Chapter 5
MALEK
The taste of her is still in the air, and it’s not perfume.
Not champagne either. It’s something finer, more potent, threaded into the oxygen like smoke after lightning splits a tree.
There’s nothing sweet about it. It’s sharp, alive, laced with iron and the kind of heat that makes the blood stir whether I want it to or not.
I haven’t spoken to a woman like that in longer than I care to measure.
Not just bold, not just clever, but built from something that doesn't bend when it should.
Most people flinch when they feel pressure.
Jennifer Callahan leaned into it like she wanted to see what would happen when it pushed back.
And now I’m standing in one of my training floors, two levels below the executive suites, barefoot and half-shifted, because that’s the only way I know to quiet what she stirred.
The room is industrial by design—cold steel beams, padded black mats, mirrored walls that show me the animal in real time.
I never bring anyone down here. No assistants, no guards, not even the wolves who swear fealty to my name and legacy.
This space is mine. A cage for the lion that doesn’t sleep nearly as long as it used to.
I rotate my shoulders, feeling the bones stretch and tighten, skin prickling as claws push halfway through my fingers.
The transformation doesn’t take long, but I stop it halfway.
Let it linger just under the surface where it burns, where it breathes.
My control is better than it used to be, but not perfect. Never perfect.
I face the training dummy in the center of the floor. High-grade polymer. Reinforced titanium core. Built to absorb the kind of hits that shatter ribs. I move toward it in a slow circle, studying it like it might talk back.
She seems unafraid of me.
I smile, low and dark.
The first strike is clean. My right palm connects with the dummy’s sternum, sending a crack up the reinforced frame. I don’t stop. I follow with a backhand from my left, claws half-formed, not enough to rip but enough to leave a message.
By the third hit, the structure groans.
By the fifth, it splits down the center.
I don’t breathe heavily. I don’t sweat. But the growl that rips from my chest isn’t quiet. The room swallows it like it's been waiting, like it knows the sound.
I step back, hands shaking, and force myself to still.
This used to be easier. Silence. Control. Walls thick enough to keep the past where it belonged.
Now it’s everywhere.
I drag my hand through my hair, slicking it back from my face, then walk toward the mirror lining the eastern wall. My reflection stares back—half-man, half-beast. Eyes gold and wild. Muscles strung tight beneath skin that doesn’t look like it belongs in a boardroom. Not anymore.
She got too close. And not physically. It's something else. Something older. I can’t stand the way my instincts reacted. That low, coiled awareness that sat up the second she walked into the ballroom and hasn’t gone quiet since.
I know what that means. I’ve felt it once before, and I buried it under enough blood to forget it for a hundred years.
I punch the mirror.
The glass doesn’t shatter, but it cracks in three clean lines radiating out from my fist. My knuckles split, blood blooming warm and bright across my skin.
Good.
Let it hurt. It should.
I turn away, make my way across the room, and pour water from the cooler into a steel cup, letting the silence settle again.
The hum of fluorescent lights, the distant pulse of electricity running through walls that were designed to suppress energy shifts, the creak of the dummy listing to one side. All of it normal, familiar.
But even here, with blood cooling on my hand and a fractured mirror behind me, I feel it.
The past doesn’t stay buried.
My mind flickers back without permission, back to a time when the floor beneath me was dirt and ash instead of custom polymer. Back when Roman still fought beside us, not against. Back when we believed in the oath like it could fix what we were.
He moved like a knife. Fast, efficient, ruthless. The opposite of Cassian’s brute force or Rafe’s chaos. Darius led like it was instinct. Mary watched like she already knew how it would end. And I—I was the strategist. The voice behind the plan. The lion behind the throne.
Roman and I sparred often. Never clean, never pretty. But always controlled. Always bound by rules we didn't speak out loud.
Until the day he stopped pulling his punches.
I shake the memory off before it finishes forming. No use dragging up ghosts that already broke their chains.
The console near the door lights up with a soft buzz. I walk over, scan my palm, and open the encrypted message waiting in queue. Lysa’s voice filters through, calm as ever.
“There’s movement in Zurich. Intercepted chatter suggests someone’s poking around the old logistics records. We’ve shut down all open access points. Should I trace the breach?”
“Not yet,” I say. “Let them keep looking.”
She doesn’t reply. Doesn’t need to. She knows me well enough to understand that I want to see what floats up when the bait is obvious.
The line goes quiet. I close the panel.
Jennifer’s face flickers in my mind again. Sharp eyes, steady voice, mouth that doesn’t flinch when it’s telling the truth. I know the type. She’s a hunter, too. Just wears cleaner shoes.
But there’s something else. Something colder. That edge to her posture. The way she didn’t react to proximity the way humans usually do around me.
I’ve made entire boardrooms sweat by standing too close. I’ve silenced courtrooms with a look. She didn’t even blink.
And that tells me she’s dangerous in a way I haven’t had to deal with in a very long time.
The elevator opens behind me. Michaelis steps out, suited, clean-shaven, hands behind his back like he just walked out of a security summit instead of through five layers of biometric locks.
“She made contact with Senator Kersey,” he says. “Spoke briefly with Devereaux and someone from the Dutch oil delegation.”
“Anything suspicious?”
“Nothing on the surface. She’s smart. Kept it light. Asked questions that don’t sound like questions. She was probing.”
Of course she was.
“And the footage?”
He hesitates. “We got a close-up on the conversation with you. Audio’s clean. She led with sarcasm, pushed into challenge, backed off before escalation.”
“Professional.”
“Calculating.”
I nod once, slow.
“Send the footage to my private terminal. Delete all other copies. Scrub the raw feed.”
Michaelis doesn’t ask why. He just turns and walks back to the elevator, vanishing the way all good soldiers should.
I stand in the silence again and let the weight of her linger, not like perfume, but like a threat.
There’s a line somewhere between strategy and temptation. I used to know exactly where it was.
Now I’m not so sure.