Chapter 96: LATE NIGHT KNOCKS
CALLUM’S POV
The study was quiet. Not like I was complaining. I could duly breath without having to listen to anyone.
But sometimes I missed Nadia. I should talk to her. But no, I held back. She seemed intent on proving to me she could handle herself, and I was proud of her. She even got a job. Took charge of her own life, and I was going to let her.
I heard the door before it opened.
Female.
The scent reached me before the footsteps did and I leaned back in my chair, not looking up from the report on my desk.
No one else would come to my study this late. It had to be Nadia.
"Nadia." A small smile pulled at my mouth. "You finally decided to come home."
"Not quite."
I looked up with a frown.
Vanessa closed the door behind her. She was wearing something thin and deliberately transparent— straps that barely held, fabric that moved with her like it was meant to, a neckline that dipped low enough to leave nothing to the imagination. She crossed the room the way women did when they wanted you to watch them do it.
I watched but not because I wanted to. Because I was trying to understand what she thought this would accomplish.
My irritation spiked in my veins as I stared at her, and a frown pulled at my lips.
"It’s late," I said.
"I know." She stopped at the other side of my desk, her palms pressing flat against the surface as she leaned forward. "I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the pack, about everything you’re carrying right now, and I just thought— I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d want the company."
"You thought I’d want the company? Seriously?"
"You’ve been alone in here every night this week." She tilted her head. "Don’t you think that says something?"
I set the report down. "Sit down, Vanessa."
She hadn’t expected that. Something moved across her face before she smoothed it over, pulling the chair back and settling into it slowly, crossing her legs at the ankle like she was performing composure.
"I want to understand you," she said and her voice was soft and careful, like she thought it was a door she could walk through if she chose the right words. "I know you’ve been through things that most people couldn’t survive. Losing your mate. Raising Nadia on your own. Running a pack that keeps getting bigger and more complicated every year. I don’t think anyone around you actually stops to ask how you’re doing with all of it."
"And you do."
"I’m trying to." She held my gaze. "I know you think I’m just performing something right now, but I genuinely want to know you, Callum. Not the Alpha of this pack. Not the title. Just you."
"Vanessa."
"I could be good for you." Her voice dropped slightly, the softness in it shifting into something more sultry. "I know what this pack needs. I know what a Luna’s role looks like and I’ve been preparing for it my whole life. But more than that— I think I could be good for you. Personally. If you’d let me."
I looked at her for a long moment. The warmth in her eyes, the inviting look in her gaze and relaxed posture, the way the neckline of whatever she was wearing kept drawing the eye down whether you wanted it to or not.
"You came into my study at this hour," I said, "dressed the way you’re dressed, to tell me you want to know me personally."
She didn’t flinch. "Is that a problem?"
"It’s transparent."
Her jaw tightened, just slightly. "I don’t know what you want me to say."
"I don’t want you to say anything." I held her gaze. "I want you to understand something. Whatever you think you walked in here to accomplish tonight, it won’t work. Not because you’re not clever, you are actually and not because you haven’t prepared, you clearly have. But because what you’re offering me isn’t what you think it is, and I’m not so far gone that I can’t tell the difference."
She was quiet for a moment. Then— "Everyone wants something, Callum. Even you. And there’s nothing wrong with that."
"You’re right," I said. "There isn’t."
She leaned forward slightly. "Then let meㅡ"
"Get out of my study."
The words came out flat and final, irritation bleeding into my tone.
She looked at me for a long moment, like she was deciding whether there was still a move left to make. Then she stood, smoothed her hands slowly down the front of her dress, taking her time with it and looked at me one more time with those careful eyes.
Then she turned and walked out and the door clicked shut behind her.
I sat there without moving. My eyes went back to the report but I didn’t read a word of it. I was thinking about the way she’d said I could be good for you like it was something she’d genuinely thought she’d be good at. Like she’d stood in front of a mirror and tried different versions of it until she found the one that sounded the most like she meant it.
She wasn’t wrong that I was lonely. That part landed, even if she’d thrown it like a hook.
She was just wrong about what I was lonely for.
I pushed back from the desk, grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair, and left.
********
I found myself at Keisha’s house.
Somehow, I always found myself always going to her.
I didn’t have a reason to go to her house. I knew that as I walked, hands in my pockets, the night air cold and quiet around me. Nadia was there. I couldn’t knock. Couldn’t go inside. Couldn’t do anything with the wanting except carry it down the east path and stop when the house came into view.
One light was still on. The living room, maybe. Or the kitchen.
I stood there and looked at it and thought about Keisha on the other side of those walls, probably awake, probably sitting with Nadia and talking about different stuff.
I could imagine her laugh. The way she would double over with Nadia telling her something in her ear.
Oh how much I wanted to see that.
I wanted to go in.
I stood there and wanted it but didn’t move and eventually turned around to go back.
That was when I felt it.
A presence that didn’t belong. Male. Unfamiliar. The scent was controlled— suppressed deliberately — but underneath the suppression there was something synthetic. Something chemical that had no place on pack grounds.
I didn’t stop walking.
I kept my pace exactly the same, my shoulders loose, my face doing nothing. I adjusted my direction slightly, the way a man does when he’s walking without a fixed destination, and he adjusted too, staying parallel, staying back, staying in the tree line like the dark belonged to him.
It didn’t.
I kept walking, taking the long way around, giving him nothing to react to, letting him get comfortable with the distance between us and the cover of the trees. When I reached Dane’s door I knocked twice.
Dane opened it and looked at my face.
"There are goods that came in at the north border," I said. Loud enough, my voice easy enough. Like it was nothing more than a late administrative issue that couldn’t wait until morning. "Something’s off with the manifest. I need someone to go and check it."
Dane leaned against the doorframe, his expression unbothered. "What kind of something?"
"The numbers don’t match what was declared. Could be a clerical error." I paused. "Could be something else."
He looked at me for just a moment longer than the conversation required. "I’ll head there now. Eastern gate?"
"I’ll take the eastern gate."
We separated.
I took the eastern path and walked it slowly, giving Dane time to come around, giving the man following me time to believe he still had the upper hand. The path narrowed after the third bend, the tree line pressing in on both sides, the ground uneven, no lights this far out. Anyone following me here would have nowhere to go. Anyone trying to turn back would run straight into whatever was coming from the north.
I slowed, making my steps slowly reduce.
He slowed with me, still in the trees, still thinking the dark was his.
Not very smart.
Then I stopped walking entirely.
I turned around, not sharply, just slowly, the way you do when something at the edge of your hearing makes you pause, and I looked directly at the tree line. Not at him exactly. Just at the space where I knew he was standing.
I watched him understand that something had gone wrong.
He ran.
He made it three steps before he hit something solid that didn’t move.
Then Dane’s voice came through the dark, quiet and certain.
"Gotcha."