The man who came around the corner was not a staff or an omega.
I knew who Rhys Gray was before I drove up here. I'd done the research, because I do research before I do anything.
Rhys Gray was Alpha of the Graymoor Pack. Thirty-two years old. He had a brother who died of some mysterious illness. He took over a decade ago under circumstances that the public record described vaguely, which usually meant something complicated. Known for territorial expansion and a negotiation track record that other packs apparently found frustrating.
The photographs I'd found were fine, but they did not fully prepare me for the reality of him standing at the end of the hall, twelve feet away, looking at me.
Okay. He's tall. That's just a fact. Lycans are generally larger builds; that's not a surprise.
He was also, and I noted this purely as an observation, extremely good-looking in a way that was doing absolutely nothing helpful for my composure.
My stomach did something I chose not to acknowledge.
It's the intimidation factor. That's all this is. He's an Alpha in his own house. Anyone's stomach would do that.
"Mr. Rhys Gray. I'm Elise Winters," I said and was relieved that my voice came out normal. "I have a property matter I'd like to discuss with you. I hope the county land office—"
"I know why you're here." He was looking at me the way someone looks at a person they had already known their whole life.
Then he briefly looked at the folder I was holding out but didn't take it.
"The situation with that land is more complicated than your documents suggest, Ms. Winters," he said straight out.
"My documents suggest a deed and a legal title," I said. "That's not usually considered complicated."
Something shifted in his expression. It wasn't quite a reaction….
"You should probably come in," he said, and it didn't come across as a question, but not exactly an order either. It was somewhere in between.
This is fine. Going inside is fine. This is a professional conversation about a legal matter and you are a property lawyer and this is literally your job.
I followed him in.
His office was at the end of a wide corridor, past a sitting room and what looked like a map room with the door half open. The office itself was a working space. Papers in organized stacks, two laptops open on the main desk, and topographic maps pinned to the wall with annotations in different colors of pen.
"May I?" I gestured toward the chair across the desk.
He nodded, already pulling my folder toward him.
I sat down and watched him go through the documents properly this time. He read carefully, which I appreciated. Most people skimmed and then asked questions that were answered on the page they'd skimmed. He turned each page deliberately, went back twice, and cross-referenced something against the map on the wall without getting up.
All while he was doing this, his expression gave nothing away.
I watched him anyway, partly because reading people was part of my job and partly because I couldn't seem to look at anything else in the room right now—which was a problem I'd deal with later.
"The original filing," he said. "Did you access that directly, or through the title company?"
"Directly. I pulled the county records myself when I was verifying the chain of title."
"And the notary."
"Dissolved firm. The notary himself died in 1989, two years before the deed was filed in his name." I leaned forward and turned to the survey map page. "Which is something I'd very much like to understand better. Here." I pointed to the parcel boundary marker on the northeast edge. "This line runs directly adjacent to what your territorial records list as pack-managed land, but the parcel itself predates your current territorial claim by almost a decade, which means—"
I looked up.
He was not looking at the documents. He was looking at me, and then, before I could make sense of it, I could've sworn he took a slow breath, like he was trying to… sniff me.
He glanced away immediately, back to the papers. But I'd caught it.
Did he just—was he just…
Okay. I did not imagine that. That happened. That was a thing that just happened, and I was going to need to think about what that means at some point, but right now I had to keep my face completely neutral and continue this conversation.
Because was that a lycan thing? Did they… do that? Scenting, or whatever the technical term was? That would make sense. They had heightened senses. Everyone knew that.
Except I'd met lycans before. Plenty of them. And not one of them had ever leaned in and taken a very deliberate breath like I was a sample perfume. So either that wasn't normal… or it was, and I had just never noticed.
Or maybe he'd just been… breathing. People did that. Regularly. For survival.
Right. Yes. That was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
And now, for some reason, I was suddenly aware of how close he was, how quiet the room had gotten.
I looked back down at the survey map.
"Which means," I continued, trying hard to steady my voice, "that your pack's claim and my deed exist in the same legal space. And I'd like to understand how."
He looked at me and was quiet for a moment.
"So would I," he said finally.