The Mark He Refused To Claim

CHAPTER 9

"What do you mean the council knows?" I demanded, my voice pitching higher than I wanted it to with Dane standing three feet away, watching every flicker of fear cross my face with an intensity that made it impossible to hide anything from him anymore.

"Someone at the lab talked," Priya said, breathless, the words tumbling out too fast. "Word is spreading fast through Crimson Ridge, Nora. The Voss family is furious. They're saying a hidden heir threatens their entire sponsorship agreement, and some of them, the older ones, the ones who remember how these things used to be handled, are already talking about making the problem disappear before it becomes public."

The words hit me like ice water poured straight down my spine. "Disappear how, Priya? Say it plainly."

Dane's head snapped up at that, his whole body going rigid beside me, and I realized with a fresh jolt of alarm that he could hear every word of the call from where he stood, his enhanced hearing picking up Priya's voice as clearly as if she were in the room with us.

"I don't know the exact details," Priya said, her voice cracking under the weight of her own fear. "Just be careful, Nora. Please. Watch every direction at once."

I hung up, my hands trembling badly as I lowered the phone. Dane was already moving beside me, pulling out his own phone with a speed and focus that spoke of pure survival instinct rather than any conscious decision.

"Torren," he barked into the receiver the instant the call connected, his voice dropping into a register of command I hadn't heard from him since the gym. "I need eyes on Nora Ashworth's apartment and Milo's school, immediately, both locations, right now. Not surveillance. Protection. If anyone connected to the Voss family so much as sets foot within a block of either location, I want to know before they've finished the thought."

"You can't just decide that," I said, even as some traitorous, exhausted part of me felt a sudden flood of relief at the offer, relief I resented myself for feeling after everything he'd already cost me once before.

"Watch me," Dane said, not unkindly, already dialing a second number before the first call had fully ended. "Camila. I need to know exactly what your father's people are planning, and I need to know it now, not after they've already acted."

I couldn't hear Camila's answer through the phone, but I watched Dane's jaw tighten with every passing second of silence, watched something cold and lethal settle into his expression that I hadn't seen since he'd lifted that man clean off his feet in the middle of the gym.

"Understood," Dane said finally, and hung up without another word. He turned to look at me, and for the first time since he had walked back into my life, I saw genuine fear behind his eyes, fear that had nothing to do with business deals or public reputation or the legacy he'd spent his whole life protecting.

"They know about Milo," he said quietly, each word measured and careful, like he was trying not to let the full weight of them show. "And my father in law is exactly the kind of man who solves inconvenient problems quietly, without ever leaving fingerprints anywhere near the outcome."

My stomach dropped straight through the studio floor. "I need to get to Milo. Right now, Dane. This second."

"I'm coming with you." He was already moving toward the door, keys in hand.

"I don't need your protection." Even as the words left my mouth, I grabbed my bag and followed him out at a dead run, some deeper instinct overriding six years of careful independence.

"You don't," Dane agreed, holding the door open for me with an urgency that betrayed exactly how frightened he actually was underneath the composed Alpha exterior. "But he's my son too, Nora, whether you're ready to hear that yet or not, and I am not going to let anything happen to him because of a mistake I made six years ago on a terrace I still dream about."

We reached the school in eleven minutes, Dane's car cutting through afternoon traffic with a reckless precision that would have terrified me under any other circumstance in my life. My heart lodged itself firmly in my throat the entire way, every worst possibility looping through my mind on an endless, brutal cycle I couldn't switch off no matter how hard I tried to focus on breathing.

We burst through the front doors of the school together, and the receptionist looked up sharply, visibly startled by the sheer combined force of both our presences colliding into her otherwise quiet afternoon.

"Milo Ashworth." My voice came out breathless, barely holding together. "I need to see my son. Right now."

The receptionist's face shifted rapidly from professional surprise into something closer to genuine confusion, her hand already reaching for the clipboard beside her. "Ms. Ashworth, I'm so sorry, but Milo was already picked up. About ten minutes ago now."

The entire world went silent around me, every sound in the building falling away except the roar of my own pulse. "Picked up by who?"

"A man." She flipped through her sign out sheet with growing, visible unease, her eyes darting between the page and my face. "He had identification. He said he was Milo's father.”