The Alpha's Only Cure

No Way Out

Chapter 4

Evelyn's POV

They moved my station to the second floor.

The third floor was what he told me in the boardroom two days ago. Third floor, genetics division, access card by afternoon. I had gone there on my first day, found my station, done my work, kept my head down exactly the way I planned.

Then I came in this morning and everything changed.

I stepped out of the elevator on the third floor at 8:53 and the security guard at the desk looked up and held out a new access card before I could even reach my station.

"Second floor," he said. "Starting today."

No explanation at all. Just a new card and a new location.

I took the card and said nothing.

The second floor was different from the third. It was quieter with fewer people on it and a long open plan lab that ran the full length of the building. I found my station and sat down.

Then I looked out of the corridor. It was wide and well lit. At the far end was a large corner office.

I looked back at my screen.

I knew whose office that was without needing to ask.

I want to be clear about something. I was not afraid of Damian King the way most humans were afraid of Lycans. My own fear was precise. It had a shape and a size and a very specific set of conditions attached to it and it had been keeping me alive for five years.

He had moved my station. No explanation, just a new access card and a new location that happened to sit directly in the sightline of the corridor he used most. That was not a coincidence and I was not going to insult my own intelligence by pretending it was.

The question was what he knew. Or more accurately, what he thought he knew.

The other night, he had been close to me in that lab for less than thirty seconds. The patch had been on for six minutes, sealed and green. Whatever tiny trace had slipped through in those eleven seconds before I swapped it should not have meant anything.

But he had grabbed my wrist and asked me what I had done to him.

I pressed two fingers to my collarbone under my shirt. The patch had been on since midnight. The compound I ordered had still not arrived and until it did, twenty one patches was all I had left.

I went back to my station and pulled up the sequencing data and I began working on it.

At eleven fifteen, Damian walked through the corridor.

I did not look up. I felt him before I saw him. He had that silent aura that followed him everywhere. I kept my eyes on my screen and my hands steady on the keyboard. He passed the glass partition without stopping.

I exhaled slowly and kept working.

Twenty-five minutes later, he came back the other way.

This time I was already watching the corridor and I could not fully explain why. He was moving at the same pace as before, same expression that gave away absolutely nothing. But as he came closer the section of glass directly across from my station, he slowed down but kept his head steady. His eyes did not move toward the lab either.

Then he was past it. The pressure instantly faded and I was left sitting at my bench staring at the corridor where he had been.

I turned back to my screen and did not look at the corridor again for the rest of the morning.

Lunch time came and I was eating lunch at my station, which I did every day because eating in communal spaces meant conversation and conversation meant questions, when the woman two seats down rolled her chair sideways and stopped next to me.

I had learned her name that morning. Dr. Sera Mathis. Twelve years in the genetics division.

She looked at my lunch, which was a protein bar and black coffee, and then looked at me.

"You eat like someone who forgets they have a body," she said.

"I just have other things on my mind."

She looked at me for a second, then let it go. "Rolan Voss came to the third floor yesterday. Before they moved you. He spent forty minutes at your station."

I looked at her. "I didn't know that."

"I know you didn't," she said. "That's why I'm telling you."

"He doesn't usually come down to genetics," she continued. "In four years, I've seen him here maybe twice. Yesterday was the third."

I looked at her. Her face was calm, but her eyes were watching me carefully.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because this morning they moved you to the second floor," she said. "In this building, those two things together mean someone is paying attention to you, and attention here is rarely a good thing."

She rolled her chair back to her station.

I sat with that for the rest of lunch.

Rolan came in at two. I did not expect to see him on this floor. He stood at the entrance talking to the floor supervisor about something I could hear from where I was, but the moment he walked in his eyes moved across the room and found me. His gaze was quick and then, he looked away.

The second time he looked, I held it for one full second before I looked away.

Him being on this floor was not a coincidence and I was done pretending otherwise.

I spent the next hour thinking about Rolan. I knew what Phase 2 looked like. The restlessness, the way a man starts following his instincts without fully understanding why but I could not say for certain that Rolan was in Phase 2.

I packed up at five and kept my face neutral, my pace was steady all the way to the elevator, through the lobby and out the front doors.

A black car was parked directly outside.

It looked expensive. The driver in a black uniform stood beside the rear door holding a tablet, scanning the faces coming out of the building. His eyes found me before I had taken three steps outside.

"Dr. Vance," he said.

I stopped. "Yes."

"Alpha King has arranged private transport for genetics division staff effective this evening." He pulled the rear door open. "I will be driving you home."

I looked at the open door, I looked at the driver, then at the small camera mounted at the top right corner of the car's interior, angled to cover the entire back seat.

Everything about that car felt wrong, but I got in anyway.

The door closed and the driver started driving. I sat at the back of that car with my hands folded on my lap and thought about the man who had rearranged my entire workspace without explanation and was now paying for my ride home. Neither of these things were accidental.

He did not know what I was. I was still certain of that.

But he knew something was off about me. And from everything I had seen so far, Damian King was not the kind of man who left something unresolved.

My phone buzzed and a message popped up at the screen from an unsaved number, no introduction whatsoever. Just 4 words that said ; Sleep well, Dr. Vance.

I stared at the screen for a long time. Then I looked up at the camera at the corner of the car, found the lens directly, and held it.

If he was watching I wanted him to see that I was not looking away.

But my hand, resting on my lap where the camera could not reach was shaking.

And somehow, without saying it directly, Damian King had just made it very clear that he knew where I lived.