I don’t sleepwell that night. Lying on my back in the dark, I listen to my heartbeat, going over every second of the exchange under the oak like a cop examining a crime scene. I play out what happened from different angles, imagining how I could have stepped back, the moment I could have released her wrist, every single thing I should have said but didn’t.
By the time the sun comes up, I have settled only one thing: she is not buying those men any fucking clothes.
By six-thirty, I am at my desk. Dressed in the most severe black suit I own, with a tie the color of tar. My wolf, deeply displeased by this decision, has been pacing inside me for an hour. I ignore him.
At quarter past eight, I hear footsteps in the corridor outside my office. Two sets. Cheerful, familiar voices. The unmistakable rustle of shopping bags.
I am at my door before I have thought it through.
“Vance. Cole.”
Both of them stop.
Jason Vance has three bags in one hand, a coffee in the other, and a truly regrettable smile on his face, the kind of smile a man wears when a woman he admires has just given him a gift. Eric Cole is carrying a smaller bag and a box, and at least he has the good sense to look wary.
“Alpha,” Vance says. “Good morning.”
“What’s in the bags?”
“Oh.” He glances down at them, still smiling. “Miss Carter picked up some things for us last night. Said our wardrobes were too gloomy for an integration team. She’s got a real eye. It’s—”
“Give them to me.”
Vance’s smile falters. “Alpha?”
I hold out my hand.
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t have to. The look on my face has Cole taking a small, instinctive step backward. Vance looks down at his hand, then up at mine, then back and forth in the hallway as if he is hoping someone else will arrive and explain what is happening.
“Sir, she—”
“You are not permitted to accept gifts from the liaison. Neither of you. It is a conflict of interest while the assessment is ongoing. Hand them over.”
It’s a thin excuse. We all know it’s a thin excuse. But I am the alpha of this pack, standing in my own estate house, very obviously sleep-deprived, and neither of these men is going to argue with me.
The parcels change hands.
Vance appears, briefly, as if he wants to say something. Then, he looks at my face again, and he does not say it.
“Understood, Alpha,” Cole says quietly.
“Go.”
They scurry away with their tails between their legs.
I walk back into my office with four shopping bags looped over my wrist and a box under my arm. I set it all down on my desk in a neat row.
I look at them for a long time.
Then, I open the first one.
Inside is a shirt in a deep, cornflower blue, folded with tissue paper tucked under the collar the way nice shops do.
I stand there in my black suit and tar-colored tie, my hands holding the blue shirt that my fated mate bought for another man, and for a second, I’m not sure whether I am going to laugh or put my fist through the wall.
I place the shirt back into its bag with more care than it deserves. I leave all the packages on my desk, sit down in my chair, and stare down the curve of the west wing at the open window of her office for a long, long time.
Chapter Ten