Page 28 of Bad Girl
Everything slowed.
Kael pushed forward through our bond—not aggressively, just present. Fully present in a way he rarely was during working hours. The bond we’d been born with, older than either of us in the way pack bonds were, ran deep and certain beneath everything else.
I scanned without stopping. Listened through doors and walls, through the low hum of the ventilation system and the muted machinery of the lift. Filtered for what mattered.
North. East. South. West.
No rebellion. No keywords. No mention of the Gallaghers or the Cúallaidh Pack. No whispered threat, no coded language, nothing that set off the frequencies I’d been trained since childhood to identify.
The floor was clean.
And yet.
The feeling didn’t ebb the way it usually did once I’d cleared an area. It stayed—settled low and stubborn, refusing to shift.
I heard two female voices from the direction of the main conference room. Talking. Easy. Relaxed.
I paused in the corridor.
Stood.
Kael went absolutely still.
Not the stillness of threat assessment. Something else. Something I hadn’t felt from him before—a held breath, almost. An attention so focused it had no room left for anything else.
I forced myself back into the present.
Conference room. Project meeting. Dáire Financial Services.
I closed the distance in three long strides and pushed the door open.
Two sets of eyes turned to face me. I was about to greet them when my head snapped to the dark-haired one.
I said dark, but it wasn’t.
No, it was.
There were a variety of shades. Dark at the scalp, lighter up top where the light caught it. Then it tumbled down, long and full-bodied.
A simple ponytail.
Ice cold eyes.
Pale grey.
In thirty-six years Kael had never panicked. Not once. Not in any situation I could recall—territory disputes, challenges, things that had required genuine violence to resolve. He was older than panic. He didn’t do it.
He panicked now.
He pressed against me—hard, urgent—and my hand twitched at my side before I caught it. I pushed back at the pressure in my chest, forcing him back so hard that I felt sweat bead on my upper lip.
Kill her. His voice came low and certain.It’s unnatural. Wrong. Kill her now or I will.
His growl was already rising when I coughed—sharp, deliberate—and turned toward the back of the room for water. Bought myself three seconds.
Calm the fuck down.I kept my back to them while I filled a cup. Look at her. She is what—a little over five feet?
She— He stopped.
