5

She didn't sleep. She sat up against the headboard with every light in the apartment on, phone in hand, and texted Milo three separate times just to hear back from him, just to have proof the ordinary world was still turning outside whatever this new one was.

u ok? he texted back the third time. ur being weird

Just a lot going on with the new job, she typed. Love you. Go to sleep.

love u too weirdo

She didn't hear anything else that night. No more howls, no more car doors slamming with intent, just the ordinary creak of an unfamiliar building settling around her until, sometime near dawn, exhaustion won out over fear and she slept sitting up, the photocopy of the farmhouse still gripped in one hand.

Nadia knocked at seven, brisk, a coffee in each hand like a peace offering. "You look like hell," she said, handing one over. "Understandable. Drink this."

"Is it safe? For me to be seen? Should I even be at the facility today?"

"Safer there than anywhere else, honestly. My brother's got the entire east wing on alert." Nadia leaned against the doorframe, studying her with the frank, appraising look Sienna was starting to recognize as a family trait. "For what it's worth, I gave him hell last night for telling you the truth so fast. But watching you sit here this morning, still standing, still asking the right questions instead of falling apart? I think he made the right call."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"It's not meant to be reassuring. It's meant to be true." Nadia checked her phone, expression flickering. "Talia Voss is doing a walkthrough of the gala venue this afternoon. Killian has to be there. You're on shift in the training room at two, working with the defensive line. Keep your head down, do your job, and if anyone asks why you look tired, tell them you're settling into the new schedule. Can you manage that?"

"I've been managing worse than that my whole life."

Something in Nadia's face softened, just slightly. "Yeah," she said. "I'm starting to get that impression."

The training room at two o'clock was loud, sweaty, and entirely, blessedly normal, and Sienna threw herself into it like a lifeline. She worked through a rotation of players, checking range of motion, taping ankles, correcting a defenseman's rehab exercises with the kind of blunt clinical patience that had nothing to do with werewolves or fated mates or farmhouses burned to the ground. For an hour and a half she was just a physiotherapist, and it felt like breathing after holding her breath too long.

Then Killian walked in.

He hadn't touched her since the hallway two nights before, careful, deliberate distance in every interaction since, but she felt him enter the room before she turned around, a prickle along her arms like weather changing. He was in a suit, gala-adjacent, tie perfectly straight, and beside him walked a woman Sienna recognized instantly without ever having seen her before: tall, blonde, moving like she'd been trained since birth to occupy a room fully.

Talia Voss.

"Ms. Cole," Killian said, professional, careful, a stranger's voice layered over the one she'd heard in her apartment two nights ago. "This is my fiancée, Talia. She wanted to see the facility before the gala."

Talia's eyes moved over Sienna once, quick, assessing, the same kind of look Nadia had given her, except colder, more territorial. "The new physiotherapist," Talia said. "I heard you were hired rather suddenly."

"Killian liked my qualifications." Sienna kept her voice level, professional, though her pulse had kicked up hard the second Talia's gaze landed on her.

"I'm sure he did." Talia's smile didn't reach her eyes. She stepped closer, close enough that Sienna caught a faint, sharp scent off her, something clean and cold like frost on metal, distinctly not human, and Talia's nostrils flared, subtle, controlled, but unmistakable once Sienna knew to look for it.

Talia went very still.

"Killian," Talia said, quiet, dangerous, not looking away from Sienna once. "A word. Now."

"Talia-"

"Now." Talia's composure cracked at the edges, gold flickering hot and furious in her eyes for half a second before she reined it back under control, and Sienna understood, with a drop of pure ice through her stomach, that Talia Voss had just scented exactly what Killian had scented two nights ago.

"I need to speak with Ms. Cole about her caseload," Killian said, too smooth, buying time that wasn't going to hold. "It's a two-minute conversation, Talia, I'll meet you at the car-"

"You'll meet me at the car after I've had my two minutes with your new hire." Talia's smile had turned into something with teeth in it. "Alone."

Killian's jaw tightened, gaze cutting to Sienna, some silent apology in it, before he stepped back, out through the training room doors, leaving Sienna alone with a woman who had just realized, in real time, exactly what she was smelling.

"You have no idea what you've walked into," Talia said, once the door shut, her voice low and cold and utterly without the polish of a moment ago. "Do you, Ms. Cole?"

"I really don't."

"No." Talia circled her, slow, predatory, and Sienna made herself hold still, made herself not flinch. "I can smell what you are. Fresh, unclaimed, and somehow standing in the middle of my fiancé's training facility like the last fourteen years never happened." Talia's eyes went gold again, hard and bright. "My father is going to want to meet you, Ms. Cole. And I promise you, whatever Killian's told you about protecting you, whatever fantasy he's already building in that thick skull of his, none of it will matter once my father finds out an Ashgrove is still breathing."

"Your father." Sienna's mouth had gone dry. "You know what he did to them."

Talia's expression flickered, something almost like guilt passing behind the gold before it hardened over again. "I know what my father says he did," she said. "Which isn't the same thing as knowing the truth. But it doesn't matter which one it is, Ms. Cole, because the second he learns you exist, you become the single most valuable and most disposable person in this territory, and I'd bet everything I own on which one he chooses first."

She stopped, close enough now that Sienna could feel the cold radiating off her, and smiled, thin and sharp.

"Enjoy the gala," Talia said. "I hear it's a beautiful night for things to burn."