Chapter 28 After the Pitch
Sable’s POV
The meeting ended in a blur.
Voices rose and fell around me—Donovan wrapping things up with his trademark polish, Jenna practically glowing with excitement, Sam giving me a small, proud smile from across the table. To anyone else, it was a victory. One of our sharpest pitches yet, a room full of executives leaning forward, nodding, already half convinced.
But I didn’t feel triumph.
I felt fire.
Fire in my chest where the mate bond burned like a live coal. Fire in my palms from gripping my pen so tightly the wood splintered. Fire in my eyes every time I caught Liora leaning too close to him.
And through it all, Kier’s gaze never left me.
Not once.
It was heat and hunger and a thousand unsaid words crashing into me until I could barely breathe. I could feel him, smell him, taste the electricity of his presence on my tongue. The pull between us was a current, and I was trying to stand upright in a storm.
When Donovan finally extended his hand and thanked Ironclad’s board, I was already half out of my chair, desperate to get away—out of the gleaming room, out of the scent of cedar and storm that wrapped around me like a net. I needed distance before I did something reckless. Before my wolf did.
But I didn’t make it to the door.
“Sable.”
His voice cut through the noise—low, commanding, rougher than I remembered. The kind of voice you didn’t ignore even if you wanted to.
I froze, every muscle locking tight. Gods, I wanted to keep walking. But my traitorous feet stilled, rooted to the polished floor.
Slowly, I turned. “Mr. Blane,” I said coolly, using the name I’d heard the humans call him, as if he were just another CEO and not the mate I had run from.
Something flickered in his eyes at that—pain, maybe, quickly masked by steel. He dismissed Donovan and the others with a glance sharp enough to slice. My team hesitated, but the weight of his presence sent them moving. Within moments, the boardroom emptied.
It was just us.
And the bond, thrumming between us like a live wire.
He stepped closer, each stride slow, deliberate, predatory. My wolf surged to meet him, pressing against my skin, howling to close the distance. I shoved it down, fingers curling into fists at my sides until my knuckles ached.
“You’re really here,” he murmured, almost to himself. His eyes roamed over me shamelessly—my face, my curves, the clothes that suddenly felt far too tight under his gaze. “Five years, and you walk back into my life like this.”
I forced steel into my spine. “Coincidence.”
His lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “Do you believe that?” His voice was low, dangerous, like a growl restrained by human form.
“I have to,” I said.
Silence stretched, thick with all the things we weren’t saying. The tension pressed into my ribs, a weight as familiar as it was unbearable.
His hand lifted, slow and tentative, as if to touch my cheek—then stopped, fingers curling in on themselves before he let it drop.
“You’ve changed,” he said quietly.
“So have you.” My voice cracked, betraying me, and I hated it.
His jaw tightened, his eyes dark. “Not where it matters.”
The bond pulsed again, so strong I swayed toward him before I caught myself. My body betrayed me, every nerve screaming for him, for us, for the life I’d run from.
But my mind—my hard-won freedom—held the line.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” I said, my voice sharper now, each word an anchor to keep me from being swept under. “I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone.”
His eyes burned into mine, fierce and unrelenting, his voice a low rasp. “You’ve always belonged to yourself, Sable. That’s what I—” He stopped, but the word slipped out anyway. “—loved about you.”
The word—loved—struck deep, slicing through my armor like claws. My breath caught, my wolf whining low in my chest, aching at the sound of it.
But I couldn’t let myself believe it. Not when Liora’s scent still clung to his suit. Not when the memory of her fingers on his tie was burned into my mind like a brand.
So I turned away, forcing each step toward the door to feel deliberate, professional, final. My heels clicked against the polished floor, the sound like a drumbeat against my pulse.
“This meeting was business,” I said, my voice even though my throat felt raw. “Nothing more.”
And before he could stop me, I walked out.
The door swung shut behind me with a soft thud, cutting off his scent, his voice, his presence—except it didn’t. The bond followed, heavy and alive, a chain and a lifeline all at once.
Down the hall, Jenna and Sam were waiting with questions in their eyes, but I barely registered them. My heartbeat was still in the boardroom, thrumming against his, trapped in a tether I’d spent five years trying to escape.
I kept walking, past my team, past the elevators, past the glittering lobby. Out into the street where the city’s noise washed over me like water.
My breath came in ragged pulls, the cool air biting at my skin. My wolf paced inside me, restless, snarling, pressing at my ribs as if she could claw her way out and run back to him.
I pressed a hand to my chest, whispering the words that had become my mantra. “I choose me.”
But this time the bond pulsed harder, answering back with a wordless certainty that rattled my bones: Mate.
I shut my eyes, fighting the ache. Freedom was supposed to feel like light, like air. Instead it felt like being torn in half.
And deep down, past the anger and the pride and the pain, one truth rose up clear and cold as moonlight:
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.