HIS WOLF TOLD ME EVERYTHING

Chapter 3: Ask Me Something Else

Rory Rourke's hand was warm, dry, and perfectly steady.

Edena's wasn't. She made it steady anyway, the way she'd once held a client's hand at a press conference while his wife's lawyer read a statement on live TV.

"Only if you watched the video," she said. "Then we've met nine million times."

"Ten," Rory corrected cheerfully. "I helped. I watched it on the treadmill and fell off." He didn't let go. His eyes, a lighter grey than his brother's, moved over her face with lazy curiosity. "You look familiar, though. Do you get that a lot?"

*Let go of him,* Fiendh hissed. *Let go, let go. He smells like lake water.*

He smelled like vetiver and expensive soap. But Edena let go.

"I have one of those faces," she said. "People think they went to school with me. Then they remember they went to private school."

Rory laughed, a real laugh, head back. The scars stretched pale along his jaw.

"Oh, I like her, Hol."

"Out," Hollis said.

"He means it affectionately." Rory backed toward the door, pointing at Edena. "Come on my podcast. *Second Son Energy*. Four hundred thousand listeners, and my father has never heard a single episode, which is the whole point."

"Rory."

"Going." He paused in the doorway and grinned. "Welcome to the family business, Gala Girl. Mind the furniture. Some of it bites."

The door shut.

Edena kept her face pleasant and her hands flat on the desk, because they wanted to shake.

The boy from the lake had a name, a podcast, and a brother who signed her paycheck.

*I didn't,* Fiendh whispered. She sounded small, which was worse than anything she'd said yet. *Cage, I don't remember doing that. I remember cold. I remember screaming. I don't remember teeth.*

*You're very quiet,* Zikal said kindly. *Is she quiet? Your wolf has stopped saying rude things to him. He's noticed. He's suspicious. He's always suspicious, but now he's doing the eyebrow.*

Hollis was doing the eyebrow.

"Don't," he said.

"Don't what?"

"My brother collects people who trend." He sat, finally, and pulled her coffee off his papers with two fingers like it was evidence. "He'll make you a guest, then a friend, then a story. Stay away from him."

"Is that jealousy or management?"

He looked at her for a long, flat second. "Your office is on fifty-eight."

---

The comms war room on fifty-eight was full of people who had been told to hate her.

Eleven staff. Four screens. A whiteboard that said **APOLOGY DRAFT v.7** in red marker, with every version crossed out.

A thin man in a lilac shirt stood when she walked in. "Theo Bask, head of communications. I want to say, very professionally, that this is insane."

"Noted." Edena picked up the eraser and wiped the whiteboard clean in four strokes. "Nobody apologizes."

The room made a noise like a dropped tray.

"The board meets soon," Theo said. "The Dubai partners want contrition. The internet wants blood."

"The internet wants a plot twist." She uncapped a marker. "Right now the story is *rich man throws out girl*. Boring. Old. We've all read it. By the time the board sits down, the story is *girl walks back in*."

She drew a coffee cup.

"Morning rush, Rourke Tower lobby. I'm photographed walking in with two coffees. He takes one. No caption. No statement. We let a 'leaked' photo do the work, and four million people argue about what it means instead of whether he's a monster."

Theo stared at the cup. "That's it? A drink?"

"A drink is a plot point if you hold it right."

Someone in the back started clapping, saw nobody else was, and turned it into a cough.

"And Miss Dessa?" Theo asked. "His fiancée is going to see a photo of her man taking coffee from the girl her people laughed out of the ballroom."

"Then Miss Dessa will post something cryptic about inner peace," Edena said, "and gain two hundred thousand followers, and send me a thank-you note she'll never admit she wrote."

Theo opened his mouth. Closed it. Wrote *inner peace* on his notepad and underlined it twice.

*He's frightened of you,* Zikal reported, thrilled. *Theo is frightened of nobody. He once made a crown prince rewrite his own birthday toast.*

By the door, Leang Cross stood with his hands folded, watching. He had a way of standing in a room that made you forget he was there until you checked, and then you couldn't forget again.

*He's always there,* Zikal said. *He's been with us for years. He fixed the cameras after the—* A pause. *Ask me something else.*

Edena's marker stopped.

*After the what?*

*Ask me something else,* Zikal repeated, unhappy now. *I can't lie to you. So I just won't say.*

Her phone buzzed against her hip.

**Good girl. Now his private calendar. Every appointment he hides from his assistant. Send it by midnight.**

Edena smiled at Theo, said, "Get me the photographer who shot the Belmont wedding," and walked out to find a bathroom with a lock.

---

The calendar lived on Hollis's tablet, and Hollis's tablet lived on Hollis's desk, and Hollis left the 61st floor late that night, according to Zikal, who narrated it like a nature documentary.

*He's in the elevator. He's going to the gym. He boxes when he's annoyed. He's VERY annoyed. You did that. Thank you.*

"Why are you helping me?" Edena whispered, slipping into the dark office.

*I'm not helping. I'm talking. He hates it when I talk.* A happy sigh. *Also, I like you.*

*Everyone likes me,* Fiendh said, recovered and smug. *Eventually.*

The harbor glittered beyond the glass, a million yachts' worth of light. Edena didn't look at it. She looked at the tablet. Passcode.

*Seven-six-seven-nine,* Zikal offered. *It spells RORY on the keypad. Don't tell him I told you. Actually, he'll know. He always knows.*

Something in Edena's chest twisted at that. The coldest man in Port Halden had unlocked his whole life with his little brother's name.

She opened the calendar and began photographing it screen by screen.

Board. Dubai call. Tailor. Leona: dinner, Leona: shoot, Leona: brand event. All very normal, very rich, very dull.

And every month, for as far back as she could scroll, the same entry with no location.

**L.I.**

Her thumb hovered.

"Zikal," she breathed. "What's L.I.?"

The silence stretched for so long she thought he'd gone.

*Ask me something else.*

Fiendh went very still inside her. *Lake,* she said slowly. *L for lake. I for—*

The overhead lights snapped on.

Edena dropped the tablet face-down on the desk and turned, phone already pressed to her ear.

"—no, Theo, I said *oat* milk, he's not a monster—" she said loudly, and stopped.

Hollis stood in the doorway in a black T-shirt, hands taped for boxing, hair damp with sweat. He hadn't gone to the gym. Or he had, and something had brought him back.

His eyes went from her face to the tablet, and back.

"There's no one on that call," he said.

"There could be."

"Your screen's black."

She lowered the phone. "It's a very private call."

He crossed the office slowly, unwinding the tape from one hand. Every step was quiet. She'd seen that walk on nature programs. It usually ended with a gazelle having a bad day.

He stopped a foot from her.

Inside her chest, Fiendh began to whisper to him.

Edena couldn't hear a word of it. She could only feel it, pouring out of her wolf in a hot, urgent rush: not smug this time, not flirting. Something closer to begging.

"Stop," Edena whispered. "Fiendh, stop it—"

Too late.

Hollis's face changed. The ice cracked, just slightly, and underneath it was something she hadn't expected at all.

Concern.

"Your wolf," he said quietly, "just told me someone owns you."

The tape slid from his fingers and fell to the floor.

"She says there's a leash around your throat, and you've been choking on it since your gala." He leaned in until she could see the silver in his grey eyes. "So tell me, Miss Bray. Who's holding the other end?"

Her phone buzzed in her hand.

Both of them looked down at the screen.

**11:58. Two minutes. Tick tock.**