His Forgotten Silver Luna

Chapter 9

He gave her two days.

This was calculated Remy Chase had known Nova Sinclair for six years, had followed her into exile and across three states and through the building of something extraordinary from nothing, and he understood her processing rhythms the way a navigator understood currents. Push too soon and she closed. Wait too long and she'd filed it somewhere inaccessible under resolved when it wasn't.

Two days was right.

He brought coffee, which was always the correct opening move, and sat across from her desk on the Thursday morning with the Manhattan skyline behind him going silver in early light and waited until she looked up from whatever she was reading.

She looked up. Registered the expression on his face. Set her pen down.

"Talk," she said.

"The Ironclad consultancy starts Monday," he said. "Twelve weeks of close operational work with their senior team." He paused. "With Damien Cross specifically, given that he's both Alpha and acting head of their operations division since their last director left."

"I know what the consultancy involves. I designed it."

"I know you know." He held his coffee cup in both hands. "I want to talk about whether you've thought through what twelve weeks of close proximity actually means. Not professionally. The other part."

Nova's expression did not change. "There is no other part."

"Nova."

"Remy. I sat across a table from him for forty minutes and closed a business arrangement and it was fine. It was completely"

"You came home and reorganised the entire physical filing system," he said. "Which you haven't touched in two years. At eleven thirty at night."

A pause.

"I wanted to reorganise the filing system," she said.

"Right." He set his cup down. "I'm not saying you can't do this. I'm not saying you should walk away from the consultancy frankly the money alone makes it non-negotiable and I've seen what you can do with their logistics problem and it's going to be some of your best work." He leaned forward slightly. "I'm saying that proximity does things. Biology does things. And your biology specifically, given what we now know about your blood, may do things that you're not accounting for."

She was quiet for a moment.

"The bond is severed," she said.

"The bond was severed," he said. "Past tense. Silver blood affects things that are supposed to be permanent. You know what the texts say about proximity between silver-blooded wolves and former bond partners."

"Theoretical literature. Case studies from four hundred years ago."

"Still literature. Still cases." He watched her. "The ghost bond. Has it been quiet?"

The slight pause before she answered told him everything.

"It's been present," she said carefully. "Since the meeting. Which is biology. Proximity response. It doesn't indicate anything actionable."

"No," he agreed. "But it indicates something is happening that you should be clear-eyed about before you walk into twelve weeks of weekly face-to-face contact with the man who"

"Remy." Her voice was quiet and final.

He stopped.

She stood and walked to the window. Stood with her back to him, looking at the city, and he gave her the silence because she'd earned it and because he knew what was in it.

She'd built all of this the company, the reputation, the careful architecture of Silver from the material of what Damien Cross had done. Not in spite of it. From it. The rejection had been the foundation, as strange and terrible as that was to say, because it had freed her from a life she would have lived fully but at half her actual size, contained by pack hierarchy and omega status and the specific smallness that the Ironclad world had always assigned to her.

She was not small now.

She was also, Remy knew, not as healed as the exterior suggested.

"I know what I'm walking into," she said finally.

"Do you know what you want to walk out with?" he asked. "At the end of twelve weeks. Best case. What does that look like?"

She was quiet for a long time.

"A restructured pack logistics operation and a signed long-term service agreement," she said.

"Nova."

"That's my answer, Remy."

He studied the back of her head. The set of her shoulders composed, contained, the Silver posture. Underneath it, if you knew where to look, the girl from Montana who had folded an ivory dress neatly at a boundary marker in the dark and then walked into sixty miles of wilderness rather than fall apart.

He loved her more than he had words for. That was why he pushed.

"He didn't recognise you," he said. "At the meeting."

"No."

"He will. Eventually. The scent alone, over time"

"I know."

"And when he does"

"I know, Remy." She turned from the window. Her face was composed, professional, with something running underneath it that she was managing the way she managed everything with precision and will. "When he does, I'll handle it. The way I've handled everything else."

He held her gaze. "You don't have to be okay with it."

"I am okay with it."

"You don't have to be."

Something moved briefly across her expression there and gone, like light through cloud.

"The consultancy starts Monday," she said. "I'd like to review the full Ironclad financial brief before then. Can you have it on my desk by tomorrow afternoon?"

He recognised the close. Picked up his coffee cup and stood.

"Tomorrow afternoon," he confirmed.

He was almost at the door when she spoke again.

"Remy."

He turned.

She was looking at him with the unguarded expression the one she only let exist when it was just the two of them, the face underneath the face.

"Thank you," she said. "For asking."

He nodded once. "Always."

He pulled the door closed gently behind him and stood in the corridor for a moment, coffee in hand, looking at nothing in particular.

Then he went back to his desk and started pulling the Ironclad financial brief together, and made a private note to himself to watch Monday very carefully.

Some things you could prepare for.

Some things you simply had to stand close to and be ready.