Page 36 of Curvy Sold Mate

“Olivia.”

She refocused. Viktor was watching her with a gaze that missed, and she met it without flinching.

“The grid is good work,” he said. “The weight discrepancy is the first physical evidence we’ve had—everything else has been circumstantial. Timing correlations, behavioral anomalies, Maren’s inconsistencies. This is something we can bring to Kahn.”

“Not yet.”

His eyebrows shifted—a fraction, the barest upward movement, the equivalent of a shout from a man who communicated in millimeters. “Why not?”

“Because the weight proves cargo was moved, but it doesn’t prove Maren moved it. She filled out the requisition, but the transport team loaded the cart, and the gate officer recorded the weight. There are three sets of hands between the paperwork and the cargo, and if we go to Kahn with an incomplete chain, we give Maren time to close the gaps we haven’t found yet.”

Viktor sat with that. She could see him turning it over—the strategic patience warring with the instinct to act, the investigator measuring evidence against the soldier who wanted to end the threat. His thumb pressed against the edge of the desk, the small unconscious gesture she’d added to the growing catalog of his tells.

“What do you need?” he asked.

The question was a concession, and they both knew it—he was yielding the operational lead to her judgment, the way he’d been yielding it in increments since the night she’d confronted him about the investigation, and the accumulation of those small transfers had built something between them that she could feel in the room like a third presence. Trust, maybe, or its precursor—the willingness to be wrong in front of someone and find that the wrongness didn’t cost you.

“The gate logs for the full quarter,” she said. “And I need to talk to Lena Vasik on the transport team. She’s been on every supply run that shows a discrepancy, and she’s the kind of person who notices when a cart rides heavier than expected but doesn’t mention it unless someone asks the right question.”

“I’ll pull the gate logs this morning. What else?”

“Keep Damian occupied while I do the interview.”

“He’s been asking questions,” she said, keeping her voice even. “About the investigation, the pack, about us. He doesn’t mean harm by it, but he talks to people, and people listen, because Damian is the kind of man people want to tell things to. If Maren or anyone connected to her hears that the Beta’s wife is pulling transport records and interviewing cart drivers, we lose the advantage.”

“You’re asking me to manage my brother.”

“I’m asking you to keep him away from my investigation for three hours.” She held his gaze. “Whatever is happening between the two of you—I’m not going to pretend I haven’t noticed, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t involve me, because we’re both adults and denial is a waste of time I don’t have. But I am also not going to stand in the middle of it. You and Damian will work out what you need to work out, and you’ll do it without using me as the subject of the conversation, because I am not a subject—I am a person doing a job, and the job comes first.”

“Understood,” Viktor said.

The word was simple and complete, and he delivered it without defensiveness, without the careful diplomacy he used when managing Kahn’s moods or the flat deflection he deployed when Damian pressed too close. He said it the way he said things that were true: once, clearly, without ornamentation.

She gathered the folder, stood, tucked the pencil behind her ear, and moved toward the door. The space between them widened with each step. She felt the bond stretch without straining—elastic, accommodating, holding them connected across the growing distance with a steadiness that her body had started trusting before her mind caught up.

“Olivia.”

She paused at the threshold.

“The weight discrepancy, the grid, the connection to the breach timeline—that’s the best piece of investigative work anyone in this pack has produced in six months.” He was looking at her with that expression again, the one that carried more than professional respect, the one she’d been cataloging and refusing to examine in direct light. “Including me.”

“I know,” she said, and let the corner of her mouth shift in a way that acknowledged the praise without surrendering to it. “I’ll have the interview notes by noon.”

She left, her footsteps steady, and the folder solid under her arm. The bond hummed between them—cleaner than the fractured, raw frequency she’d felt at dawn—recalibrated by the work they’d done.

Chapter 22 - Viktor

Caitlynn told him to stand closer.

Viktor looked at the space she was indicating—three feet from the examination table, two feet from Olivia’s shoulder, close enough that his shadow would fall across her arm—and every instinct he’d spent twenty years sharpening told him to stay at the door.

“The bond between mated pairs can stabilize the extraction,” Caitlynn said, laying out the crystal-tipped probes in their leather roll with the focused calm of a woman who had done this twice before and intended to do it right the third time. “The last anchor is the deepest. The shard has threaded itself into the nerve cluster along the ulnar pathway, and when I pull it, her system is going to revolt. The bond is the only counterweight I have.”

“What does that mean in practice?”

“It means I need you close enough that the bond signal is louder than the pain signal. You don’t have to touch her. Just be present. The magic will reach for itself.”

Olivia was already on the table, her forearm turned upward, the shard’s entry point a dark, bruised mark against the inside of her elbow. He moved to the spot Caitlynn had indicated. Close enough to smell her.