We have an Audience

The flight back from the Everglades had been a descent into a new kind of hell. I could still see the grey, furred limb of the creature in the pit. My hands, resting on the silk of my thighs, were shaking with fury.

Back at the office, I threw open the double doors to Caspian’s office before he could even look up from his tablet.

"You took me off the Silver Moon files," I said, my voice a dangerous low.

"I tried to log in this morning. Access denied. Total lockout. What the hell is this, Caspian?"

Caspian didn't look surprised. He was leaning back in his leather chair. He looked calm, too calm. The charming CEO who had caught me at dinner was gone, replaced by the calculating predator.

"Your role has evolved. The Silver Moon logistics are… tedious. I’ve moved you to the North Miami Port Acquisition. It’s high-stakes, faster-paced. It suits your temperament better."

"Don't lie to me!" I slammed my hands onto his desk.

"You moved me because I saw Zone 4. You moved me because you know I saw the Iron Claw patrolling a graveyard. You’re clearing the land; you’re digging for something. Or you’re killing for something."

Caspian stood up. He walked around the desk, his blue eyes fixed on mine with a chilling intensity.

"You have quite the imagination, Eloise. It’s one of the things I find most attractive about you. But you’re a Thorne. You should know that in this world, there are things beneath the surface that require… specialized management. Your father understands that. I understand that. Why can't you?"

"What I saw out there, the biohazard trucks, the pits, the way you looked at that site, that’s not management. That’s an atrocity."

"Careful," Caspian whispered, stepping into my space.

"Atrocity is a word for the weak. We are talking about evolution."

"Is that what you call it? Evolution?" I backed away, but he kept coming.

He was driving me toward the window, toward the drop that overlooked the city.

"Using Silas and his pack of scavengers to guard whatever you are hiding there? What are you doing with those wolves, Caspian? What are you putting into those pits?"

I felt the backs of my knees hit the edge of the desk. I was trapped between the cold glass of the skyscraper.

"You’re so focused on the 'how' that you’re missing the 'why,'" Caspian said.

He placed his hands on the desk on either side of my hips, leaning in until I could see the tiny flecks of gold in his irises.

“You’re addicted to the fire. I felt it at dinner. I felt it in the helicopter."

"You felt nothing," I lied.

"I felt everything."

Before I could turn away, his hand was in my hair, tilting my head back. His mouth forced against mine, not with the desperate hunger of Cane, but with a possessive dominance. For a split second, the intense power of him paralysed me.

My hands went to his chest to push him away, my fingers digging into the fine cotton of his shirt. I felt the hard density of his muscles.

I shoved him with every ounce of strength I had.

"Get off me!"

I scrambled back, gasping for air, my back hitting the massive glass pane of the window. Caspian didn't chase me. He stood there, his chest heaving, a dark, triumphant smirk on his lips.

"You can fight it all you want, Eloise. But you’re one of us."

He didn't look at me then. His gaze drifted past my shoulder, out toward the building directly adjacent to ours, the sleek, black-glass tower of the Meridian Group, barely thirty feet away across the street.

The smile on his face deepened into something cruel, something knowing.

"It seems we have an audience," he murmured.

I slowly turned my head, my breath fogging the glass.

There, on the edge of the Meridian’s rooftop, ten stories above us, stood a shadow.

It was Cane.

He wasn't in his human form. His eyes were burning with a light so bright they seemed to pierce through the tinted glass of the penthouse. He was standing on the very edge of the building, his claws digging into the stone.

He had seen it. He had seen the kiss.

"Cane," I whispered, my hand reaching for the glass as if I could touch him.

Cane didn't wait. He moved with speed, and he lunged.

He leapt from the top of the building, a seven-foot blur of fur blocking the morning sun. He didn't fall; he soared. He cleared the gap between the buildings, his claws catching the ledge of a lower floor of the building across the street. He swung his weight downward, dropping twenty feet to a balcony, then another thirty to a fire escape. He moved like a shadow through a forest of steel. He hit a brick wall, his claws carving deep to slow his descent, before he pushed off, leaping over a parked delivery truck and disappearing into the dark, narrow entrance of an alleyway.

I turned back to Caspian, my face white.

Caspian was still smirking, adjusting his cufflinks with a terrifyingly calm precision.

"He’s fast," Caspian remarked.

"But he’s still just an animal, Eloise. And in this city, animals eventually get put down."

“You son of a bitch!” I shouted at Caspian and slapped him across his face.

I ran out of his office.

The Lamborghini screamed as I pushed the V12 engine to its breaking point, moving through the Miami traffic. My father’s warning echoed in my thoughts.

“If you set foot in that warehouse, the deal is dead.”

I didn't care. The image of Cane’s burning eyes through the glass was the only thing that mattered. The way he had leapt into the abyss haunted me. He hadn't just seen a kiss; he had seen a betrayal of the soul.