Page 30 of Shattered Salvation
Kade’s gaze stays on the paused footage. “Go home.”
Sloane shuts the laptop halfway, then looks at me. “Try not to get followed twice in one day, Detective. It makes our camera review untidy.”
“I’ll keep your workflow in mind.”
He leaves with a faint smile and closes the office door behind him. Kade moves to the other side of the desk, inches from my side, the lie on my tongue about only coming here to warn him about Morrisonright there.He throws me a look and I just sigh.
“I came because… I’m not sure but it felt right but there was a reason, okay? Morrison’s still got her eye on you for some reason. I don’t know why.”
His expression tightens a little. “There’s something else and maybe they’re connected.”
I look up from the footage. “About the sedan?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet.” He rests one hand on the back of his chair, his thumb moving once along the seam. “A scent’s been bothering me. Flattened, chemical edge under it. Cleaner or blocker, maybe. I caught it in the alley when I pulled the man off Emrys, but there was too much rain and panic to place it. Then I caught something similar near the building after I got back, and again here near the entrance.”
I open the private file. “Inside the company?”
“Not past security. Maybe someone passing through. It wasn’t strong enough to track.” His jaw tightens, his frustration sittingin the room without him needing to raise his voice. “The problem is that I know it and I can’t place where, but I’ve smelled it before.”
I open my parallel file and stuff that information in there as well before looking up at Kade. “I meant to go back to the station after the sedan,” I start. “I had the plate and the route. I could have started pulling cameras from my desk or even called you for access. I came here instead. I told myself it was because your cameras are better,” I continue. “That’s true. It just isn’t all of it.”
The office settles around the admission. Kade crosses to the desk and turns one of the chairs so it faces me, then sits on the edge of it instead of standing over me. He is giving me room. I hate how much I notice.
“You’re not here only because of the cameras,” he says.
“No.” My throat works, and I look down at my hands because they have started to feel like someone else’s. “I keep meaning to do the correct thing. Go back to the station. Keep distance. Make cleaner choices. Then something pulls, and I end up at Emrys’ apartment or here, and I don’t have a framework for that. I’m not an Alpha. I’m not an Omega. I’m not supposed to be this easy to redirect.”
Kade takes that in, tilting his head to the side as he studies me. “Nature started forming us into a pack,” he says finally.
I laugh once, but it doesn’t have much behind it. “You say that like it is simple.”
“Itis. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.” He leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs. “You seem used to being useful. You know what to do with that. This is different because it’s not asking you to prove your place before you are allowed to have one.”
That hits too close to what Emrys asked in the kitchen.
My mouth opens, then closes again. For once, I don’t have a joke ready.
He lets the silence hold for a moment before he continues. “You don’t need to understand the whole shape today. You don’t need to promise more than you have. Just start being real about why you’re here, that youwantto be here.”
I hate that it’s nearly the same conversation we had yesterday, my insecurities trying to undermine a good thing before it even starts. “I don’t know how to do this,” I say.
“Then learn slowly.”
“And if I make a mess of it?”
“Then we clean it up slowly too.”
Kade reaches over with his palm up, offering me something no other Alpha ever has. A choice. Arealone. I stare at it for a beat too long before interlocking my fingers with his.
Emrys
By the end of my shift, I’ve replayed what Kade told me so many times that Priya takes the stack of pastry boxes out of my hands.
“You’ve folded three of these wrong,” she says, fixing the top one without looking away from me.
I glance down at the bent cardboard, then back toward the kitchen where the ovens are cooling and the last trays are already wrapped for morning. The bakery is in that strange almost-closed place, still warm from the day but quieter now,the front cases half-empty and the floors needing one last pass. “Kade thinks the attack might be connected to his work.”
The teasing leaves her face. She sets the box down and comes around the prep table, close enough that the noise from the front counter does not swallow us. “What kind of connected?”
