Chapter 30

IRIS POV:

I stood there for a moment after the door clicked shut.

Then I picked my blouse up from the floor.

I put it back on slowly, button by button, and looked around the suite like I was seeing it for the first time. Which in a way I was. Everything looked slightly different when you were standing in it with your heart still racing and your skin still warm and the echo of someone's hands still living in your memory.

My wolf was entirely unbothered. Settled and satisfied in a way that made me want to have a firm conversation with her later.

I found the bathroom.

It was the kind of bathroom that made you stop walking when you entered it. All white marble and gold fixtures and a bathtub that sat in the center of the room. A separate shower ran along the entire left wall, glass-fronted, with about twelve different settings on the panel beside it.

I turned the shower on, found towels folded on the heated rail, and stood under the water for a long time without thinking about anything in particular.

Or trying not to.

His voice kept coming back.

I want to taste you. Right here.

I turned the temperature down.

When I came out, I wrapped myself in one of the robes hanging on the back of the door. Thick white cotton that smelled clean and expensive. I padded back into the main suite and sat on the edge of the bed and looked around at the quiet room.

The table was still set from earlier. Water glasses. The folder he had brought out with notes about the gathering that we had not gotten around to discussing properly.

I reached for the remote on the bedside table and turned the television on for some noise.

A news channel came up.

I was about to change it when the headline at the bottom of the screen made me stop.

BREAKING: Fire reported at Virex Commerce Tower, Dark Moon business district. Multiple units responding. Cause unknown.

I sat up.

The camera footage was live. A building I recognized, one of the tallest in the commercial district, with smoke visible from the upper floors. Pack fire units were already surrounding it. People on the street below looking up.

The presenter was talking quickly.

"The Virex Commerce Tower, owned by Lycan billionaire Aurelian Virex, is currently experiencing what sources on the ground are describing as a significant fire on the upper floors.

The building houses the regional offices of several major pack trading companies as well as the private offices of Virex Industries itself. At this stage there is no confirmation of casualties, but emergency services have asked the surrounding streets to be cleared…"

I was already on my feet.

I looked at the door he had walked out of twenty minutes ago.

The phone call.

This was the phone call.

I stood in the middle of the suite in his robe with the television still talking behind me and understood that whatever had just pulled him out of that room was not a minor inconvenience.

My own phone was on the table. I picked it up.

No messages. No missed calls.

I looked at the strange-lettered number he had called me from last night. Still saved exactly where he had told me to save it.

I stared at it for a moment.

Then I looked back at the screen where the smoke was still rising from the building that had his name on it.

I sat back down on the edge of the bed slowly.

The presenter kept talking.

"Unconfirmed reports suggest the fire may have originated in the private office floor, which sources say houses sensitive documentation related to several ongoing inter-pack trade agreements…"

I turned the volume up.

"...authorities have not yet ruled out a deliberate cause. Pack investigators are on the scene. The identity of anyone present in the building at the time of the incident has not been confirmed…"

Deliberate.

I looked at the door again.

My wolf was no longer settled.

She was on her feet.

I was about to set the remote down when the presenter's tone shifted slightly, like something new had just been handed to them.

"We are now receiving confirmation from investigators on the ground regarding the cause of this fire," she said. "Sources are telling us that the fire originated from a deliberate system override in the building's private server room on the thirty-second floor. The override was traced to an external access point." She paused, looking down at something off camera. "Now this is interesting. Investigators have confirmed that the access signature used to breach the system was registered under a name." She looked up. "The name logged in the system at the time of the breach was Fiona."

I stopped breathing.

"Authorities stress they are not yet certain whether this is a real identity, a code name, or a deliberate misdirection. But the name Fiona was the only signature left behind at the point of breach. No other trace. No other identifier."

The camera cut back to the smoking building.

I sat completely still.

Fiona.