Chapter 20
1659 Words
NORA
Marcus arrives before everyone else.
I notice it the moment I walk into the meeting room. He's already seated, papers in front of him, pen in hand, looking ready. But his eyes come up the second I walk through the door and they stay on me for a beat too long before he looks back down at his papers.
I take my seat and open my files.
Raphael comes in two minutes later with Damon behind him. He nods at Marcus. Marcus nods back. Everyone settles in and the meeting starts.
It's supposed to be about the project. Resources. Alliance terms. Timeline for the next phase.
I have all the documentation prepared and I handle my part the way I always handle it.
Efficient and diirect.
No unnecessary words.
But Marcus keeps looking at me.
Not in a way I can point to exactly.
But it was obviously enough to call out.
He watches me sort through papers. He watches me answer a question from Damon.
He watches the way I hold my pen and the way I sit and the way I respond when Raphael addresses me directly.
I feel it the whole time.
I don't look up from my work more than necessary.
Raphael notices.
I can tell without looking at him. His jaw is tight. I've learned what that looks like on his face. He's not saying anything.
He's not reacting.
But that jaw tells me everything that isn't coming out of his mouth.
The meeting goes on for over an hour.
Marcus is professional throughout it.
He asked sharp questions.
Makes good points.
Signs what needs signing.
But every time I speak his attention sharpens in that particular way that is not about the work.
I keep my face still.
We finished and completed every document that needed our urgent attention.
The next step was confirming the authenticity of the documents and the contract. When everything is said to be clean, we ended the meeting
Marcus stands and shakes Raphael's hand.
Then he looks at me.
"Five minutes," he says. "If that's alright."
He says it to me,and not to Raphael.
I look at Raphael and he nods, approving of me talking to Marcus.
"Of course," Raphael says. Before I can respond and even decide for myself.
I look back at Marcus and nod.
Damon and Raphael leave the room. The door closes behind them.
Marcus sits back down and his whole manner changes. Not dramatically. Just slightly.
The professional layer pulls back and something else comes forward. It was something personal and searching that he was keeping in controlled during the meeting.
I couldn't understand his change of mood or attitude.
"You've been working in this pack for how long?" he asks.
The question was sudden, I wasn't expecting it .
His tone was also too calm, for someone who happened to be an alpha.
I make sure to study his gaze, before responding.
"About three weeks," I say, sternly while glaring directly at him.
"And before this pack?"
"I was in the greenwood pack," I answered.
A shiver of adrenaline rushed through my spine as the memory of what I had been through in that pack came flashing back within seconds.
"Before that?"He asked again, this time his gaze was different. I don't just know, but the way he looks at me was a bit too different.
Calm glare . Unpleasant questions.
I just stared at him, and tried to understand why he's asking so many questions, before I finally answered "There was no before that. I grew up there."
He nods slowly. His pen taps once on the table and stops.
"Your parents," he says. "Are they in the greenwood pack?"
"I don't have parents," I reply. "I'm an orphan. I don't know where I came from. I never did."
His face changed to something I wasn't familiar with. I couldn't tell what the expression was, or what it looked like.
Although he was able to control his emotions as fast as he could. But I see it. A flash of something that is not what he expected to hear,maybe .
But it's more complicated than that.
Like a person who just heard something they were both hoping and afraid to hear at the same time.
"You've never tried to find out?" he asks. His voice is very steady.
"Nobody ever gave me anything to go on," I say. "No names. No history. Nothing."
He nods.
One more question.
"How old are you?" he asks.
I told him.
He writes something down that I can't see from where I'm sitting.
Then he puts his pen down and looks at me properly for the first time since the main meeting started. He was not watching from a distance.
He was actually glaring in a manner that I don't understand.
"Thank you," he says. "I appreciate your time."
I watch him stand on his feet and gather his papers.
The professional composure is back in place again.
Like the last five minutes didn't happen the way they happened.
He leaves.
I sit there staring at the closed door.
What was that?
'I have no idea,' Sera says in my head.
'You always have an idea,' I tell her.
'I have a feeling,' she says. 'That's different from an idea.'
'What feeling.'
She doesn't answer that. Not yet.
I stand up, take my files and walk out.
*****
Raphael is in the corridor.
He was standing with his arms crossed and his phone in his hand and that flat unreadable expression he wears when he's already three steps ahead of the conversation he's about to have.
"That was strange," I say.
"What did he ask you?" Raphael asked, directly, the moment we got close to each other.
I tell him everything.
The questions about my background,my parents.
Where I came from.
The look on Marcus's face when I said I was an orphan. Every detail. I don't leave anything out.
Raphael listens without interrupting. He's very still the whole time I'm talking.
When I finished he stayed quiet for a moment.I couldn't understand what he was actually thinking about. He was just observing me or maybe trying to grasp what happened.
"Did he tell you why he was asking?" Raphael asked
"No," I say. "He just thanked me and left."
Raphael nods once.
"Okay," he says.
Just okay.
Like I gave him the exact piece of information he was waiting for and now he knows what to do with it. He's already somewhere else in his head. I can see it.
"Is there something you already know that I don't," I ask.
He looks at me.
"I'm looking into something," he says.
"What is that?."
"I'll tell you when I have something certain and tangible."
I stare at him. "I don't like that answer."
"I know you don't," he says. "Give me a little time."
We look at each other.
I want to push harder.
I want to tell him I'm done being the last person to know things that are directly about my own life.
I spent years in Kael's pack being the last to know everything.
Papers I signed without understanding. Plans made around me like I was furniture. I'm not doing that again.
But Raphael's face right now is not Kael's face.
Kael kept things from me with a specific kind of motive behind his eyes.
Raphael right now looks like someone trying to be careful. Like someone holding something fragile and not wanting to drop it.
That's different.
It doesn't mean I like it. But it's different, at least more different and assuring than Keal.
"Fine," I say. "But not long."
"Not long," he says back.
I turn and walk away down the corridor.
Behind me I hear him.
His voice drops low. He's on his phone.
"It's me," he says. "I need you to move faster. Yes. Faster than that.Find every information immediately and get back to me"
I keep walking.
My wolf has been quiet since Marcus left the room. That particular quiet she does when she's thinking about something she's not ready to say.
‘'Sera,' I called out to my wolf.
'Hmm,' she whispered.
'What is it?'
'Nothing,' she replied.
'Don't do that.'
'I'm not doing anything.'
'You've been quiet since he asked me those questions,' I told her. 'You're never this quiet. What do you know?'
Silence.
'Sera.'
'I don't know anything for now ,'
'But.'
She takes a long moment.
'The way he looked at you,' she says slowly.
'When you said you were an orphan. The way his expression change'
'What about it?' I asked .
'People don't look at strangers that way,' she answered. 'That's not how you look at a stranger.'
I stop walking.
The corridor is empty around me.
The pack is moving somewhere further in the building. Voices and footsteps far away.
Here it's just me and my wolf and the thing she just said sitting in the air between us.
‘'What are you saying then? ' I told her.
'I'm not saying anything for certain,' she says. 'I'm just saying that's not how you look at a stranger.'
I stand there.
My mind goes back to Marcus's face. That flash of something when I said orphan. The specific questions. How old are you? Do you know where you came from?
Who asks those questions?
Who asks those exact questions to a woman they just met in a professional setting.
'Sera,' I called.
'I know,' she answered quietly.
'No,don't. Not yet.'
'Okay,' She mutters.
'Not yet.'She added .
I start walking again. I am back to my office and to my files and also to the work that needs doing and the day that still has hours left in it.
But despite that, these lingering questions kept intruding my thoughts.
Right in the middle of everything.
And it's not going away . I guess not anytime soon .
- Writer
