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He just nodded slowly, like he was filing the information away, and said he hoped I’d reconsider before things got complicated.

I don’t like men who issue soft threats and call them advice. But he’s not the first and won’t be the last. The only thing that left me unsettled was his wolf. He’s an alpha all right, but there’s something off about his dominance. Something forced. It’s an unknown, and that’s my least favorite kind of risk.

My wolf huffs against the night air as if to agree, and I feel the pull of the city below. More specifically, I feel pulled toward the center of downtown where a certain penthouse catches the moonlight and throws it back like a dare.

I know which apartment is hers. Grey mentioned it when he was outlining the pack’s structure and its officers. I filed the information away as tactical and told myself that was all it was.

My wolf doesn’t believe me either.

Mia looked at me that night like no one ever has. Not like an alpha. Not like a resource or a threat or a useful connection. Like a man she was curious about and slightly annoyed by and maybe, underneath all that armor, wanted to know better.

She looked at me like a man who’d just given her what I’d like to think was the best damn orgasm of her life.

And then she made me promise to leave her forever.

We were strangers bordering on enemies back then. I told myself it was better to keep it that way. Cleaner. She was embedded in Indigo Hills, and I had Crossvale to think about.

All true.

All completely irrelevant now.

Now, we’re allies.

My wolf stirs again. Wanting her. Urging me to go to her now. It’s not the mate bond—if it were, I doubt I’d be able to resist it—but something adjacent to it. Something that sits just beyond the boundary of reasonable.

I should go back to the room at the estate Grey’s staff prepared for me. Review the patrol grids. Finalize the rotation schedule I promised to have ready by morning.

Instead, I find myself moving through the tree line toward the city lights below. The night is quiet. The city breathes in its slow, stubborn way—this place that almost broke itself and chose to survive instead.

I have a feeling she won’t sleep tonight either. Maybe this is the only way.

The doorman at her building doesn’t question me. I'm not surprised. I have the kind of presence that tends to make people step aside first and ask questions later, and if that fails, Grey and Lexi’s names open nearly every door in this city.

Mia’s door is different.

I knock twice and wait.

A long pause. Long enough that I know she’s checked the monitor she’s bound to have as part of her security setup. Long enough to think over whether or not to answer.

Finally, the door opens.

She’s changed out of her suit, but that’s not what has me drinking her in like water in the desert. It’s the exposed skin, bared like an invitation. The shorts she’s wearing—if they can be called that—might as well be panties, considering how nonexistent they are. Her loose white shirt slides off one shoulder. Hair down and gleaming red. Legs for days, smooth as velvet.

She looks softer like this, which I know she’d hate me for noticing. Her expression, however, is anything but.

If I didn’t possess the dominance of an alpha, I’d run.

“What are you doing here?” she demands.

“Visiting an old friend.” It comes out like a question. A cheeky one. She doesn’t crack a smile. Not even close.

“It’s late,” she says.

“I know.”

“I didn’t invite you.”

“No, you didn’t.”