Jack's POV:
I knocked on the boss's door, steeling myself to deliver the kind of news he never wants to hear.
"Enter."
The single word from the other side was a low, grating bass. I knew that tone. It was the sound of a storm held in check, barely. Not good.
I pushed the door open slowly. The atmosphere inside hit me like a wall, a thick haze of expensive cigar smoke, undercut by something far more primal: the sharp, metallic scent of agitated alpha pheromones. It wasn't just anger; it was a possessiveness so potent it felt like a physical weight in the air, tinting the very light a faint, threatening crimson.
Knox sat behind his vast desk, a silhouette carved from shadow and tension. A cigar smoldered between his fingers, forgotten. His attention was fixed on his phone, screen glaring up at him on the polished wood. He wasn't scrolling. He was just… waiting. The pale glow lit the hard line of his jaw, the simmering frustration in his eyes, eyes that, even from across the room, seemed to hold a dangerous, restless light.
He didn't look up. The silence stretched, charged and uncomfortable, broken only by the quiet crackle of the cigar's ember.
He was in a mood, all right. And I was the one about to throw a match into the fumes.
"Well?"
he said, the word a curl of smoke and impatience. He still didn't look up from the phone. His thumb traced the edge of the device, a slow, restless motion that betrayed the calm he was trying to project. The screen, I could see now, was open to a messaging app. A single thread. The last message sent—delivered, but not read.
He was waiting for a reply. From her.
I cleared my throat, which felt dry from the charged air.
"The meeting with the Westend suppliers. They're… pushing back on the territory agreement. Said the terms are too one-sided. They want a renegotiation before they sign."
Finally, his gaze lifted. The purple of his eyes was vivid even in the dim, smoky light, and they were utterly cold. Not with anger, but with a dismissive, predatory annoyance. An inconvenience. His true focus was clearly elsewhere.
"Is that all?"
he asked, his voice deceptively soft. He took a slow drag from the cigar, the ember flaring like a warning beacon in the dim room.
"Tell them the terms are not a discussion. They are a statement of fact. Their operations exist in my territory because I allow it. Remind them what happened to the last group who thought 'one-sided' was a negotiable point."
He said it without heat, as if reciting the weather. His attention drifted back to the dark screen of his phone. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
As I reached for the door handle, his voice stopped me again, the command softer now, edged with a specific, pointed intensity.
"And, Jack."
I turned back. He had finally put the phone down, screen-first on the desk, as if he could no longer bear the silence from it. His glowing amethyst eyes pinned me in place.
"The Redmere family matter. The bear patriarch. Has there been any contact from Alistair Redmere?"
He used the full name. Formal. Respectful, even. But the courtesy was a blade sheathed in ice. It was the respect one powerful alpha was forced to accord another of significant standing, not the warmth of an acquaintance. It made the inquiry more serious, not less.
"None yet, sir," I repeated, holding his gaze. "The Redmere estate has been quiet. No calls, no messages. No movement at their business offices that's out of the ordinary."
"Quiet," Knox repeated, the word a low rumble. He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together on the dark wood. "Alistair Redmere is a bear who has built an empire on calm deliberation. His silence is not peace. It is strategy. He is weighing his daughter's distress against the political storm a direct challenge would bring."
A faint, humorless smile touched Knox's lips. "He is deciding whether to come at me as a father, or as the head of the Redmere clan. I need to know which face he will wear before he steps onto my field." His gaze sharpened. "Double the discreet surveillance on their inner circle. I want to know if he so much as consults a clan elder or a legal advisor about territorial… infringements."
"Understood, sir."
"Dismissed."
As I closed the door behind me, I heard the soft sound of his phone being picked up again. He wasn't just waiting for a message from the daughter anymore. He was now anticipating a formal declaration of war from the father. And in the thick, red-tinged air of his office, I could have sworn he seemed almost eager for it.
Knox's POV:
I'd expected her silence. The retreat of prey to its burrow was a fundamental law of nature. A rabbit's first instinct is to freeze, then to flee. Logic told me this was just the flight.
So why did it feel like my heart had been ripped clean from my chest?
Three days. Seventy-two hours of a silence so complete it had become a physical presence in my penthouse. A deafening void where her voice, her scent, the soft sound of her breathing should have been.
My phone sat dark and inert on the obsidian surface of my desk. No calls. No texts. The message I'd sent that first night—*We need to talk.*—still sat there, delivered, unread. A monument to her defiance. Or her fear.
I couldn't stop turning her last words over in my mind, each repetition a fresh lash.
*You could eat me.*
The glass in my hand trembled, sending the amber liquid within shivering toward the rim. A low, furious growl tore itself from my throat, resonating in the sterile, empty air. I hadn't realized my panther ears were fully exposed, pressed flat against my skull in pure, unadulterated rage.
*Eat her.*
As if I were some feral, mange-ridden rogue, driven by nothing but base hunger. As if the centuries of control, the iron discipline I wielded over every primal impulse, meant *nothing*. As if the cataclysmic shift she'd caused in my very soul, the way my world had reoriented itself around the axis of her, could be reduced to something so vulgar, so… simple.
The heat of my anger was a welcome burn, scalding away the colder, more dangerous ache beneath it. The ache of rejection. The humiliation of laying myself bare, of showing her the terrifying depth of my devotion, only to have it thrown back in my face as if it were a threat.
I threw back the whiskey, the fire of it doing nothing to quench the one inside me. I surged to my feet, the chair screeching against the polished concrete floor. Prowling to the floor-to-ceiling window, I stared out at the glittering, indifferent city. My territory. A kingdom that felt hollow and meaningless.
She saw a monster. A consumer. She didn't see the protector. The worshiper. She didn't understand that the very instincts she feared were the ones that would move heaven and hell to shield her. That my hunger was not for her flesh, but for her laughter, her trust, the right to stand between her and every shadow the world could cast.
My phone buzzed against the desk. A jolt of pure, electric hope shot through me, so violent it was painful. I was across the room in two strides, snatching it up.
It was Jack. A security update on the Redmere holdings.
The hope curdled, leaving a bitterness more acrid than the whiskey. I dismissed the notification without reading it, my claws—fully extended and sharp—tapping a staccato rhythm of pure frustration on the glass screen.
Fine.
If she wanted to see the monster, perhaps it was time the monster stopped waiting politely at her door. If logic and vulnerability had failed, there were other ways to make a rabbit listen. Older ways. More direct ways.
The panther within, wounded and furious, lifted its head and agreed. The period of silent longing was over. The hunt for understanding was about to begin in earnest.