2. Ronan #3
Her mouth forms a quick smile that disappears.
She turns toward me.
“Marcus?”
“Petra will keep him alive.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I look toward the stairwell and the infirmary two floors below, where my Beta breathes shallowly while silver tries to hold him down.
“He is not safe yet. But he is alive because you kept pressure on the wound.”
Genevieve looks away, hiding an emotion she does not want witnessed.
“You would have done it without me.”
“No.”
She looks back.
“I would have carried him. Petra would have worked. Dara would have helped. But those first minutes mattered, and your hands were there.”
The words settle between us.
Her throat moves.
“You’re welcome.”
Awkward. Exhausted. Real.
The wolf lowers its head inside me.
The wolf recognizes the gratitude for what it is, not submission.
I grip the doorframe hard enough that the old wood complains.
“You should sleep.”
“I will not sleep.”
“Try.”
“I saw a man turn into a wolf, helped treat silver poisoning, entered a hidden safehouse, argued with an Alpha, and discovered that someone may be using hospital records to select murder victims. Sleep seems unlikely.”
“That is fair.”
This time she smiles—small, brief, and devastating.
I step back before I do something unforgivable.
“I will be downstairs.”
“Ronan.”
My name in her voice stops me.
I should not like it.
I turn.
She stands in the center of the small room with her arms folded, shoulders squared, blood still marking her sleeve.
“I am going to find out how those men knew Marcus was vulnerable, identify the stolen access, and trace every patient record they opened. I will need my laptop.”
“I know. You will have it.”
“Good.”
There is nothing helpless in her expression, nothing that asks me to save her from the truth.
Whoever sent those men exposed himself to the wrong human.
That should comfort me.
It does not.
It makes the pull worse.
I leave before she can see too much on my face.
On the second-floor landing, Dara waits beside the infirmary door with her arms folded.
I knew this was coming.
“You promised one night,” she says.
“She would have left otherwise.”
“She may still leave.”
“No.”
The word comes from the wolf.
Dara hears it.
Her expression changes.
“Ronan.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
That stops her.
Dara has known me since childhood, both before and after I became Alpha.
She looks toward the ceiling, toward the room where Genevieve is moving above us.
“You looked at her in the alley,” she says quietly.
“Yes.”
“And?”
I close my eyes.
For one second, I see Genevieve pressed against the brick, camera raised, fear in her scent and defiance in her eyes.
The pull was so violent my wolf nearly forgot Marcus was bleeding.
“The wolf recognized her.”
Dara goes still.
Neither of us says the word.
We do not need to.
Mate.
“It is too soon,” she says.
“Yes.”
“She does not understand what that means.”
“I know.”
“You cannot let the wolf make decisions for her.”
My eyes open.
“It will not.”
Dara watches me carefully.
“Good.”
“But whoever sent those men has already made her part of this.”
“Then we find him.”
“We do.”
“And we preserve everything at Dock 17 properly,” she says. “No assumptions. No names because one scent reminds someone of a rival. Evidence first.”
I look at her.
“That sounded like Genevieve.”
“She may be contagious.”
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth moves.
Dara’s eyebrows rise, and I stop.
“Callum will bring the evidence from the alley,” she continues. “The dead attacker had no visible colors. His scent was chemically masked. Elias says even the vehicle’s tires were recently changed.”
“Professional.”
“Yes.”
“Or meant to look professional.”
“Also yes.”
The possibilities spread through my mind: a rival pack, a human contractor who knows too much, someone inside the hospital, or someone inside my own operation.
Marcus’s patrol schedule was not public.
Neither was his condition.
Two protected facts brought together in one alley.
Someone planned this carefully.
They simply did not plan for me.
Or Genevieve.
Above us, through the floorboards and old pipes, I hear her begin to pace.
Three steps. Turn. Three steps. Turn.
After a while, the pacing gives way to a low, unconscious hum—a melody without words.
It drifts down the stairwell as though it belongs in the building.
The wolf goes quiet.
For the first time since the ambush, it is neither snarling nor straining for blood.
It listens.
I stand on the landing with silver burning in my side, my Beta fighting poison behind the infirmary door, and a human witness in the room above me.
One attacker is dead.
One escaped.
Whoever ordered Marcus’s murder will know about Genevieve before morning.
He will know she recorded the attack and saw me shift.
He will know the Black Harbor Alpha reached Dock 17 when he was never supposed to be there.
But he does not know what his men exposed inside my territory.
Neither do I.
Not yet.
I know only this.
Genevieve Ashcroft is not walking back into danger tonight.
And every instinct I possess is already learning the shape of her name.