Elise had been gone maybe three minutes before I realized I was still holding the deed.
I set it down. Picked it up again. Set it down.
Real smooth back there.
I'd sniffed her. Actually sniffed her, like some kind of—I didn't even want to finish that thought.
Ten years of running a pack, negotiating with rival alphas, and handling situations that required actual composure, and I'd sat across a desk from one woman and lost it completely. She'd caught it too. I saw the moment it registered on her face, that quick stillness, before she looked back down at her papers and kept talking like nothing happened.
Which was somehow worse than if she'd called me out on it.
What was she even thinking? Like I was some creep, for sure.
And her scent. God, her scent. That was the problem, that was the whole problem, because it hadn't been like smelling a person. It had been like—
I stopped that thought too.
Callum came back twenty minutes after she left, dropped into the chair across from me and put a second folder on the desk.
"It's legitimate," he said. Just like that.
"All of it?"
"All of it. Chain of title is clean going back thirty-one years. Filed through Weston County records, Winters family name the whole way through. No gaps, no inconsistencies." He paused. "Nobody in current pack administration has any record of how it got there."
I looked at the folder. "Thirty-one years and nobody flagged it."
"Nobody flagged it."
I sat back. Thirty-one years of surveys, boundary reviews, and territorial filings. We'd walked that land. We'd checked those markers. Either someone had missed it every single time, which I didn't believe, or someone had made sure it stayed invisible.
"The elders," I said.
"Still not reachable."
"Yeah, figured. Probably sitting somewhere debating something to death. Keep calling. All three of them, every hour, until someone picks up." I pushed the folder back toward him. "And find out where she's staying."
"Ms. Winters?" Callum looked at me. "Why?"
"Security matter."
He had the sense not to push it, but the look on his face said he wasn't entirely buying it. Annoying quality in a Beta.
After he left, I sat there for a while, not looking at the deed.
I was thinking about what had happened when I came around that corner and saw her standing there. The way it had hit me. Not gradual, not a slow build. It was immediate, like a physical thing, the air going out of the room and something in my chest cracking open all at once.
I'd felt my wolf.
Not a hint of it. Not some faint, distant suggestion. I'd felt it move and heard it, a sound I hadn't heard in ten years reverberating through my chest like it was trying to break something loose.
Ten years of nothing. No signal and complete silence. That was how a sealed thing was supposed to stay. That was the whole point of a seal.
I ran the logic about four times and kept arriving at the same place. I hadn't imagined it. I knew what I'd felt before the sealing, knew what my wolf felt like, and that was it. Muted, contained, pressing against something it couldn't get through. But there.
All because of her.
Which meant she wasn't just a human woman with a deed to a complicated piece of land.
I didn't know yet what that meant. I needed the elders for that. But I knew it meant something, and I knew it was bigger than a property dispute, and I knew that finding out where Elise Winters was staying was not just a security matter.
I went to bed late that night and didn't expect to sleep.
I was wrong about that.
The dream came fast and it came clear, clearer than anything I'd had in years. We were somewhere outside, trees crowding around us, the air thick with night dampness. Darkness swallowed everything beyond a few feet, but her—Elise—I could see perfectly. Moonlight caught on her skin, on the curve of her lower lip, on the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.
My hands framed her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. And then I was kissing her slowly before the hunger took over and I kissed her like I had thirty seconds before the world ripped us apart.
Goddamn, she tastes like every forbidden thing I've ever wanted.
Her lips parted under mine with a soft, surprised sound that shot straight through me. I deepened the kiss, tongue sliding against hers.
"Rhys...
She kissed back. Fucking hell. Hands in my shirt, pulling me closer instead of pushing me off like she should. Goddess… yeah, that thought's going straight to hell.
Her body arched into me, soft curves pressing against the hard line of my chest, and a low growl I couldn't hold back rumbled in my throat.
I broke just enough to speak against her mouth.
"Been waiting for you… for this," I murmured, brushing my lips over hers again, savoring the way she trembled. "Years, Elise. Felt like fucking decades. I was losing my mind."
She made another small sound. I tilted her head, kissing her harder and deeper. My fingers threaded into her hair, gripping just tight enough to hold her exactly where I needed her.
This is dangerous. This feels too real. Don't wake up.
When she finally pulled back, gasping, her lips were glistening, her eyes dark with the same heat I felt burning through me. She stayed close, our breaths mingling.
Then she turned and ran.
What the hell?
And then she pulled away and ran, and I reached for her and caught nothing, and the pull I felt wasn't panic exactly. More like direction. Heat and direction and the absolute certainty that wherever she was going, that was where I needed to be.
Follow her. Find her. Finish this.
I woke up gasping in my bed at 1am with my hand flat against my chest.
Everything was quiet and dark around me. No movement in the house.
Elise was still here. I knew it the way I knew things I had no reasonable explanation for knowing. She hadn't left. She was somewhere inside the territory boundary, probably asleep, probably not dreaming about me.
I stared at the ceiling.
This is a problem.