Chapter 10 010

Chapter 10 010

DARIUS

I couldn't concentrate.

I'd been staring at the same page for twenty minutes and nothing on it was going in. Numbers, territories, agreements that needed signing off — all of it just sitting there while my mind kept drifting to the sound of footsteps moving through the corridor earlier that morning.

I put the papers down.

She was somewhere in the house. I didn't know exactly where and I wasn't going to go looking. I just knew she was there the way you know when something has shifted in a space that's been the same for years. This house had been mine alone for a long time. It had a particular kind of quiet that I'd gotten used to. That quiet was different now.

I picked the papers back up.

Rhen knocked twice and came in without waiting. He did that. I'd stopped pulling him up on it years ago because it made no difference.

He dropped into the chair across from my desk and looked at me.

"So," he said.

"I'm working."

"She walked past me this morning there's something suspicious about her"
I didn't look up. "Good."

"Darius."

"Rhen."

He leaned forward and put his arms on his knees. "Who is she."

"I told you. She's under my protection."

"That's not an answer and you know it." He paused. "Nicholas's daughter. Kaelan's rejected mate. Pregnant." He said it flat, just laying it out. "You want to tell me what's actually going on or do I keep guessing."

I set the pen down and looked at him.

Rhen had been with me for eight years. He'd followed me through things most men wouldn't have and never asked for more than the truth in return. He deserved more than I was giving him right now. I knew that.

"Her father owes me," I said.

"How much."

"Everything."

Rhen sat back. Looked at me for a long moment. "And she knows this."

"She knows enough."

"Does she know she's the move."

"Yes," I said. "I told her."

That surprised him. I could see it — just a flicker, but it was there. He hadn't expected that.

"And she stayed anyway," he said.

"She had nowhere else to go."

"Right." He was quiet for a second. "And that's all it is."

I looked at him. "That's all it is."

He nodded slowly, the way he did when he didn't fully believe something but wasn't going to push it any further right now. He'd come back to it later. He always did.

"Nicholas will come," he said.

"I know."

"Soon."

"I know that too."

"We need to be ready. All of us, not just you." He stood up. "Whatever this is, whatever you've started — it's going to move fast once he hears. Men like Nicholas don't sit on something like this. It embarrasses him."

"Let him be embarrassed," I said.

Rhen looked at me for a moment. Then he nodded once and left and pulled the door behind him.

I sat back in my chair.

I thought about what he'd said. That's all it is. I'd said yes without hesitating and that was the right answer because it was the true one. She was here because she was useful. Because her being under my roof sent a message to her father that nothing else could. That was the beginning and the end of it.

I pulled the papers back toward me.

Twenty minutes later I gave up and put them down again.

I picked up the phone and called the doctor I used for the household. Not the pack physician — a private one, someone who had worked with me for years and knew how to be discreet.

She picked up on the second ring.

"I need you to come to the house," I said. "Tomorrow morning. I have someone who needs looking at. Pregnancy. Early stages."

A pause. "Of course. Eight work?"

"Eight is fine."

I hung up and sat there for a second looking at the phone in my hand.

She hadn't asked me for that. She'd added it to her list, I could tell — the way she'd looked this morning, turning things over quietly, figuring out what she needed to sort out and in what order. She would have gotten there eventually. Would have asked Cora or found a way to do it herself without making it anyone else's problem.

I'd just moved it up.

That was all.

I put the phone down and went back to the papers and this time I actually read them.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, behind the numbers and the territory lines and everything that needed my attention, I kept coming back to one thing Rhen had said.

I turned the page and kept working.