Chapter 16 #2
The soft creak of the study door pulled me from my thoughts. I knew her scent before I turned.
Lena stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. She had changed into soft clothes, her hair loose around her shoulders. But her eyes were sharp as flint.
“You are thinking too loudly,” she said. “I can feel it.”
“I did not mean to wake you.”
“I was not asleep.” She crossed the room and stopped beside me at the window. Her gaze moved to the laptop, still open on my desk, the security feeds frozen on the screen. “What are you doing?”
“I am hunting.”
She studied the footage, the grainy image of Michael in his stolen uniform. Her expression hardened. “You found him.”
“I found how he got in. He used the service corridor in a maintenance disguise, and he timed it during the lunch rush.” I turned the laptop toward her. “He knows the blind spots. He memorized them during his years as GM.”
“So he can do it again.”
“He could.” I closed the laptop. “If I let him.”
Her eyes sharpened. “What did you do?”
“I planted bait.” I told her about the fake schedule, the charity gala, the manufactured vulnerability. Her expression shifted as I spoke, moving from confusion to understanding to something fierce and hungry.
“You are using me as a lure.”
My wolf snarled at the words. Even the idea of it, her name on a schedule like meat in a trap, made possessive rage claw at my chest.
No. She stays here. In the den. Where nothing can touch her.
“I am using the idea of you.” My voice came out rougher than I intended. “You will be here, safe, surrounded by my guards. But Michael will see the schedule. He will see his opportunity.”
“And you will be waiting.”
“Yes.”
She studied my face, reading the war beneath my skin. The tactical mind that had set the trap warring with the wolf that wanted to lock her in this manor and station guards at every door until Michael’s corpse was cold.
“Your wolf hates this,” she said.
“My wolf wants to chain you to the bed and stand guard with my teeth bared until the threat is eliminated.” The admission forced its out of me, raw and honest. “But you are not a possession to be locked away. You are my partner. And this is how we hunt.”
She was quiet for a moment. Her anger shifted, crystallizing into resolve. And underneath it, bleeding into me, something hotter. Something that responded to the predator in my voice.
“Good,” she said, her eyes darkening. “I am done being sheep.”
My wolf howled his approval. Yes. This one understands. This is why she is ours.
“He wants the confrontation,” I said. “He has been herding us toward it, strike after strike, waiting for us to break. He thinks when we finally meet, we will be desperate and afraid and easy to break.”
Lena’s eyes met mine, blue fire burning in the low light.
“He does not know what he invited.”
The words came out cold and certain, carrying resolution rather than rage. The difference between fury and intent.
Michael had been hunting us. Thought his psychological warfare was working, grinding us down, making us weak. He thought when the confrontation finally came, we would be broken enough to give him what he wanted.
He was wrong.
“The gala is next week,” she said. “You think he will take the bait that quickly?”
“I think Michael is arrogant. He believes he is smarter than us. More patient.” I turned from the window, cupping her face in my hands.
Her skin was warm beneath my palms, her pulse steady against my fingertips.
“He will see the schedule and he will not be able to resist. The chance to corner you alone, in the building he knows better than anyone? He has been waiting for exactly this.”
“And if he does not take it?”
“Then I will find another way to flush him out.” I traced my thumb along her cheekbone, watched her eyes darken at my touch. “But he will take it. Men like Michael cannot resist the fantasy of the perfect moment. I am giving him exactly what he wants.”
“Except it will not be me waiting for him.”
“No.” I let the wolf rise closer to the surface, let his growl color my voice, let her see the predator beneath the man. “It will be me.”
She sucked in a breath. I watched the flush creep up her throat, felt the spike of her heat. Not fear but arousal. My mate liked the monster. Wanted him, even now, even here, with blood on my mind and murder in my voice.
I closed the distance between us in two strides, backing her against the window frame, caging her with my arms. She did not flinch or look away.
Her pulse hammered against the delicate skin of her throat, and I wanted to press my mouth there, feel her heartbeat against my tongue.
I hooked my finger on the diamond studded ring at the center of her collar and gave a small tug.
“When I find him,” I said, low and rough against her ear, “I am going to take him apart. Slowly. I am going to make him regret every moment he spent thinking about you, wanting you, believing he had any right to touch what is mine.”
Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away. “Promise me.”
“I promise.” I dragged my teeth along her jaw, felt her shiver. “He dies screaming your name, and the last thing he sees is my face.”
She exhaled, shaky and wanting, and I had to force myself to step back before I took her right here against the glass.
“Come to bed,” she said, her voice rougher than before. “We cannot hunt without sleep.”
She meant sleep. I could see it in her eyes that she also meant something else.
“I will be up soon.”
She studied my face for a long moment, reading the violence and the want tangled together beneath my skin. Then she nodded, pressed a kiss to my jaw that lingered too long to be chaste, and left me alone with the night.
I stood at the window until the moon had risen high over the trees, letting my wolf pace beneath my skin. He was restless and hungry and absolutely certain.
Michael thought he was the hunter.
He is wrong, my wolf said. The trap is set. Now we wait.
He was out there in the cold, checking his sources, monitoring the hotel systems he thought we had not revoked. Soon he would see the schedule. Soon he would see his opportunity.
And he would come.
Enjoy your silence, Michael. It is the last peace you will ever have.
When I finally climbed the stairs to our bedroom, the house was silent around me.
The guards had taken their positions at the gates and walls, Parsons had confirmed the perimeter was secure, and Alice had retired to her quarters with instructions to wake me if anything changed. We were as safe as we could be.
It did not feel like enough. Nothing would feel like enough until Michael was dead.
Lena was asleep when I reached our room, her breathing slow and even, her face soft in the moonlight that spilled through the windows.
I stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching her.
The way her hair spread across the pillow.
The way her hand curled near her cheek. The slow rise and fall of her chest with each breath.
She was my mate, my wife, the woman who had looked at a rose on her pillow and felt fury instead of fear. The woman who had pressed closer when I promised to kill for her, whose body had responded to the violence in my voice like it was a love song.
Michael thought he understood obsession. Thought his pathetic fixation gave him some claim to her.
He had no idea what obsession looked like. What it felt like to need someone so completely that their heartbeat was the only sound that quieted the howling in your chest. What it meant to belong to someone, body and soul and every dark corner of your mind.
I would show him what true obsession looked like, right before I ended him.
I crossed to the bed and stripped off my shirt, my belt, everything that separated my skin from hers. She stirred when I slid beneath the sheets, her eyes fluttering open.
“You came to bed,” she murmured, still half-asleep.
“I came to you.”
I pulled her against me, skin to skin, her back pressed to my chest. She was warm and soft and alive, and I needed to feel every inch of her, needed the proof of her breathing and her heartbeat and her scent surrounding me.
This was what Michael could never understand. This was what he thought he wanted but would never be able to claim. Not possession, though I was possessive. Not obsession, though I was obsessed. Something deeper than either. Something that lived in the marrow of my bones and the blood in my veins.
She was mine because she had chosen to be. Because she had looked at the monster beneath my skin and decided to stay. Because she trusted me with her sleep and her safety and her heart.
That trust was sacred. And anyone who threatened it would learn exactly what kind of monster I could become.
My hand splayed across her stomach, possessive and deliberate. She made a small sound and pressed back into me.
“Sleep,” I told her, my mouth against her hair. “I have you.”
Mine, my wolf growled. Anyone who threatens her dies.
She relaxed into my arms, trusting me to keep her safe while she slept. That trust was a gift I did not deserve and would kill to protect.
Her dreams bled into mine, restless and angry and ready for the hunt.
Mate safe. Den secure. Trap baited.
The schedule was planted. The bait was set. Michael would see it and believe he had finally found his moment, his perfect opportunity to corner Lena alone.
He would walk into that hotel expecting prey.
He would find a predator waiting.
The last thing he saw would be my teeth at his throat.
I closed my eyes and let sleep take me, dreaming of the kill to come.