Chapter Twenty-four : The Pull at Night

                    Dominic Steele

"Helena Voss," Lena repeated over the phone, her voice stripped of everything except information. "The car is registered to a property holding company she set up six years ago. It's her current legal name, her current address in the registration. She's been using Erik's network, not Gerald's. Separate line entirely."

"They know each other," I said.

"I'm finding the connection now. It goes back further than Gerald. She was involved with the Steele family commercially before she married Richard. She may have had a relationship with Gerald that predates everything."

I stood at the window of Richard's study, the house dark outside, the grounds empty. "Does Sophie know yet?"

"Lena sent her the message twenty minutes ago," Rowan cut in on the second line. "The woman hasn't approached the building. She's watching. Just watching."

"Keep your eyes on her," I said. "Don't move on her yet. I want to know what she's doing before we spook her into doing it faster." I paused. "How is Ethan?"

"Asleep," Rowan said. "Out completely. He had strong opinions about bath time but lost the argument."

I ended both calls,and  I stood in the dark study for a while, not moving.

Helena Voss. Sophie's mother. The woman who had brought Sophie into this house at eleven years old, claimed Richard's name, his money, his social standing, left when the arrangement expired, took nothing of Sophie with her when she went.

The woman who now had a car watching her daughter's child from across a Los Angeles street.

That was not a mother missing her grandchild. That was someone positioned at the edge of something, waiting.

I went upstairs at eleven. I tried to work for an hour at the desk in my room, reading through the council documentation Lena had prepared. The words moved across the page without landing. I set it aside.

Then I lay down, staring at the ceiling.

I thought about Ethan.

Six years old, fixing the wobbly wheel on his toy cart, apparently, was now at the top of Rowan's list of professional achievements. Had decided, on no particular evidence, that Rowan's size made him qualified for monster defence. Negotiated through third parties and ate pasta. And had strong opinions about baths, pools,and  the distinction between different types of fountains.

But was asleep right now in a Los Angeles apartment, completely unaware that his mother was in a house five hours away not sleeping, that his father was in a room one floor above her doing the same thing, that the story of how he came to exist was currently being dissected by a pack council, a scheming uncle, a grandmother who had apparently decided to enter the situation from an entirely separate angle.

He was six. He had his whole world arranged inside the safe perimeter his mother had built for him. He went to sleep trusting completely that the world would still be correctly assembled when he woke up.

I had missed every night of that. Every night for six years of a child going to sleep, trusting completely, I had been elsewhere, unknowing, building a life around an absence I hadn't even accurately identified.

I got up.

The corridor was dark except for the amber lamp at the far end,the  same as every night I had walked it since Sophie arrived. I moved without hurrying, without intention, which was not accurate, I had intention, I simply was not performing it.

I stopped outside her door.

No light underneath it this time. Dark at the threshold. Either she was asleep or she was lying in the dark the way I had been lying in the dark, which was the more likely option.

I stood there.

I thought about the bathroom two days ago. About the mate bond moving through me the moment she was in my arms, not like something returning, because it had never actually left, but like something that had been running at low current for seven years suddenly given full voltage. Every careful system I had built to manage it, the work, the distance, the deliberate non-acknowledgment of the specific hour every night when it became loudest, all of it simply gone. Dissolved, as if the seven years had been a wall made of paper.

I raised my hand.

I didn't knock.

I stood there with my hand at the level of the door, not touching, just held there in the dark, while the house settled around me, while the amber lamp at the end of the corridor burned its small steady light.

I thought about what I would say if she opened it. I thought about what she would look like in the doorway, sleep-soft or awake-sharp, either version of her equally difficult to look at without wanting things I had not given myself permission to want since she left.

I put my hand down.

I walked away, back down the corridor, past the amber lamp, around the corner, back to my room.

Sat on the edge of the bed.

Pressed my hands flat on my knees.

I was thirty-two years old, Alpha of a pack, currently running a multi-directional campaign against my uncle's network while managing a council threat, a third-party surveillance situation,and  a son I hadn't met. I was sitting on the edge of my bed at midnight, unable to sleep, because a woman was in a room forty feet away, breathing, existing, being in the same building as me, which apparently was sufficient to undo every system I had spent seven years constructing.

My wolf was not sympathetic to my situation. My wolf had been extremely clear about its position since the moment Sophie walked through the villa gates two days ago, and had been clear about it for seven years before that, with a consistency I found maddening.

I lay back down and stared at the ceiling again.

Thought about the garden this afternoon. The way she'd sat on that bench with the phone against her chest after the call, with something in her expression that she hadn't been carrying since she arrived, something looser, warmer, the residue of her child's voice still visibly on her face. The way she hadn't moved away when I sat down. The way the silence between us had felt, for a few minutes, like something that didn't need to be filled or escaped.

Before Lena's messages arrived. Before Helena Voss reinserted herself into the situation.

My phone lit up on the nightstand. Lena.

*Gerald called Aldric at eleven thirty. Meeting arranged for tomorrow morning, private, before the council session. I don't have the location yet.*

I typed back: Find it.

Then I lay in the dark, alert, unable to stop, unable to start, simply running.

Down the corridor, I heard it.

The softest sound. A door opening.

Then nothing. No footsteps. Just the door open, the quality of the silencechangedg slightly the way it changed when a space was no longer sealed.

She was in the doorway.

I knew it the way my wolf knew it, immediately, without requiring confirmation. Standing in the dark of her open doorway, same as I had been standing outside it twenty minutes ago.

I did not move. I lay still, listening, waiting for footsteps that would mean she was coming down the corridor, which was not going to happen, or for the door to close again, which came after a long moment, soft, unhurried.

Then her voice. Very quiet and barely carrying.

"Idiot."

Not directed at me. Not directed at herself. Directed at the situation, at the mate bond treating this entire disaster as a perfectly satisfying arrangement, at the forty feet of corridor between us that neither of us was crossing.

I stared at the ceiling.

"Yeah," I said to no one in particular.

My phone lit up again. Lena.

“Gerald's private meeting tomorrow. It's not with Aldric.”

“It's with Helena Voss.”