Three hours of border negotiations and it ended with someone throwing a punch.
I didn't throw it back. I was an Alpha, and Alphas didn't brawl in fields over survey markers like a couple of territorial idiots who couldn't read a map. I had dignity. I had ten years of leading a pack through situations that required measured, deliberate responses.
And then the bastard threw the second one and I put him on the ground because sometimes principle just has to wait.
My jaw was going to bruise. My lip had a cut that had mostly stopped bleeding by the time I hit the main road. Callum was going to say something about it.
I came through the front door, already running the next four steps in my head. Get Callum. Get the boundary report. Get a formal response out to the western pack before their version of this afternoon became the official record, because their version was going to be creative and I needed ours filed first.
I turned the corner toward the hall and stopped.
Elise Winters was sitting in my waiting room.
Laptop open on her lap, reading glasses on—I hadn't known about the reading glasses—legs crossed, completely at ease in a room I'd specifically designed to make people uncomfortable enough to reschedule. She had a mug on the side table and a folder open beside her and she looked like she'd been there long enough to get settled.
She looked up.
She took in my face and the general evidence of an afternoon that had gone sideways, and her expression did the thing it always did, which was nothing dramatic. No careful blankness, no managed reaction. Just looked at me the way she looked at everything.
"Long meeting," she said.
"Border issue."
"Did the border win?"
I almost swore. "Not particularly."
She took her glasses off, folded them, tucked them in her bag, and stood up.
"Callum said you'd be a while so I got some work done and then I found the coffee situation. Third door on the left..."
"I know where the coffee is."
"Someone should still label it. And the mugs are on the wrong shelf — everything's above eye level for anyone under six feet." She picked up her bag and settled it on her shoulder. "I'm guessing that's not a problem you've personally encountered."
I looked at her. She looked back at me. There was a very specific kind of person who walked into the Graymoor pack house and located the coffee within hours and developed opinions about shelf organization, and I was standing across from her.
"You waited three hours," I said.
"Almost four. And I had work to do, so it wasn't wasted."
"You could have rescheduled."
"I could have," she said, pulling the folder out, the one she always had, and holding it toward me. "I found something else in the county archive. Secondary deed, older than my family's title. The signature isn't a county official." She tapped the page. "It's a notary stamp from a law firm that dissolved in 1987. I looked up the firm. One of the founding partners shares a last name with your pack."
I took the folder and I read it carefully. She was quiet while I read, which I appreciated. Most people filled the silence. She didn't.
"Where did you find this?" I asked.
"County archive, secondary index, which most people don't bother pulling because it requires a separate request form and about two hours of patience." She looked at me evenly. "I'm a property lawyer. This is professionally what I do. Do you know what it means?"
"I need to make some calls."
"That's not an answer."
"No," I said. "It isn't." I handed the folder back. "Give me two days."
She considered that. I could see her deciding how hard to push. "Two days," she said finally. "Then I file a formal dispute with the county and we do this the official way."
"That takes eighteen months minimum."
"I know. I've done it before." She picked up her jacket from the chair. "I'm also very patient when I have to be."
She headed for the door.
"Elise."
She turned.
"The coffee situation." Something shifted in my expression that I let happen. "The high shelves. It's intentional. You know, to discourage people from staying too long."
She looked at me, then at the room, then back at me. "How's that working out for you."
I stepped closer. "I'll have it rearranged."
Her eyes moved to my mouth. The cut on my lip, probably. Reasonable thing to look at. Except she didn't look away, and I felt the pull between us like something physical, the wolf pressing forward, the air between us doing that thing it did when she was close.
Don't.
I didn't move back.
"Your lip," she said quietly.
"It's fine."
She looked up at me then, all the way up, and something in her expression had shifted. Softer than usual, and she wasn't the kind of person who went soft easily.
"Your eyes," she said, barely above a murmur. "They're—blue. Really blue. Like glaciers."
That caught me off guard. First time she'd looked at me like that. Not just looking, actually noticing and saying it out loud.
I took a slow breath, trying to keep it together. And she was still watching me, like she was working something out, and my wolf was no help whatsoever, pushing and practically howling for me to close the last inch.
"Do you like them?" I asked.
"...Yes," she said softly. She didn't move back.
The space between us shrank. Inch by inch. I could feel the warmth radiating from her skin now, that faint scent of hers wrapping around me. My heart slammed against my ribs.
Closer.
Her breath brushed my mouth first, quick and a little unsteady. My hands stayed at my sides even though every instinct screamed to cup her face, to pull her in. I tilted my head, angling so our noses almost touched.
Then it happened.
My lips grazed hers. Just barely. The lightest, accidental-on-purpose touch—soft, impossibly tentative for how badly I wanted to devour her. It wasn't even a kiss yet and for one suspended second, the world narrowed to nothing but that tiny point of connection.
Holy shit.
I lingered there, not pressing harder, and definitely not pulling away. Just letting the graze deepen. My lips brushed hers again, a slow and gentle slide that caught the corner of her mouth, then centered fully.
My wolf surged forward harder, flooding me with possessive heat. The urge to tilt my head and slide my tongue along the seam of her lips was so strong my hands clenched into fists at my sides.
More. Just a little more.
Then she gasped. The sound was soft, breaking the spell like cold water. She stepped back fast, eyes wide, one hand flying up to her mouth as if she'd just caught herself doing something dangerous. Something she hadn't planned on.
I straightened slowly, jaw tight, forcing my expression to stay composed even as my pulse hammered and my wolf snarled in frustration.
Goddamn it.
"I have to go," she said and then left without looking back.
And she left. Quickly, not running but close, and I stood in the middle of the room holding her folder while the door clicked shut behind her.
After a moment, I went out to the hall. Callum was there, right where I expected him.
"The elders want to see you tonight," he said. "All three."
"Tonight?"
"You heard me. They found something in the old records about the Winters land," he paused. "Rhys, they think someone in the pack put it there on purpose."