Chapter 2: His Name

Nobody followed me up here.

I'm almost certain of that. I took three turns after the parking garage, lost visual on both of them by the second block, and the elevator was full of civilians going about their Friday evening completely unaware that the person standing in the back corner had just left a jacket in a stranger's hands and run for his life.

Almost certain is not certain.

I scan the room.

About sixty people. Two exits I can see, one behind me and one on the far side behind a catering table. The men who were at the door when I came in have not moved. I count three of them. Big. Still. Earpieces. Not hotel security, the posture is different, this is private and specific and they are watching the room not the door.

They are watching me.

Not aggressively. Not with the hands-on energy of the two in the parking garage. Just, aware. Noting. The way you watch something your employer told you to watch.

My wolf is not helping.

My wolf is still turned toward the window with that devastating quiet certainty and I am still standing in the middle of the wrong room trying to decide what to do about that while also deciding what to do about the three men by the door and the two who are probably still somewhere in this building looking for a man without a jacket.

The woman beside me says a name.

Low. Careful. The way you say something that has weight.

Thalrion Bloodryn.

I know that name the way everyone in this world knows that name. You don't survive eight years in the margins of werewolf society without learning which names mean run and which ones mean run faster and Thalrion Bloodryn is not a run faster name, it is a don't be in the same city name, it is a name attached to territory wars and three government investigations that dissolved before they got anywhere because the people running them developed sudden permanent changes of professional ambition.

He runs the Bloodryn Group.

On paper it's real estate and private security and logistics.

Off paper it's everything underneath this city that moves money and power and things that don't have polite names.

He is the reason Omegas sleep with their scent blockers on.

My hand goes to my neck before I can stop it. The patch is there, flat against my skin just below my jaw. Fresh this morning. It should be holding.

My wolf is still turned toward the window.

Which means something is getting through regardless and I file that under catastrophic developments and keep my face neutral.

The man at the window turns around.

Silver eyes.

Not grey. Not pale. Silver, the kind of colour that doesn't look real until it's aimed at you and then becomes the only real thing in the room. A scar along his jaw. A face built for making people feel the exact size they are. And an expression that says he has been aware of me since the moment I stepped off the elevator.

Like he was waiting.

Like he knew.

He looks at me for one long moment and then says, across sixty people and the entire length of the room, "Interesting."

Quiet. One word. Lands in every corner anyway.

My wolf surges so hard my hand tightens on the glass, i almost squeeze it to pieces. 

I need to leave.

I turn back toward the door.

The three men shift. Just slightly. Just enough.

I stop.

I look at the exit. I look at the second door behind the catering table. I look at the windows which are forty three floors above a city that would not catch me. I do the math and the math is not comfortable and I stand there doing it anyway because standing and calculating is better than moving and being wrong.

Someone takes the glass from my hand.

I spin around.

He is right there.

Close enough that his scent hits me full and direct and my wolf surges again and my brain goes offline for approximately three seconds before I drag it back by force. Up close he is worse. More. The scar is older than I thought and the silver eyes are darker and he is looking at me with that expression, careful and layered and reading something written in me that I didn't know was visible.

He sets my glass on the nearest table.

"You're on the wrong floor," he says.

"I noticed," I manage.

"And yet..."

Two words and they land like he already knows why I haven't left, like the answer is obvious to him even if it isn't to me, and I want to argue with them and I cannot because my wolf is still down and my face is doing things I cannot fully control and the elevator is right there and my feet are not moving toward it.

He turns and walks back toward the window.

Not a dismissal. Not a goodbye. Just turns and walks back like the conversation is finished and the matter is settled and I am already following him even though I am standing completely still.

My wolf is already following him.

I look at the door.

I look at his back.

I look at the door again.

And I think about the parking garage and the syringe and my real name in the dark and I think about eight years of running and I think that in every city in every close call in every moment that should have broken me, I have never once felt my wolf do what he just did.

Not for anyone.

Not ever.

I look at the three men by the door who are watching me with that quiet professional awareness and I understand suddenly with the specific clarity of a person who has been surviving on instinct for eight years that the two men in the parking garage are not getting past those three men tonight either.

I don't know how I know that.

My wolf does.

I take a glass from another passing tray.

I stay.