor opened the log.
ELEVEN
MIRELLE
The text came in after eight.
