Chapter 22

IRIS POV:

I looked up.

He was leaning forward now, elbows on the table, watching me with that expression I had seen on the highway outside the mating hall.

“You've made your point,” he said quietly. “The running. The scene at the ceremony. Everyone has had a good look. But it's time to come home now.”

“This is a professional meeting, Mr. Crest,” I said. “If you're not here regarding the services we offer, then I'll need to…”

“Your father is in a cell,” he said simply.

I went still.

“Your mother lost her job.” He tilted his head slightly. “You lost yours. And now you're sitting in this office because your friend felt sorry for you.” He paused, letting every word get to me. “I can fix all of it. Today. One call and your father walks out of that cell before dinner. Your mother's position is reinstated. Everything goes back.” He reached across the table slowly and covered my hand with his. “All you have to do is come back to me.”

I looked at his hand on mine.

Then I looked at him.

“Get your hand off me,” I said.

His jaw tightened slightly. “Iris…”

“I said get your hand off me.”

He removed it slowly. Sat back. The patient expression was still there, but he looked angrier.

“You're still my mate,” he said. “The bond doesn't care about your feelings about it. It doesn't care that you ran. It doesn't care where you work or who you think you are now.” He stood up slowly, straightening his jacket. “You belong to me. The moon decided that. Not you.”

He came around the table.

I stood immediately, stepping back until the wall met my shoulders.

He kept coming.

“Nicholas,” I said. My voice stayed steady even though everything underneath it wasn't. “Don't.”

“You pushed me away once,” he said quietly, stopping close enough that I could see the gold flickering at the edges of his eyes as his wolf surfaced. “I'll let you have that. I won't be letting you have it again.”

His hand came up toward my face.

The door opened.

Not knocked. Opened.

Three men in black walked in.

Not our office security. These men were different.

Nicholas spun around.

“What the…” He straightened, his Alpha authority sliding into place automatically. “Do you have any idea who I am? Get out of this room right now before I…”

The man in front immediately looked at Nicholas in the eye coldly.

Nicholas stopped talking.

Not because he wanted to.

Because something in that single look instinctively made him recognize his place.

The man in front didn't look at Nicholas again after that.

He looked at me.

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a small envelope, cream-colored, thick paper. He crossed the room and held it out toward me.

I took it with slightly unsteady hands.

My name was on the front.

Written in handwriting that was sharp and that I had seen once before on the back of a card that still sat in the pocket of a pair of sweatpants folded on my chair at home.

Iris.

My wolf surged forward so suddenly my breath caught.

“Who sent you?” Nicholas demanded. His voice had changed. Something in it that I had never heard before. A crack running through all that authority. “Answer me. Who sent you?”

The man in front looked at him then. Just for a moment.

“You know who,” he said quietly.

The color shifted in Nicholas's face.

He looked at the envelope in my hands. Then at the men. Then back at the envelope.

And for the first time since he had walked through that door, Nicholas Crest looked like a man who understood that he had miscalculated something very badly.

“This isn't over,” he said. But the words came out smaller than he intended them to.

He straightened his jacket one more time and walked out.

The door closed behind him.

The three men stood where they were, patient and unhurried, waiting.

I looked down at the envelope in my hands.

My fingers slid under the seal slowly and pulled out the single card inside.

Four words.