The Alpha's Forbidden Pact

CHAPTER 21: PULLED OFF DUTY

I left the office with Julian still on his knees.

Kade and Theo were waiting by the elevators. Neither of them asked what had happened behind the locked door. They only fell into step on either side of me and rode the elevator down in silence. The drive back to the safehouse passed the same way. No one spoke. The city slid by outside the windows while the weight of Julian’s confession sat heavy in my chest.

Damaris was already in the front hallway when we walked in.

He took one look at my face and the temperature in the house dropped.

“Upstairs,” he said. “Now.”

I followed him to the study. He closed the door harder than necessary and turned on me before I could speak.

“You were gone longer than the meeting required.”

“The Council is looking at Vance Industries. Julian needed time to explain.”

“Julian.” The way he said the name carried an edge I had not heard before. “You are on first-name terms with a man who has been lying to you since the day you met him.”

“He has also been protecting me.”

“That is not his job.”

“It became his job the night his father died trying to save my parents.”

Damaris went still. The muscle in his jaw jumped once.

“You told him things you should not have told him,” he said.

“I asked questions. He answered them.”

“And while you were asking questions, you were alone with him behind a locked door.”

The accusation hung in the air. I felt heat rise in my face, but I did not look away.

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea what that looks like right now? The Council is already turning its attention toward that building. You are under tighter security than you have ever been. And you walk into a private office with a man who is not bound by the pact and stay there long enough for every person in this house to notice.”

“It was not about the pact.”

“Everything is about the pact until the Moon rises.” His voice had gone low and hard. “Or have you forgotten what one wrong step costs the rest of us?”

The words landed like a slap. I stared at him.

“That is not fair.”

“It is the truth.” He dragged a hand down his face and turned away from me, pacing the length of the desk. “I have spent eighteen years making sure no one outside this house could get close enough to hurt you. I will not watch you hand that access to someone we cannot fully control.”

“You do not get to decide who I speak to.”

“I get to decide who stands close enough to become a liability.” He stopped pacing and faced me again. The anger in his eyes was no longer only about protocol. It was personal. Raw. “Julian Vance is off your detail effective immediately. You will not return to that building without my direct authorization. You will not take his calls. You will not meet him alone. Is that clear?”

Silence filled the study.

I felt the order settle over me like another set of walls. Tighter than the ones from the night before. Meant to keep Julian out as much as they were meant to keep me in.

“You are not only protecting me,” I said quietly. “You are removing him because of what you think is happening between us.”

Damaris’s expression flickered. For a second, something unguarded moved behind his eyes. Then the control slammed back into place. OK

“I am removing him because the Council is watching that company, and every minute you spend there puts a brighter target on your back. The rest is secondary.”

“Is it?”

He did not answer.

I took a step closer. “You are angry because I was alone with him. Not because of the Council. Not because of the timeline. Because it was him.”

“Ivy.”

“Say it.”

“Enough.”

The single word cracked through the room. He stared at me like a man who had already said too much and was fighting not to say the rest.

“Julian is off your details,” he repeated, quieter now, finally. “Effective immediately. The others have already been informed. You will not see him again until I decide it is safe.”

He walked past me and opened the door. The hallway light spilled in.

“Get some rest,” he said without looking back. “The next few days are going to be harder than the ones before.”

Then he was gone, leaving me alone in the study with the clear knowledge that the walls around me had just closed in for a reason that had very little to do with the Council and everything to do with the man who had knelt for me only hours earlier.