chapter 9

Scarlett Vance

“The Alpha wants you in his study, now.”

Lyra delivered the message without looking directly at me.

Pack members always spoke like that when the words came from Dominic Vance.

I was sitting at the vanity in the bedroom, halfway through pinning my hair up.

My hands stopped.

His study.

Not the VIP lounge.

Not the clubhouse.

His private study in the east wing of the mansion. Behind a door I had passed many times but never entered.

In my previous life he had never once called me there.

The lounge was where he received people.

The study was where he dealt with them.

I slowly placed the hairpin down on the table.

I stood up.

I smoothed my dress with both hands.

Then I looked at myself in the mirror.

Three steady seconds.

My face was calm.

My eyes were not.

“Tell him I’m on my way,” I said.

Lyra nodded and left.

The room felt quieter after the door closed.

I exhaled slowly.

The walk to the east wing felt longer than it should have.

Every step gave my mind space to run through possibilities, and none of them were comfortable.

He had the photographs.

The empty hiding place at the wall had made that clear enough.

He had known.

Before I even realized I had been watched.

He had probably been sitting across from me in that lounge while I stumbled through my little performance, already aware of exactly what I had done hours earlier.

Which meant the real question wasn’t what he knew.

The real question was what Dominic Vance planned to do about it.

I reached the study door.

Knocked once.

“Come in.”

I stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind me.

The room was large.

Bigger than the lounge.

Leather and wood polish hung in the air along with the faint, fading trace of cigar smoke.

Bookshelves lined two walls.

A fireplace sat cold against the third.

And at the far end of the room, tall windows stretched from floor to ceiling, opening onto the view of pack territory beyond the mansion grounds.

Dark trees.

Distant mountains.

Dominic Vance stood there with his back to me.

He did not turn when I entered.

For a moment he did not acknowledge me at all.

He simply stood there with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out across his land like a man quietly counting everything that belonged to him.

Then he spoke.

“The woman who replaced you did not last long.”

His voice was low.

Unhurried.

The kind of voice that did not need to be loud because the room adjusted itself around it.

“I want you back.”

Two sentences.

Between them, an entire blade.

He needed me.

But only on his terms.

That was what those words meant.

He wasn’t offering anything.

He was restoring conditions.

My heart reacted before my face did, pounding once hard in my chest.

I kept my expression still.

“Of course, Alpha,” I said calmly.

Only then did he turn.

Slowly.

The way he did everything.

Like time itself slowed down out of respect whenever Dominic Vance decided to move.

He faced me across the length of the study.

Those gray eyes settled on me and stayed there.

Watching.

Reading.

Calculating.

I was beginning to understand that this quiet, relentless assessment was simply how he experienced the world.

He crossed his arms.

“Scarlett.”

He said my name the way he always did.

Like it had weight.

Like it meant something specific that only he knew the definition of.

“If you call me Daddy in my lounge again,” he continued evenly, “I will have you removed from the clubhouse permanently.”

He held my gaze.

“No second conversation. No explanation. You will simply be gone.”

A pause.

“Are we clear?”