LOGIN**Stella's POV** Nara looks at me for a long moment. Not the way Kael looked at me — assessing, guarded — but differently. Quietly. The way someone looks at a thing they already know the answer to but want to hear you ask properly first. "So, you said you are Ace Industries's CEO," she says. "Yes." "The big company Ace Industries." She says it again, not as a question but as something she is turning over carefully. "I have heard of them." A pause. "Even up here in the hills." Something in her tone makes me still. "Then you know who I am," I say carefully. "I know what you are," she says. "Which is not always the same thing." She moves to the worn wooden table in the corner of the room and opens a small carved chest sitting on top of it. Inside — I can see from where I stand — are rows of carefully wrapped leaves bound with twine, dark roots coiled like sleeping things, small clay vials stopped with cork, and paper packets folded tight and labeled in handwriting too smal
**Stella's POV** The man is enormous in the way that some Alphas are enormous — not just physically but atmospherically, the kind of presence that arrives before the person does. Broad through the shoulder, dark-eyed, moving with the particular unhurried authority of someone who has never once had to announce himself in a room. He stops at the edge of the grounds and watches the chopper with his arms folded. He does not look surprised. He looks annoyed. I step out. The morning air up here is different — thinner, cooler, carrying the smell of old pine and something older beneath it that I cannot name. The packhouse behind him is exactly what it looked like from above. It's made of tone and timber. A place that has existed long enough to stop being impressed by things. I walk toward him. He doesn't move. "This is Mirae territory," he says, when I am close enough to hear him clearly. His voice is the kind that carries without effort. "You and yhe chopper needs to leave.
**Stella's POV** Auntie Lisa turns to me immediately. "No." Her voice is firm. "No, I'll go. You don't need to do that. Tell me where she is and I'll drive up there myself." She is already looking at the doctor. "The Shanori hills — how far?" "Auntie Lisa—" "You've already done enough as his boss." She says it without hostility but she says it plainly, the way women of a certain age say things they mean completely. "You brought me here. You're paying for—" she gestures around at the room. "You don't need to go chasing healers up a hillside in the middle of the night. That is not your job." "It's not about the job," I say. "Then what is it about?" I look at her. I look at Shawn. And then I say the thing that is simply true. "He has been the best employee I have ever known. He has shown up every single time I needed him to. Without complaint. Without explanation. He has just — shown up." I pause. "I have never once said thank you for that. Not the way it deserved to be said." I
**Stella's POV** "I'll ask you again," I say, not backing down. "Who are you?" "And I'll ask you again too," she says, with the patience of a woman who has absolutely nowhere to be and no intention of being rushed there. "Who are you? Because I have been in this house for a month plus." She sits up fully now, arms folding across her chest, mirroring me without knowing she's doing it. "One month. And you have not shown up once.... So I'll ask you what I asked you — who are you, and why are you in this house at this hour?" She's been here a month and Shawn never mentioned her?! My eyes widen in disbelief. "You've been here a month," I say slowly. "I have." "Are you related to Shawn?" Something shifts on her face at his name. Softens, almost imperceptibly, the way faces do when you say the name of someone they love. "I'm his auntie Lisa," she says simply. I frown. "Shawn doesn't have an auntie." "Is that what he told you?" "He told me he has no family." I hold her g
**Stella's POV** The doctor leads me through a set of double doors and down a corridor and stops outside a room. "He's in here," he says. I walk in and then I stop. Shawn is lying in the bed with tubes running from his arm and a monitor beside him and his eyes are closed and his face is slack in the particular way of someone who is not simply sleeping. I gasp, lifting both of my hands to my mouth because I was not prepared for this. He was standing two hours ago. He was talking to me. He stepped off my elevator with my daughter behind him and his eyes found mine and he was present and upright and entirely himself and now he is lying in a hospital bed looking like something that has been taken apart quietly from the inside. "Why is he unconscious?" I ask. "I thought—" I stop. Start again. "He was awake. He was talking to me less than two hours ago. Why is he still unconscious?" The doctor clasps his hands in front of him. "We induced the coma." "Why?" I look at him wit
**Stella's POV** Shawn opens his mouth to respond to me but then suddenly goes down fast and heavy the way a person goes when their body has simply stopped negotiating, and he hits the floor before I've finished processing what I'm seeing. "Shawn." I'm on my knees beside him in an instant. "Shawn." I put my hand on his face. His cheek is cold in a way that has nothing to do with the room. "Hey. Look at me." Nothing. I shake his good shoulder and his head lolls and his eyes stay closed. He does not move the way a conscious person moves. "Shawn. Hey." Still nothing and then I hear footsteps behind me. "Mommy?" Maya is standing at the end of the hallway with Maria behind her, both of them drawn out by the sound of him hitting the floor. "What happened to the kind man?" Maya's voice is small. I don't turn around. I keep my eyes on Shawn's face. "Maria." My voice is level. "Take Maya to the kitchen. Feed her. Give her whatever she wants. I will be there soon."
**Stella's POV** Barbara—as she finally introduced herself—leads me through the sleek lobby of Ace Industries with brisk, efficient steps that her sensible flats make easy. My Louboutins, on the other hand, are already starting to pinch. I keep pace with her, refusing to show any sign of disc
**Stella's POV** By the time Kelvin and I finish organizing the returned mail and prepping tomorrow's deliveries, I'm completely exhausted. My feet are screaming in these Louboutins. My back aches from bending over the sorting table all day. And emotionally, I'm drained from the rollercoaster t
**Stella's POV** "No idea. But there have been a lot of closed-door meetings lately. People whispering in corners." Kelvin shrugs. "Probably nothing. But it's fun to speculate." I file that information away, making a mental note to tell my father about it later. "Any other gossip I should kno
**Cole's POV** (Meanwhile in Black River pack) The drive back to my house is silent except for Maya's soft humming. She's wearing her pink noise-canceling headphones, lost in whatever cartoon soundtrack Sabrina loaded onto her tablet earlier. I glance at her in the rearview mirror. She looks







