The correct answer was yes.A conversation in a quiet parking structure.A firm explanation of boundaries that left bruises where clothing would cover them.Or something more permanent, if the message didn’t take.
“Not yet.”I set the phone down.“Continue surveillance.I want his patterns.Where he sleeps, who he talks to, whether anyone’s feeding him information.”
“Understood.”
I ended the call and stared at the photographs.The wolf snarled in my chest, a low vibration in my molars.Every instinct screamed that this insect had no business breathing the same air as my mate, let alone photographing her exits.
But killing Joe Bishop now would solve nothing.He was a symptom.The photographs, the lingering, the confrontation Petrov had briefed me on yesterday, the one where she had told him not to call me “that man” and the wolf had nearly howled with satisfaction when Petrov briefed me.Joe was a lovesick boy with a bruised ego.Dangerous in the way puppies were dangerous.Not the bite, but the mess they attracted.
I filed him under “watch” and moved to the next problem.
Viktor called at five-forty.I let it ring twice.With Viktor, the pause was its own language.
“Rafa.”His voice was low.Careful.Viktor never wasted syllables.“The boss asked me directly yesterday.How your wife is settling in.”
I said nothing.The silence between us carried everything that words would have made too real.
“He expects progress,” Viktor continued.“A functional arrangement.Not…” He paused.Chose his words with the precision of a man who understood that the wrong one could get his wolf brother killed.“Not separate bedrooms and unanswered texts.”
“Who told him about the bedrooms?”
“No one had to tell him, Rafa.He sent two of his people to the dinner.They have noses.”
I closed my eyes.The inspection dinner.Lena sitting rigid in her chair while Dmitri snarled at shadows and Viktor watched with that careful stillness of his and the scent of her fear, bitter as burnt coffee, soured the meal I had barely touched.Of course the Pakhan’s people had smelled it.The hostility between us, the anger rolling off her in waves, the unmistakable absence of anything resembling a mate bond.They’d have reported back within the hour.The Vor’s human wife hates him.The marriage is a performance.A bad one.
“How long?”
“The Pakhan expects progress.”Viktor let that sit.“Make it real, or he’ll revisit the alternative.”
The alternative.The word landed in my gut like a blade.The alternative was her body cooling on a warehouse floor while the wolf inside me tore itself apart trying to reach a mate who no longer existed.
“It will be real.”
“For both your sakes,” Viktor said, and hung up.
I checked the timestamp on the Pakhan’s last communication to me.Three days ago.Viktor had sat on this order for seventy-two hours before making the call.He had done his duty, eventually.But he had given me three days first.Three days to figure out how to make the marriage real before the Alpha’s patience ran out.That was Viktor.Loyal to the pack, always, but finding small ways to protect the wolves he called brother.
I sat in the silence he had left behind and calculated timelines.The Pakhan wanted proof that this marriage served the pack, not just Raphael Antonov’s inconvenient attachment to a human who happened to smell like apples and absolution.And his patience had limits.
The coffee timer in my head pinged.Six-twenty-five.I went to the kitchen, ground the beans, boiled the water, and set the French press to steep.Seven minutes later I checked the temperature with the back of my hand and left it on the counter where she would find it.Beside it, a clean mug.The one she preferred, the wider one with the flat base that sat steady when she set it down between sips.I had watched her choose it from a cabinet of twelve identical options and memorized the selection the way I memorized threat patterns.Automatically.Without permission from the part of me that was supposed to be keeping its distance.
Then I left.Went back to the study.Closed the door.
The discipline of not being in the room when she came down was the hardest thing I did every morning.Harder than the Pakhan’s enforcers had been.Harder than the three days of healing after their claws had opened my back to the bone.At least with the beating, the pain had been simple.
By nine I was showered and dressed and driving to the hotel under the pretense of reviewing Petrov’s security upgrades to the east wing entrance.The real reason sat in my chest like a stone.I needed to see her.
Not speak to her.Not touch her.Just see.
The Hughes Palace was waking into its Sunday rhythm when I arrived.Brunch service filling the lobby with the smell of bacon and fresh bread and expensive perfume.Summer bookings were climbing.Petrov had mentioned the numbers were up eleven percent from the previous month, which meant she was doing her job, which meant the staff respected her, which meant the hotel was recovering despite the marriage gossip and the lingering shadow of everything else that had tried to drag this place under.
She had done that.Not me.Not the debt money.Her.
I found a position near the mezzanine railing where I could observe the restaurant without being obvious about it.She was at a table with three department heads, a tablet propped against a water glass, reviewing what looked like a summer event calendar.Her posture was different here.Straighter.Looser at the same time, like she had shed a weight she carried everywhere else.Her voice reached me clear across the dining room, not loud but present.Authoritative.The wolf’s ears pricked.
“The jazz brunch needs its own pricing tier.We’re undercharging for the experience and training the guests to expect a discount.”She tapped the tablet.“I want proposals by Wednesday.”
The restaurant manager nodded without the half-second pause people used when they planned to push back later.The events coordinator was already scribbling down notes.