Chapter 26

IRIS POV:

When we finished, he set his glass down and looked at me.

"Your job," he said.

I looked at him. "What about it?"

"You don't need it anymore," he said. "Not with what's coming in four days. You'll need time to prepare, and you can't do that from behind a scheduling desk."

"You want me to quit," I said.

"I want you to have the option," he said. "Vera will understand. I'll make sure of it."

I thought about Sarah, who had put me there in the first place.

"Sarah works there," I said.

"Sarah keeps her job," he said immediately. "This is about you, not her."

I looked at him for a moment. "You already thought about that."

"I think about most things before I say them," he said.

I picked up my bag from the chair beside me. "I'll handle it myself," I said. "I don't need you to manage Vera."

Something moved in his expression. "Alright," he said.

His men drove me back as the evening was settling in. I sat in the back of the white SUV and watched the pack move past the windows and thought about everything that had just happened in the span of one day.

The car stopped outside my house.

I got out, and the SUV pulled away quietly. I stood on the pavement for a moment before walking up to the front door.

I could hear voices inside.

I pushed the door open.

My mother was in the hallway, and my father was standing in the middle of it in the same clothes he had been taken away in, looking thinner than I remembered and older than he should have.

He turned when he heard the door.

I didn't say anything. I just ran forward, and he opened his arms, and I went into them, and he held me the way he had held me as a child, before the business deals and the arrangements and everything that had grown up between us over the years.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly into my hair. "I'm sorry, Iris."

I didn't answer. I just held on.

My mother was crying somewhere behind us. The quiet kind. The relieved kind.

We stood there for a while, the three of us in the hallway, and it was the best moment I had experienced in weeks.

Then my father's phone rang.

He pulled back and looked at the screen, and something crossed his face.

"I have to take this," he said.

He stepped into the sitting room and pulled the door almost closed behind him. My mother and I stood in the hallway and looked at each other.

We could hear his voice but not the words. His tone shifted after the first few seconds, though.

He came back out two minutes later.

"That was the Alpha," he said.

I looked at him.

"He said there was a misunderstanding," my father said. "He wants to continue the working relationship. He said the contracts can be reinstated." He looked at me. "He was very polite about it."

"I imagine he was," I said.

My father studied my face. "Iris. What did you do?"

"Nothing," I said. "Go and rest. You just got home."

He looked at me for a moment longer, then nodded slowly and went upstairs.

My mother squeezed my hand and followed him up.

I went into the sitting room and sat down and turned the television on for something to do with my hands.

The first channel was a news segment.

I reached for the remote to change it and then stopped.

My own face was on the screen.

Footage. Taken from outside the office building that morning. Me walking through the front doors and Aurelian's men clearing the path, and then me getting into the white SUV while press people crowded the edges trying to get the shot.

The headline running along the bottom of the screen read:

EXCLUSIVE: The Wolf Who Ran From The Alpha Heir, Straight Into The Arms Of Billionaire Lycan Aurelian Virex?

I stared at it.

"Sources close to the Dark Moon Pack confirm that Iris Calloway, the young woman who made headlines last month when she fled her own mating ceremony to Alpha heir Nicholas Crest, was seen today leaving her place of work in the company of Aurelian Virex, whose return to Dark Moon territory has already sent shockwaves through seven allied packs. The nature of their relationship remains unconfirmed, but witnesses describe the scene outside the building as, and I quote, the kind of exit you don't forget."

I clicked the television off.

The sitting room was very quiet.

I sat there with the remote in my hand and stared at the blank screen.

I only hope my dad doesn't find this news.

My phone buzzed on the cushion beside me.

Sarah.

I answered it.

"IRIS." Her voice came through so loud I pulled the phone from my ear.