12. Raphael
RAPHAEL
I didn’t change the sheets.
I had meant to. Told myself I would before Alice saw them and made that knowing face she had been making since Lena moved in. But when I reached for the corner of the fitted sheet, my hand stopped. Refused.
Her scent was everywhere. Apples and cream and a darker note now that smelled like anger and want and the salt of her skin after I had made her come twice on my desk before carrying her to this bed.
My wolf had gone still the moment I breathed it in, a rumble of satisfaction rolling through my chest that I couldn’t have stopped if I had wanted to.
She came to us. The pain of not claiming her had quieted, just for those hours. The ache receding while she was in my arms, while her body moved against mine, while I could pretend this meant something more than anger finding an outlet.
Not because I had demanded it. Not because the contract required it. She had walked into my study with fury in her eyes and fire in her voice and she had taken what she needed from me like I was hers to use.
I looked at my back in the bathroom mirror. Four lines scored across my shoulder blade where her nails had dug in when she came the last time. The marks had already healed, fresh pink skin where the scratches had been just hours ago. Shifter regeneration. By tomorrow they’d be gone entirely.
I wished they’d scar.
Alice found me in the kitchen, dressed but still carrying the warmth of those memories like a secret I wasn’t ready to share. She set a cup of coffee in front of me without being asked, her movements efficient and familiar.
“You look different this morning,” she said.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. Alice had known me since I was a child hiding in the sculpture garden, crying over a mother who would never come back. She had known me through the cruelty I had learned from a grandfather who only ever saw me as a weapon. She knew what this was.
“She came home an hour before you woke.” Alice wiped the counter that didn’t need wiping. “Went straight to her room. Hasn’t come out.”
I nodded, wrapping my hands around the mug. The coffee was exactly how I liked it. Strong enough to strip paint, black, no sugar. Twenty years of mornings and Alice had never forgotten.
“Give her space,” Alice added, though I hadn’t asked for advice. “Whatever happened last night, she needs to process it on her own terms.”
I knew that. God, I knew that better than anyone. She had flinched when I had tried to touch her face after. That gentle brush of my fingers across her cheek, meant to be tender, and she had recoiled like I had burned her.
Don’t.
One word. That was all she had given me before she pulled her clothes on and walked out.
But she had come to me. She had chosen me over everyone else when she was afraid. My wolf purred at the memory, a deep vibration in my chest that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with the bone-deep satisfaction of having my mate in my arms, even if she had left before the sun rose.
My phone buzzed, shattering the quiet. Petrov.
“Overnight report,” his voice came through, clipped and professional. “The hotel was quiet. But we picked up Bishop again.”
I set down the coffee. “Where?”
“Staff entrance. Around two in the morning. One of the cooks spotted him trying the door, called it in. He was gone before we could intercept.”
Joe fucking Bishop. The ex-boyfriend who had been circling Lena like a vulture since the wedding announcement hit the papers.
“He’s escalating,” Petrov continued. “This is the third time this week. Taking photos. Trying access points. It’s stalker behavior, sir.”
My wolf rumbled low, territorial instincts firing. Another threat to what was mine. Another insect buzzing around her, thinking he had any right to be close to her.
“Keep tracking him. I’ll deal with him personally when this murder investigation settles.”
“Understood.”
I hung up and stared at the phone for a long moment. Joe was a problem, but a secondary one. He was pathetic and obsessive but ultimately harmless compared to whoever had been terrorizing the hotel with dead animals and heating sabotage and blood in the fountain.
The call came two hours later.
I was reviewing reports in my study, trying to focus on pack business when every part of me wanted to go upstairs and knock on her door.
Tell her I understood why she had left. Tell her that whatever she needed from me, she could have it.
Tell her that I would wait as long as it took for her to come to me again.
Petrov’s name flashed on my screen.
“They found a body at the hotel.” His voice was different now. Tight. “You need to come now.”
I was out the door before he finished the sentence.
The drive to the Hughes Palace was twenty minutes. I made it in twelve.
Viktor sat in the passenger seat, silent as always, his silver-streaked hair catching the morning light. He had been waiting at the manor when Petrov called, as if he had sensed something was wrong. That was Viktor. He always knew.
“The staff are saying it’s the florist,” Viktor said as I pulled into the hotel’s back lot.
Stephanie. The woman who had always had fresh flowers on Lena’s desk, who had helped her with the hotel’s event planning. Lena liked her.
My wolf keened.
Police cars clustered near the service entrance.
Uniformed officers milled about, yellow tape already strung across the door to what I knew was the staff area behind the ballroom.
The lobby still carried the faint metallic residue of yesterday’s blood fountain, the hazmat cleaning not quite able to erase it from my senses.
Petrov met us at the door. “This way. I’ve kept the staff back, but the police are already inside.”
I followed him through the back corridors, my wolf pacing beneath my skin, hackles raised.
Every instinct I had screamed to hunt, to find, to destroy.
This was my territory now. More than that, this was hers.
The woman my wolf had claimed whether she accepted it or not.
Someone had spilled blood where she worked, where she built her legacy, and that offense demanded an answer.
The body was in a storage room behind the florist shop.
Stephanie lay on the concrete floor, her eyes open and staring at nothing. The smell hit me first. Blood and fear and the harsh bite of cleaning supplies that surrounded her.
The blood. My wolf went rigid with recognition. The same signature as the fountain, that specific metallic sweetness unique to every person. They’d used Stephanie’s blood to terrorize the hotel before they killed her.
And underneath that, another scent. A trace I couldn’t quite place.
My eyes burned.
The shift tried to push through, my irises threatening to change from gray to amber, heat building behind my skull as my wolf fought for control. Viktor stepped in front of me, blocking the view of the officers taking photos and the detective speaking with hotel staff.
“Control yourself,” he said quietly. “Not here.”
I closed my eyes. Breathed through my mouth. Forced the wolf back down with an effort that left me shaking.
“This wasn’t professional,” I managed when I could speak. “Too messy. Too personal.”
“No forced entry,” Petrov confirmed. “She knew whoever did this.”
Inside job. The words echoed in my head as I scanned the room again, trying to see what my eyes might have missed while my wolf was raging. Stephanie had been killed here, in the hotel, by someone who had access and who she trusted enough to meet alone.
That scent. The one I couldn’t identify. It was familiar, a trace I had encountered a hundred times but never paid attention to.
I filed it away. My wolf growled in frustration, unable to place it.
Michael arrived then, pushing through the police line with the authority of a man who ran this building. His face went pale the moment he saw the storage room, his eyes widening as he took in the scene.
“Oh God.” His voice cracked. “Stephanie. Oh my God.”
He turned away, one hand covering his mouth, the other bracing against the doorframe. His shoulders shook with what looked like genuine sobs. The general manager had worked alongside her for years, had coordinated flower orders and event planning and a hundred small daily interactions.
I watched him carefully, the way I watched everyone.
Looking for the hesitation before the shock, the micro-expression that didn’t match the words.
Years in the Bratva had taught me to read grief like a language.
Real loss had a particular rhythm to it.
The hitched breathing. The way the body curled inward as if protecting itself from a blow already landed.
Michael’s grief was authentic. His hands trembled when he lowered them from his face. His eyes, when he finally turned back to the room, held the hollow look of a man recalculating a world that had just lost someone from it.
My wolf growled at him anyway. The same low territorial rumble he always produced when Michael was near her. I had never liked how close he stood to her, how easily she accepted his touch, how much access his position gave him to the woman who was mine.
But jealousy was not the same as suspicion.
I dismissed him from the list of suspects because the evidence demanded it.
Michael had worked for the Hughes family for over a decade, had been vetted during my initial security assessment, had no criminal history, no financial irregularities, no connections to anyone who might want Lena harmed.
My wolf’s possessive snarling was about territory, not threat.
I had growled at every man who looked at her too long. That didn’t make them murderers.
The wolf’s instinct and the man’s logic pulled in different directions. I chose logic.