I heard Elise before I saw her the next day.
Nadia's voice in the main hall, warm and chatty the way she got with people she'd decided she liked, and then Elise's voice answering and then the sound of heels on the hardwood floor coming down the corridor.
Heels.
The omega who showed her in was grinning when she left. Actually grinning, like she just heard or saw something hilarious.
Elise had been in work pants, but today she was in a pencil skirt, heels, and a blazer over a beige blouse, with her hair pulled up. She looked professional and put-together, as usual. But it was also doing absolutely nothing good for my concentration, and I resented that from the first second.
"You're dressed differently," I said.
She looked down at herself, then back at me. "Good morning to you too, Rhys. I have a client meeting this afternoon." She set her folder on my desk like that was the end of it. "I came here first."
I looked at the skirt. Looked away. "What kind of clients?"
"The kind that pay well and expect me to look professional."
"You dressed like that for them specifically?"
She paused and tilted her head slightly.
"Are they men?" I asked when she didn't answer.
"What?"
"The clients. Are they men?"
The look she gave me was somewhere between disbelief and something that was trying very hard not to be annoyed. "That is genuinely none of your business."
"So yes."
"Rhys."
"I'm just asking. But if you ask me, I prefer the pants." She narrowed her eyes at me. I picked up my keys. "We should go. I'll drive."
I heard her exhale before grabbing her folder and followed, and I was fairly certain she was working hard at not smiling, which I chose not to acknowledge.
They were definitely men.
My wolf had already sensed her presence the moment she crossed into the building and was now doing that restless, pressing thing it had been doing since she arrived in Graymoor.
On the way, I focused on the road. Specifically and deliberately on the road, because the alternative was my eyes drifting to her legs, which they kept doing anyway, which was a problem I was handling badly.
"You're very focused on the road," she said, about ten minutes in.
"I'm driving. I'm not staring at you this time," I said.
She laughed, shaking her head slightly.
We turned onto the access road and she straightened up, looking out the window.
"There are armed men out here too," she said.
"Yes."
"And that." She pointed at the lookout post on the ridge, the mounted light catching the morning sun. "That's a searchlight."
"It is."
She looked at me. I kept my eyes on the road.
"You're not going to tell me why," she said.
"Not yet."
When we arrive, we parked at the boundary and walked in.
Being on the property with her was completely different from sitting across a desk. Out here she moved differently—less formal, more attentive. She walked the boundary line like she was reading it, crouching occasionally to look at the ground, checking the survey markers against the printout she'd brought, asking questions as they came to her.
"The tree line sits further back than the survey suggests," she said. "These stakes don't match the filing coordinates."
"They've been adjusted."
"By who?"
"Pack maintenance. Years ago."
She wrote something down. "And the spacing on those posts." She nodded toward the perimeter. "That's not standard security. That's a containment pattern."
I looked at her. She was already moving on to the next thing, which was good because I didn't have an answer for that one I was ready to give her.
She noticed every deflection. I could see it — the slight pause, the way she took note of the non-answer alongside the question without pushing immediately. She was building a picture from what I gave her and what I didn't, and she was good at it.
My wolf was loud here. Louder than anywhere else. Standing on this specific ground, with her on it, the pressure behind the seal was distinct enough that I could feel my own pulse pushing back against it.
Being here with her was a risk, and the elders knew it. Still told me to go ahead and see if it gets us answers.
I kept my distance. Measured it, actually, without being obvious about it. Closer meant louder. I'd been running that variable since the night she showed up and the math kept coming back the same way.
She crouched near the northern edge and put her hand flat on the grass.
Just that. Palm down, fingers spread, completely focused on whatever she was feeling through the ground.
And I tried. I genuinely tried not to notice the way the skirt pulled, or the line of her legs, or—I looked at the tree line hard.
Do not. Absolutely do not.
The wolf wasn't helping. It had been pressing and restless since we got out of the car and right now it was doing absolutely nothing useful.
I made myself look back at her face instead, which was safer, except then I caught two of my men's eyelines drifting in her direction and something clenched in my chest that had nothing to do with the seal.
Eyes forward. I didn't say it out loud but I looked at them and they both found something very interesting to look at on the opposite side of the property immediately. Good. Smart men.
She went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with what I'd been thinking about. Still, completely still, like something had caught her mid-thought and wouldn't let go.
"Does this land feel strange to you?" she asked.
I looked at her. "What do you mean?"
She straightened up, and I kept my eyes on her face, and I was very proud of myself for that. Something flickered across her expression—embarrassed, like she'd said something she hadn't planned on saying out loud. "Nothing. Never mind. Forget I said that."
We moved toward the tree line and I was about to say something about the northern boundary markers when Elise went still beside me.
I followed her eyeline.
At the tree line. Large, black, completely motionless. Just standing there in the shadows between the trees like it had been there the whole time and we'd only just noticed it.
Around me I heard the sound of my men pulling up, positions shifting, and the low crackle of a radio.
"Could be a rogue," one of them said. "Alpha Rhys, do we engage?"
I didn't answer right away.
I was looking at it.
And I was looking back, and I suddenly felt the sharp cold in every flesh in my body and felt cold water run in every vein. I suddenly could no longer feel my wolf.
I stilled. "Hold," I said to my men. "Nobody moves."
But then it was gone. I walked to the tree line myself.
Nothing. No tracks that made sense for something that size. The ground was soft enough to hold a print and there was nothing there that matched what we'd just seen. I stood at the edge of the trees for a moment, looking in, and got nothing back.
I came back to where Elise was standing.
"Rhys, what was that?" she asked; her breathing was fast.
"I honestly don't know."