جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 190

Skye Jaxon has been gone for five days and I'm having some feelings about it that I don't think I'm allowed to have. If someone had told me this time last year that there would come a time I’d miss him again, I’d have thought they’d lost their mind. But I do. I miss him.And not just as Benji's father—I miss him in a way that has nothing to do with Benji and everything to do with the bond and what I finally admitted to myself and what I still haven't figured out exactly what to do with.I am Nicolai's mate. I am wearing his mark. I chose him and I love him and I am sitting at the breakfast table missing Jaxon Vale with an intensity that is shocking and equally guilty-inducing.I'm not going to pretend it isn't happening. I told myself I'd be honest. Being honest includes letting myself feel it. Even if that means that Nicolai sees me craving the presence of another man. And he does notice. Of course he does. Even if he couldn’t feel it through our bond, he’s always noticed everything

SkyeNicolai’s question is a test and not a test. I feel the weight of it."Yes," It’s barely a sound but it’s the truth. "If you told me you couldn't—if you really couldn't—I would choose you. I made a vow. I meant it. I mean it now." My voice breaks slightly. "Even if it—yes. I would choose you."The way he’s looking at me, his expression does something I don't have words for."Show me," I challenge. "Show me you can't accept this, accept him. Look at me and tell me. You do that and I’ll choose you."He doesn’t look away but there’s no warmth in his gaze. The tension in the room holds. Then something in his face changes. The breaking-thing underneath the control surfaces and he crosses the room in one stride, takes my face in his hands and says:"I can't watch you give it up." He murmurs. Just that.My jaw drops open and I stare at him. Because after everything, what do I say to that?"If you gave it up for me," he continues, "I would see it on your face every day. The thing you were

NicolaiArmed with the information from my lawyer, I head to the west wing to find Jaxon. He’s working in his office and looks up when I come in, closes his laptop, and gives me his full attention. Almost like he’d been waiting for me to show up and wondered what took me so long. "What are you going to do about Ironwood?" I ask, no preamble. He doesn't require preamble—I've learned this about him."I don't know yet," he says."That's not a plan." I grumble. "No," he agrees. "It isn't. I'm still working on it."I sit across from him. The west wing room that's become his—his photo of Benji on the desk, his things on the shelves, the particular imprint a person leaves when they've inhabited a space for months."While you work on it," I say, "my pack is developing opinions about my fitness to lead. Because I appear to have invited competition into my home." I hold his gaze. "Those opinions will calcify if left long enough.""I know." He doesn't look away. "I understand the difficult posi

Skye Nicolai’s been in a meeting allahabad ay, but of course he comes out earlier than expected. He appears in the sitting room doorway and takes in what's happening. Jaxon and me leaning in, both of us with every intention of reenacting our last kiss. His face does something and it takes everything in me not to jump back like a girl whose parents caught her with a boy they disapprove of.Then I notice it’s not the look of jealousy I've learned to read—the tight-jaw, controlled-breath version. This is something subtler. The expression of someone watching the person they love in an intimate situation with someone else and still deciding how he feels about it. He recovers immediately. His shoulders relax and he strolls further into the room. Says something normal—asks how Benji's been today, mentions something from his meeting. Joins the conversation for a few minutes with the practiced ease of a man who manages everything. But I saw it.That evening, when we're in our room and finall

JaxonI happen to be passing by Nicolai’s office when I overhear Mikhail informing him about a security issue. A gap in the estate's perimeter monitoring—a gap I’d already identified but assumed was being addressed so I said nothing. But seeing the look of concern on his face, I realize this is the first time he’s hearing of it."Woolf." He looks up, surprised to see me standing there. "Your eastern boundary camera," I say. "The rotation pattern. There's a window."He looks at the report in his hand. "Where?""Between the twenty-minute rotation on the secondary camera and the motion sensor reset. Forty-three second gap, repeating on an interval." I've seen it before—Ironwood had the same vulnerability in its system three years ago, before I had it addressed. "Your installer probably followed a standard template. Most do."Nicolai stares at me for a moment, debating with himself. "Come in," he says eventually.I come in. We stand over his desk and I show him what I'm seeing. He asks a d