chapter 11

~ Mira’s POV ~

I had not slept after the rose, I sat on the edge of my bed for forty minutes staring at it like it was going to say something to me, then swept it off the nightstand, stuffed the card in my bedside drawer, and spent the remaining hours until sunrise aggressively reviewing quarterly reports until my eyes burned.

I was fine, completely fine.

The fact that a warlock had breached the security of my penthouse which had three layers of supernatural warding, two human alarm systems, and a rotating guard rotation without triggering a single alert was a security concern and nothing else. The fact that he had been in my dream before that was a boundary violation. The fact that I could still feel the ghost of his thumb on my jaw was…..

Irrelevant, completely irrelevant, damn it!!!

I walked into WyrmTech at 7:43 AM, handed my coat to Zara without breaking stride, and had cleared four emails before I reached my desk.

“Good morning,” Zara said carefully, falling into step beside me. She had the particular tone of someone about to deliver news they’d been rehearsing. “You have a full board meeting at nine, the Singapore acquisition call at eleven, and….” she paused, “three visitors in the lobby.”

I stopped walking.

“Three,” I repeated.

“They arrived separately,” she added quickly. “Within four minutes of each other. They don’t appear to be together but they are now….” Another pause, “standing in a triangle in the lobby not speaking and it’s making the receptionist very uncomfortable.”

I closed my eyes for exactly three seconds.

Of course they were.

“Send them up,” I said, “All three, Same time.”

Zara blinked, “Together?”

“If they want to act like this is a group activity,” I said, “let’s treat it like one.”

They filed into my office.

Killian entered first because of course he did, moving to the far side of the room with the unhurried confidence of someone who arrived first. He looked at my face, then at the faint dark circle under my eyes, and something shifted in his expression that I refused to acknowledge.

Kaiden came in second, spotted Killian, and his jaw immediately tightened. He planted himself on the opposite side of the room.

Ares walked in last, Our eyes met.

I held his gaze for exactly two seconds and then looked away, which was two seconds longer than I intended and one second too long to be meaningless, and from the way the corner of his mouth moved I knew he knew that.

I sat behind my desk and folded my hands on the surface.

“Gentlemen,” I said pleasantly. “Would anyone like to explain why all three of you are in my office before eight in the morning?”

Silence.

Then all three of them spoke at once.

“The Supernatural Council….”

“There’s been a report filed…..”

“Someone told them about…..”

They stopped and looked at each other. The temperature in the room dropped approximately four degrees as three of the most powerful supernatural beings on the continent registered that they had just said the same thing in unison like a poorly rehearsed choir.

Kaiden recovered first. “Someone reported a Wyrmblood sighting to the Supernatural Council yesterday morning,” he said, his voice tight. “They’ve called an emergency meeting.”

The words landed in my chest as stones dropped into still water. I felt the ripple move outward from the center, cold and inevitable.

I kept my face still.

“I see,” I said.

“They’ll mobilize hunters,” Killian said from across the room, his voice carefully controlled. “The Council has protocols for Wyrmblood sightings. Old ones, from before the massacre.” His blue eyes held mine steadily. “They won’t ask questions first, Mira.”

“I’m aware of how hunters work,” I said.

“Then you’re aware that you need…..”

“If you say protection,” I said quietly, “I will have security escort all three of you out of this building.”

Kaiden made a sound that wasn’t quite a growl, “This isn’t about your pride…..”

“It’s about my survival,” I said, and the sharpness in my voice cut the room clean in half, “Which I have been managing without any of your help for three years. So forgive me if I don’t immediately collapse in relief because three men I’ve known for maybe five weeks decided to show up at my office before I’ve finished my coffee.”

The room dropped with silence.

My wolf, the traitorous creature, whispered, they came through, All three of them, First thing.

I ignored her.

Ares, who had been silent this entire time, standing just inside the doorway with his coat still on and his dark eyes moving between me and the other two, spoke then.

“She’s right,” he said simply.

Kaiden turned to look at him. “Excuse me?”

“She doesn’t need protection.” Ares moved further into the room, stopping at the edge of my desk, and the steadiness of his gaze when it found mine made my stomach churn. “She needs information. Specifically…..” he reached into his coat and placed a folded document on my desk, “who filed the report.”

I looked at it without touching it.

“You already know,” I said.

“I have a name,” he said, “I wanted you to have it too.”

The room was very quiet. Killian had gone still in the way that ancient vampires went still when they were paying absolute, predatory attention. Kaiden’s arms had unfolded at his sides.

I reached out and picked up the document.

I unfolded it and read the name.

The air left my lungs in one slow, controlled breath.

“Of course,” I said softly, to no one but the name on the paper, to the familiar shape of a betrayal that somehow still managed to surprise me even when it shouldn’t.

I set the document down and looked up.

All three of them were watching me with varying degrees of carefully contained urgency, Killian calculated, Kaiden coiled, Ares quiet and steady and reading my face like a language he had been studying for two years.

“Get out,” I said calmly.

“Mira…,” Kaiden started.

“I need ten minutes alone,” I said. “Then we can discuss whatever plan the three of you inevitably already have.” I met each of their gazes in turn. “Ten minutes, please.”

Something in the please…. the fact that it existed at all, made all three of them move without further argument.

The door clicked shut behind them.

I sat in the silence of my office for exactly thirty seconds.

Then I picked up the document again and looked at the name written on the report filed to the Supernatural Council.

Alpha Rowan Blackwood. Nightshadow Pack.

My ex-husband.

The man I had just offered to buy his company. The man who had framed me, exiled me, left me to bleed in the forbidden lands.

He had found out what I was And he had told them.

My hands were completely steady as I folded the paper, My face was composed. My voice, when I pressed the intercom, was level and professional.

“Zara,” I said. “Clear my morning.”

A pause, “All of it?”

“All of it,” I confirmed.

I set the document down and looked out at the city beyond my windows, at the skyline I had built my empire against, at the world that had tried twice now to erase me.

My wolf rose quietly inside me, not calm but raging.

They want a Wyrmblood? she said softly.

I straightened in my chair.

Then let’s remind them what that means.