Chapter 15.5
Conrí
Nothing.
No exiles. No strays. Not even the fox shifters, who were an imported Asian breed that had arrived through the English ports sometime in the sixties and had been quietly integrating ever since. I’d checked every contact, every enforcer report, every run logged in the past seventy-two hours.
Nothing that should be making Kael behave like this.
We were spread throughout the country and blended well—that had always been the priority.
Numbers limited, presence managed, nothing that drew the kind of attention that couldn’t be walked back.
I needed to ensure that stayed true. Whatever Kael was picking up on, I needed to understand it before it became something I couldn’t contain.
Something was brewing.
Something I couldn’t name yet.
Nora appeared at my door, punctual as always.
“Your ten thirty is in the conference room.”
I nodded and stood. But even as I moved out of the office my mind stayed fixed on Kael—on the low, persistent hum of his alertness, the way he’d been holding himself since yesterday. Since the car. Since before that, if I was honest.
“Keep my afternoon free, Nora.”
“What about the HR meeting with Hannah?”
“Reschedule,” I said, already facing forward.
The unsettled feeling didn’t ease as I walked the corridor.
If anything it gathered—slow and pressurised, like the air before a storm that hadn’t decided where to break yet.
I kept my pace measured. Nothing in my expression.
Nothing that would read on cameras or to the staff who moved past me with their lanyards and their laptops and their complete ignorance of what walked among them.
Everything slowed.
Kael pushed forward through our bond—not aggressively, just present. Fully present in a way he rarely was during working hours. The bond we’d been born with, older than either of us in the way pack bonds were, ran deep and certain beneath everything else.
I scanned without stopping. Listened through doors and walls, through the low hum of the ventilation system and the muted machinery of the lift. Filtered for what mattered.
North. East. South. West.
No rebellion. No keywords. No mention of the Gallaghers or the Cúallaidh Pack. No whispered threat, no coded language, nothing that set off the frequencies I’d been trained since childhood to identify.
The floor was clean.
And yet.
The feeling didn’t ebb the way it usually did once I’d cleared an area. It stayed—settled low and stubborn, refusing to shift.
I heard two female voices from the direction of the main conference room. Talking. Easy. Relaxed.
I paused in the corridor.
Stood.
Kael went absolutely still.
Not the stillness of threat assessment. Something else. Something I hadn’t felt from him before—a held breath, almost. An attention so focused it had no room left for anything else.
I forced myself back into the present.
Conference room. Project meeting. Dáire Financial Services.
I closed the distance in three long strides and pushed the door open.
Two sets of eyes turned to face me. I was about to greet them when my head snapped to the dark-haired one.
I said dark, but it wasn’t.
No, it was.
There were a variety of shades. Dark at the scalp, lighter up top where the light caught it. Then it tumbled down, long and full-bodied.
A simple ponytail.
Ice cold eyes.
Pale grey.
In thirty-six years Kael had never panicked. Not once. Not in any situation I could recall—territory disputes, challenges, things that had required genuine violence to resolve. He was older than panic. He didn’t do it.
He panicked now.
He pressed against me—hard, urgent—and my hand twitched at my side before I caught it. I pushed back at the pressure in my chest, forcing him back so hard that I felt sweat bead on my upper lip.
Kill her. His voice came low and certain. It’s unnatural. Wrong. Kill her now or I will.
His growl was already rising when I coughed—sharp, deliberate—and turned toward the back of the room for water. Bought myself three seconds.
Calm the fuck down. I kept my back to them while I filled a cup. Look at her. She is what—a little over five feet?
She— He stopped.
We both sniffed.
Not a fox. Not fully human. There was some wolf. Or was there? Something threaded through her scent that didn’t have a clean name. Old. Bloodline deep.
The redhead had started talking. We were too busy trying to figure out what the other one was.
I finished my water and scrunched the paper cup, tossing it into the bin.
“Apologies, ladies—something in my throat.”
Her torn out neck should be in our throat, Kael snarled.
I smiled pleasantly.
“I’m Conrí,” I said, waiting for their names.
“Francis Hardman.” The redhead. Then, gesturing: “And that’s Nika Horvat.”
My gaze dropped before I could stop it—registered the dress, the breasts—and confirmed efficiently that Nika Horvat was not, in fact, the junior male team member I’d assumed from the name.
Nika, Kael snarled, the name like something he was tasting and rejecting simultaneously. Nika. Wrong. Bad. Wrong.
The woman didn’t smile. There were no pleasantries. Her eyes swept down me, pausing at the floor before they worked their way back up.
The disdain was obvious. But there was more. Her chin tilted up. A muscle twitched in her left cheek.
Once. Twice.
Then a slight flare of her nostrils.
Murder.
She wanted to slaughter me.
It seemed we both wanted the same thing.
I forced myself to relax and pulled a chair out, lazily sliding into it. I crossed my legs and fixed my tie, smoothing it over my abdomen.
When I raised my head, I stared into those eyes.
“You may begin.”
I used the tone Cuán called insufferable. It served a purpose.
It worked. Her hands closed into small, tight fists on either side of the laptop. The cheek twitched again. Then she tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and turned to the screen.
She did not tap the keyboard gently.
She stabbed it.
Again.
And again.
My jaw clenched each time Kael pushed against me. His teeth needed to sink into her flesh. I kept whispering to him. Not yet. Not now. Soon.
Francis glanced between us—once, twice—then lifted her notepad and developed a sudden intense interest in its cover.
Keep your eyes on her, Kael said.
That would not be a difficult task.
I didn’t know what she was, but this was new.
She was new.
The Cúallaidh Pack had faced adversaries, challenges, things that had required everything we had to survive. We were still here.
I would die for my pack.
And I would kill for my pack.
Kael settled.