Chapter 6: The Inquiry

Lucian POV

"Sir, Dr. Evans is at the door," Theo said through the intercom beside the bed.

I looked up from the dark leather armchair near the window. The digital clock on the nightstand read four-thirty in the morning. I had not left that chair for hours, except to check her forehead and her breathing. Rain still tapped against the thick glass, but the storm was finally slowing down.

"Send him in," I said. "He is hours late."

"His tow truck only got past the barricade ten minutes ago, sir. He wanted me to apologize."

"Later."

I stood and adjusted the cufflinks on my dark suit sleeves. My mind felt strangely quiet. For years, I had not slept more than three hours a night, because Vaelric, my burgundy wolf, was always pacing behind my ribs, snarling at shadows and warning me of danger.

But this morning, Vaelric lay calm in the corners of my mind, breathing slowly, for the first time in years.

I walked over to the wide bed. She was still asleep under the thick white duvet, her hair spread across the pillow. I reached out and pulled the dark velvet curtains back just two inches, and early gray light spilled across her face.

Last night, in the lamplight, I saw the swelling and the split lip. Now, in the plain morning light, I could see the rest.

A dark, ugly bruise covered her left cheek and jaw, and it was shaped like the palm and fingers of a hand. Her lower lip was cut down the middle, with dried blood still clinging to her skin.

My chest tightened. A cold, ancient rage rose in my veins, and Vaelric lifted his heavy head, his eyes flashing amber.

Dr. Evans came in quietly, a small medical bag in one hand and a female nurse in a gray uniform behind him. His coat was muddy to the knees.

"Good morning, Mr. Draeven," he whispered. "My apologies, the road was impassable. Is this the patient?"

"Yes. Her fever broke a few hours ago. I kept her cool, and I did not give her anything." I kept my voice low. "There is a trace of suppressants in her blood, old and heavy. She told me she was never aware she was taking them."

Evans's eyebrows rose, but he only nodded and set his bag on the nightstand. He took out a penlight and checked her eyes, her pulse, and the swelling on her cheek, while the nurse slid a blood-pressure cuff onto her arm.

"Severe trauma to the face," he murmured, writing on a white pad. "Her body is exhausted from heat stress, but she is stable. The jaw is not broken, only badly bruised. I would like to draw a blood sample, to see exactly what has been in her system, and I will start a saline drip now so she can sleep."

"Do it quietly," I said. "Do not wake her."

"Of course."

When the drip was in place, the nurse gently helped her into a clean white hospital gown, keeping the duvet raised around her, and I turned my back to the bed until she was finished.

"Move her to the private medical suite on the top floor," I said afterward. "No staff are allowed on that level without my personal permission."

"Right away, Mr. Draeven."

Before the medical team moved her bed, I pulled a thick black-and-gold business card from my inner jacket pocket. I slid it under the door frame of the medical suite, so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke.

Ten minutes later, I walked down the carpeted hallway into my private corner office on the top floor of Hotel Veyra, where Theo was waiting.

Theo Kane was waiting for me. He wore a crisp dark gray suit, holding a thin black tablet in his hand.

"Did you get the security footage?" I asked, sitting down behind the heavy mahogany desk.

"I did," Theo said, sliding the black tablet across the polished wood toward me. "I ran her face through our internal security database and the city public records. It took twenty minutes."

I looked down at the tablet screen.

A clear photograph of her face appeared. She had warm hazel eyes, long auburn hair, and a bright, confident smile. It was taken before her cheek was purple and swollen.

"Her name is Elara Rooke," Theo said, leaning his hands on the edge of the desk. "She is twenty-eight years old. She is the founder and CEO of Aurevia Skin, that local luxury cosmetics brand in Larkspur Quarter."

"Rooke?" I repeated, my eyebrows pulling together.

"Yes," Theo said grimly. "Her husband is Darian Rooke."

I froze.

"Darian Rooke?" I asked, my voice dropping into a dangerous, low rumble. "Our Vice President of Acquisitions at Draeven Capital Partners?"

"The very same," Theo confirmed. "He works right under us in Thornwick Heights."

The air in the room felt heavy and cold. I remembered Darian Rooke. He was thirty-two years old, always wearing three-piece suits that were a little too flashy, always talking too loudly in board meetings, always eager to claim credit for other people's work. I had never trusted him. He was slippery, arrogant, and greedy.

"My own employee did this to her," I said flatly.

"It looks that way, sir," Theo said, folding his arms. "The street cameras near Gilded Row show her running out of the Rooke townhouse without a coat or shoes at eight o'clock last night. Darian Rooke was standing on the porch shouting at her."

My fingers tightened around my pen until the metal creaked."She said a man gave her pills every morning and called them vitamins," I said slowly. "Suppressants. For years."

Theo's jaw hardened. "Her husband, then. It would fit."

"He struck a female wolf, and he kept her wolf locked down for years." I set the pen carefully on the desk, because I did not trust my hand with it. "My own employee."

"What do you want to do, Lucian?" Theo asked quietly. "He is an Alpha-blooded employee. If you attack him without Council sanction, Octavian Vesper will use it against us."

"I am not going to attack him in the street, Theo," I said, leaning back in my leather chair. "That would be sloppy. I am going to take everything he cares about."

At ten o'clock in the morning, I walked back into the top-floor medical suite.

Elara was awake. She sat upright in the center of the large bed with the white duvet pooled around her waist, and the black-and-gold card from under the door was gripped in one hand. The bruises stood out dark purple against her pale skin. Her split lip had stopped bleeding, but the swelling remained. Someone had left a folded white robe on the chair, and she had already put it on over the hospital gown, with the belt knotted tight and her collar clutched shut.

Her hazel eyes locked on me the second the door opened.

"You," she said. Her voice was raw and cracked. She swallowed. "The man in the lounge."

"Yes."

"You carried me." She looked down at the card in her hand, and then up again. "You told me you wouldn't ask my name."

"I didn't ask," I said. "But I found it out, your name is Elara Rooke."