Page 19 of Bearly Out Loud

“The production team will send over the full recording schedule.” His voice stayed steady. One of the useful skills of being an alpha: the ability to project calm while the interior was chaos. “Priya runs the sessions, but if you need anything equipment-wise, studio-wise?—”

“I’ll let Priya know.” Nari pressed the elevator button. Turned to face him. Brown eyes sharp enough to cut glass. A smile that was equal parts warmth and challenge. “Thank you. The studios are exceptional. Whoever built them understood sound.”

“My father designed the acoustic specs.”

Her eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Stellan Keiser designed recording studios?”

“He believed if you’re going to invest in voices, you build the room to deserve them.”

She looked at him. Really looked—not the polite scan of a client assessing an employer, but the direct, evaluating attention of a woman who had decided he was more interesting than she’d planned for. Her head tilted. The earrings caught the light.

“That’s either a very good line or a very sincere belief.”

“Both aren’t possible?”

“In my experience? Rarely.”

The elevator arrived. She stepped in. The doors began to close.

“Episode twenty-two.” She said it like a parting shot, a test, a question wrapped in a statement. “You watched that yourself. No assistant.”

He held the door with one hand. The metal frame barely noticed the pressure. “Three times.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. Not a full smile—a crack in the armor, a concession she hadn’t authorized. “Goodnight, Dojin Keiser.”

He released the door. It closed. The jasmine hung in the air for eleven seconds—he counted—and then it was gone, and the floor was ordinary again, and Dojin stood there, every muscle still braced toward the closed doors, like they’d asked him a question and he hadn’t answered yet.

His office.Door closed. Reo already inside, because Reo was always already inside.

Dojin pulled up the session footage on his monitor. Four takes. Each one better than the last. He queued the Yua introduction—the first read, the one that had silenced the room.

He watched it twice. Then composed a production memo: increase Nari Wixx’s studio allocation by forty percent. Priorityscheduling on all Yua Voidwalker solo sessions. Budget approval for additional booth time as needed.

“The project needs her, or you need her?” Reo sat in the chair across from the desk. Legs crossed. Face neutral. The question landed like a field report—clinical, direct, filed under “assessment.”

“Get out of my office.”

“I brought honey cake.”

Dojin looked at the desk. A plate had materialized at some point during the footage review—a slice of Maren’s honey cake, golden and dense, on a ceramic plate with a fork placed at the correct angle. Reo had carried it from the den kitchen to Chelsea, which meant he’d planned this intervention before the session started, which meant Dojin’s second had predicted the crisis with the same accuracy he predicted security threats.

“Stay.”

Reo stayed. Dojin ate the cake. It was excellent. Maren’s recipe, Colette’s modifications, honey from the spring harvest. He tasted none of it because his brain was replaying the moment Nari had looked at him through the booth glass with those sharp brown eyes, and his entire future had reorganized itself around a woman he’d known for ninety minutes.

“The Celestial Ronin quote.” Dojin set down his fork. “You reacted.”

“I did not react.”

“You left finger marks in the leather.”

Reo’s jaw flexed. The tell—the same one from the control room, the one that cracked the professional facade and let a younger, less controlled version of Reo shine through. “She quoted the Fourth Gate Oath. That’s—” He stopped. Recalibrated. “That’s from a significant part of the canon.”

“A significant part of the canon.” Dojin leaned back. “You said that like a man trying very hard not to say more.”

“I have a passing familiarity with the franchise.”

“You have opinions about the franchise.” Dojin kept his voice level. “I’ve noticed your reading habits.”