Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MAGNUS
Huxley's briefings ran thirty minutes on a good day and an hour on a complicated one. Tonight's ran forty-five, which meant the operational picture was stable. We had righted the ship in just four days.
"The Lobo network processed the Jersey shipment without incident," Huxley said, moving through his tablet with the methodical efficiency I had trained him to.
"The pharmaceutical couriers ran the route clean — no tails, no interference, the federal transponders logged normal activity at every checkpoint. The Volki didn't touch it."
"Good," I said. "What's the Volki status?"
"Quiet. Unusually, so.” Huxley set the tablet down. "No movement on the northern corridor, no intelligence activity near our remaining transit points. Either they're regrouping or they're preparing something we can't see yet."
"Assume the latter. Keep the perimeter protocols at the current level and—"
I smelled Nell. Or I was hallucinating the scent of her. She was long gone from the cabin and my fingers, including under my fingernails. I'd even snuck into the guest room she'd used when she'd been here, and that scent had faded two nights ago.
My gaze went to the door. It was her security detail. Reyes had been guarding her for the last four days. He smelled like her.
My wolf let out a low growl. All conversation in the room stopped. I knew Reyes hadn't touched Nell. Not intimately.
Or did I?
I had no claim on her. I was going to meet my future wife in a matter of days. Nell could be fucking anyone she wanted. My claws dug into the wooden armrest of my chair.
Reyes smelled like Nell.
The scent was on his jacket. Warm vanilla first. And… bourbon. Had she taken him out for a drink? She was supposed to be at her office and then at home. I'd made those orders clear. If either of them were defying me to fuck around, they were about to find out.
"Status."
"All clear." Reyes’ gaze found a spot on my shoulder and stayed there, showing deference to his alpha.
"No surveillance activity near the building or the residence.
No approaches, no vehicles running patterns on Ms. Odhiambo's routes.
If anyone from the other packs has identified her as a person of interest, they're not acting on it.
She may read as low priority to them. They see the Blackwood name on the company and assume the threat is coming from you. "
"Or they're waiting," Huxley said.
I wasn't interested in what the other packs were or weren't doing about Nell. I wanted to know what Reyes had done with her tonight that included bourbon.
"Anything else?" I prompted.
"She altered her routine tonight. Left the office at nineteen-thirty instead of her usual twenty-one hundred. Went to a bar on Forty-Fourth, stayed approximately twenty-five minutes. A male approached her at the bar. Attempted conversation, offered to buy her a drink."
The wood of the arm of the chair made another splintering sound.
"She declined," Reyes said. "Left on her own. Returned directly to the residence. No further activity."
"Thank you," I said, because my mother raised me with manners. "You're all dismissed."
I sat in the empty room. Though I was alone, the room was not silent. The wood splintered with a sound like a thick branch snapping as my grip tightened. My right foot tapped an irritated rhythm against the floor. My molars found each other. The grind of it was low and continuous.
She was fine.
Crack. Another splinter. The wood groaned under my right hand before it gave.
I had wanted her to be miserable. Or at least pining. But she was drinking. Bourbon. And getting hit on by random men in a bar.
Had she used me? Had I just been had?
She had negotiated for the company name. She had committed corporate espionage without too much arm-twisting. Every moment I had believed was real — had she been in the driver's seat the entire time while I congratulated myself on being the one running the play?
Crack.
I looked down at my hands. Four gouges on the left armrest. Three on the right. Splinters embedded in three fingertips like small, deserved punishments.
I undid my tie with two pulls and dropped it on the chair. My jacket followed. I was out of my shirt before I reached the door. Out of everything else, by the time I hit the back of the property where the tree line started and the dark of the estate gave way to the dark of the woods.
The shift came fast and violent. The bones moved before I had fully surrendered to it. The fur came in with a heat that was almost painful. I hit the ground on four paws and ran, letting the North Woods swallow me whole.
I ran without direction for a long time; the way I ran when thinking was the enemy, and the only solution was speed and darkness and the cold air moving through fur at a velocity that made everything else irrelevant.
The pack's sentinels clocked me at the perimeter and gave way without joining, reading the frequency of my run and understanding that this was not a patrol.
Eventually the wolf found its direction without consulting me.
The cabin.
I slowed as I approached it. I moved through the last hundred yards in the low, silent crouch of an animal that was no longer running from something but toward it. The cabin was dark and locked and had been empty since Nell left it days ago.
The wolf nosed the door open and went inside.
The main room was cold and still. The wolf moved through it without interest, past the kitchen where her coffee cup had been washed and left on the drying rack, past the desk where she had sat, and into the bedroom.
The wolf went to the chair. It pressed its nose into the seat of the fabric and inhaled, searching for any remnant of her scent. It was gone. There was nothing of her left. Because she was in the city, thriving.
She was thriving while I was starving myself, preparing for the day I'd eat wedding cake and it would likely get lodged in my throat. I hadn't had a chance to get my fill of her, but she was apparently done with me.
Well, fuck that. I still had ten days before I made a commitment. If I was getting fucked over, I'd at least get fucked for my efforts.