What She Overhears

Chapter Five

Zara is the last person on her floor at seven forty in the evening.

She knows this because the lights in the corridor have switched to low power mode and the only sound in the whole wing is the scratch of her pen on paper and the occasional car horn floating up from the street below. She does not mind working late. Late is when her brain settles. Late is when the noise of the day finally stops and the actual thinking can begin.

The investor dinner is in three weeks and she has the room layout almost exactly where she wants it. Forty guests. Round tables of eight. A sight line from every seat to the small stage area where the presentations will happen. She is rearranging table three for the fourth time when she hears voices in the hallway.

Low voices. Not angry. The kind of low that is deliberate.

She does not mean to listen. The door to her conference room is slightly open because the latch does not catch properly and she has been meaning to mention it to Priya. She keeps her pen moving on the paper. But the voices are getting closer and the building is very quiet and she is only human.

Two voices. One she knows.

Damien.

The other one is a woman. Older, from the sound of her. Steady and precise with the particular tone of someone who has been in charge of rooms for a very long time.

"The council will not wait past the end of the month," the woman says.

"I heard you the first time, Adaeze."

"Hearing and acting are different things. You of all people know that."

A pause. Footsteps slowing just outside the door.

"There is nothing to act on."

"Damien. Do not insult my intelligence. I have been on this council for thirty years. I felt it the moment I walked into this building today. The bond is active. Your bond. After six years of nothing."

Zara's pen stops moving.

She does not breathe.

"You are imagining things," Damien says. His voice is flat. Controlled. But something underneath it is not.

"I am not. And neither are you. The question is what you intend to do about it."

"Nothing. I intend to do nothing. The situation is complicated."

"The Alpha of this pack cannot have a complicated situation. He has a responsibility."

"I know my responsibilities."

"Then act like it. Find out if she is who the bond says she is. Handle it properly. The pack is watching you, Damien. They have been patient but patience has a limit and Victor Graves is very aware of where that limit is."

Another pause. Longer.

"Stay away from Victor," Damien says, and now there is something else in his voice entirely.

"It is not me who needs that warning. Good night."

Footsteps moving away. Then silence.

Zara sits completely still in the low-lit conference room with her pen hovering over the seating chart she is no longer seeing.

The Alpha.

The bond.

She turns the words over like stones. They do not make sense and they make complete sense at the same time and that is somehow the most frightening part.

She should stay in the room. She should wait until the hallway is clear, pack up her things, go home, and think about this from a safe distance with a locked door between herself and whatever is happening in this building.

Instead she stands up.

She pushes the conference room door all the way open and steps into the corridor.

Damien is standing ten feet away with his back to her, phone in his hand, head down. He turns before she says a word. Like he heard her stand up through the wall.

They look at each other.

His face does the thing it does where it shows nothing. But his eyes are different tonight. There is something in them that was not there during the lobby exchange this afternoon. Something that looks a lot like the expression a person makes when they have been caught, not doing something wrong, but doing something they were not ready to explain yet.

"Ms. Mensah."

"I was working late," she says. "The door does not latch properly. I heard your conversation."

She watches him absorb that. He does not flinch. He does not try to backtrack or laugh it off or ask her how much she heard. He just looks at her steadily and something in that steadiness makes her chest feel strange.

"How much," he says. Not how much did you hear. Just: how much.

"Enough to know the word bond was used and it was not about a financial instrument."

The hallway is very quiet.

"Go home, Ms. Mensah," he says. Quiet. Not unkind. "It is late."

"That is not an answer."

"No. It is not."

She stares at him. He stares back. He is not going to explain. Not tonight. She can feel that as clearly as she can feel the strange warmth that comes off him whenever she is standing this close, which she has been trying not to notice and is failing at completely.

"Are you going to tell me what is going on in this building?" she asks.

A long beat.

"Eventually," he says.

"That is also not an answer."

"It is an honest one."

She breathes out through her nose. She picks up her bag from inside the door. She puts her folder under her arm. She does all of this very calmly because she learned at twenty-two that the time to stay calm is exactly when you least feel like it.

"Good night, Mr. Wolfe," she says.

"Good night."

She walks to the elevator. She does not look back. She presses the button and waits and when the doors close around her she finally lets herself exhale.

The bond.

The Alpha.

She does not know what any of it means. What she knows is that Damien Wolfe did not deny a single word of what she overheard. And that the woman named Adaeze said she felt something when she walked into the building today.

I felt it.

What does a person feel in a building?

She is home by eight thirty.

She makes actual food for once, rice and the leftover stew her mother sent up from Savannah last weekend, and she eats it standing at the counter because she is too wired to sit down. Then she calls Nadia.

"I need to tell you something and I need you to not say I told you so."

"I would never," Nadia says, which is a lie and they both know it.

Zara tells her. All of it. The late night in the office. The voices in the hall. The word Alpha. The way Damien looked at her afterward and said eventually like it was a promise wrapped in a delay.

Nadia is quiet for four full seconds, which is the longest she has ever been quiet in twelve years of friendship.

"Zara."

"I know."

"Alpha of what."

"I do not know."

"And bond of what."

"Nadia. I do not know."

"Okay but you have to admit that sounds extremely…"

"Do not say it."

"I was going to say something interesting."

"You were going to say something much worse than interesting."

"I was going to say romantic."

Zara closes her eyes.

"He said eventually. Like he is planning to tell me the truth at some point. Like there is a truth to tell."

"Then wait for it," Nadia says. "Or ask him directly. You are not a woman who waits for information she wants."

That is true. That is very true.

"The woman he was talking to," Zara says slowly. "She said Victor Graves is aware of where the limit is. With the pack. She said it like a warning."

"Victor from the elevator."

"Victor from the elevator."

Silence.

"I do not like him," Nadia says simply.

"You have never met him."

"I do not need to. You described his handshake and I do not like him."

Zara almost smiles. Then her phone buzzes in her hand. A second call coming in. Unknown number.

"Hold on," she says to Nadia. She switches over. "Hello?"

Silence on the line. Then a voice she does not recognize. Male. Low. Something about it makes the hair on her arms rise.

"Ms. Mensah. You should know what you signed up for before it is too late to sign out. Ask your employer what happened to the last woman he bonded with."

The call ends.

Zara stands in her kitchen with the phone against her ear and the silence in it.

Her rice is going cold on the counter.

She switches back to Nadia with hands that are completely steady because she will not let them shake.

"Nadia," she says. "I need you to look something up for me."