I shook my head and continued my rounds.The wolf was being paranoid.The threat was gone.Joe was dead and buried, and whatever lingering unease remained was nothing more than the echo of months spent on high alert.My instincts needed time to recalibrate.That was all.
Petrov’s voice crackled through my earpiece, sharp with urgency.
“Vor.You need to come to Mrs.Antonov’s office.Now.”
I was moving before he finished speaking, the wolf surging beneath my skin, claws pressing against my fingertips.The bond flared with my alarm, and somewhere in the building I felt Lena’s confusion in response, her awareness prickling at my distress.
Not her.Not her.Please not her.
I took the stairs.Three at a time.The elevator would be too slow, too confining.My vision was edging toward amber by the time I reached the executive floor, my control fraying at the edges, heart pounding, hands shaking.
The office was empty when I arrived.Petrov stood by the desk, his face grim, and two of my men flanked the doorway with hands near their weapons.No sign of Lena.Through the bond, I felt her calm, a few floors away, in a meeting.Safe.
The relief nearly buckled my knees.
“What is it?”
Petrov pointed to the desk.
A photograph lay in the center.Lena, standing in front of the mirror in her private office bathroom, her blouse unbuttoned and pulled aside to expose the claiming mark on her shoulder.Her head was tilted, her fingers tracing the raised scar where my teeth had pierced her skin.The expression on her face was soft, private, intimate.A woman alone with her thoughts, touching the mark that bound her to her mate, unaware that someone had been watching her.
The image was sacred, private in a way that made my wolf snarl with possessive rage.
Someone had taken it through the ventilation grate above the mirror.
Beneath it lay a note on hotel stationery, the words printed in neat block letters.DID YOU THINK I WOULD JUST GO AWAY?
Every muscle in my body locked.
“When.”The word came out barely human, more growl than speech.“When was this taken.”
Petrov’s jaw was tight.“Based on what she’s wearing, yesterday afternoon.During her lunch break.”
Yesterday afternoon.
Joe had been dead for two days.
The room tilted.I gripped the edge of the desk to steady myself, the wood groaning beneath my fingers, and somewhere in the depths of my chest, the wolf began to howl.A sound of rage and grief and devastating failure.I had been so certain.So satisfied with myself.So proud of my protection.
Wrong.Wrong.I told you.I told you something was wrong.
“Pull the security footage,” I heard myself say.My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.“Every angle on this floor from yesterday.Every maintenance access point.”
“Already doing it, sir.”Petrov’s voice was carefully neutral.The voice of a man delivering bad news to a superior who might shift and kill him for it.“But whoever did this knew the camera placement.There are blind spots in the coverage on this floor.”
Whoever had done this had planned it carefully, had calculated every angle, had waited with patience I had not expected.Joe Bishop had never been that smart or that patient.Joe Bishop was dead, rotting in the ground where I had put him, and someone else entirely had been watching my wife.
I killed the wrong man.
The realization hit like a physical blow.I staggered back from the desk, my vision blurring at the edges, amber bleeding into my sight as the wolf fought for control.My claws extended without conscious thought, scoring deep gouges into the wood of the desk.I could not remember doing it.Could not stop it.
Failed.We failed.She is still in danger and we killed the wrong one.
“Vor?”Petrov’s voice, careful.Wary.Ready to move if I shifted.“Sir, are you?—”
Through the ventilation grate.
The words from Petrov’s earlier assessment echoed in my skull.The photo had been taken through the ventilation grate.Someone had crawled through the building’s ductwork, positioned themselves above the mirror in her private bathroom, and waited.Someone who knew every inch of this hotel.Every access point.Every blind spot in the camera coverage.