"Just trust me. No lingering, no seeking him out. Stay away. Okay?"
"Okay," Iphe said quietly. "I hear you."
Mira looked at her for a moment, then nodded and started walking again.
They reached the staff lot in silence. She pulled Iphe into a hug that lasted a second longer than usual.
"Text me when you're home."
"Always." Iphe hugged back. "Thanks for tonight."
Mira pulled away with a warm smile and waved as she disappeared around the bend. Her footsteps faded into the silence.
Iphe stood alone in the lot.
Her sedan—the one Melby had given her the day she started on the estate—waited exactly where she had left it, patient and ordinary in the quiet. She reached into her bag and this time found her keys. The night seemed to pause as she moved toward the car.
Then she felt it. Felt him. Distinct and specific, different from anything else the night had produced. A thread tugging at her chest, insistent yet patient. She wondered if he could feel it too.
She looked toward the treeline and found him.
Alaric stood at the boundary of the shadows, still as the trees behind him. The moonlight caught his eyes from where she stood, those amber rings visible only in darkness and proximity. She had not imagined them.
She crossed the lot and stopped a few feet from him. The moonlight sharpened every line of him, the set of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the careful stillness he wore like armor. His scent reached her before she was close enough to speak. Earth, pine and petrichor.
"I didn't get the chance earlier," she started. "Thank you. For the hall. And for the handkerchief." She paused, waiting for a reaction. She got none. "I'll bring you a clean one tomorrow."
He looked at her. Something moved through his expression, brief and unguarded. Then his jaw set and it was gone.
"You shouldn't be walking these grounds alone at night." His voice was low and deliberate.
"This is not the first time I've had to leave the estate late, Mr. Alaric." She watched his eyes widen for a moment at the mention of his name, and she smiled internally.
"You don't belong here." He took a step closer, and his scent deepened with it. "You are going to be nothing but danger to yourself and the ones you love." His eyes stayed on hers. "Stay away from Alpha Jax. And Ronan. The people they decide to notice don't receive warnings. They get made into examples."
She stared at him. "Jax? My boss? He's barely spoken to me. He's just—"
"It doesn't matter whether he's spoken to you." Flat. Final. "Stay away from him. Stay away from the estate."
Her mind reached for something to hold onto, some framework that made sense of what she was being told, and found nothing. Jax was an employer she rarely came face-to-face with. Ronan was a name she barely knew. And yet here was this man, who had caught her twice and said almost nothing either time, telling her they were dangerous.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
He didn't answer. She searched his face for something, any trace of what had passed between them in the corridor or an explanation of what he was saying now, and found nothing she could name.
"Go home," he said quietly. "Don't come back."
Then he stepped back into the shadow and was gone.
She stood in the empty lot for a moment. Then she got into her car, started the engine and pulled out.
The ache behind her eyes eased as the distance grew, the way it always did when she left these grounds, releasing its grip mile by mile. But this time, it didn't leave entirely. It sat at the base of her skull, dull and patient, the same way the pull sat in her chest, following her down the road and refusing to let go.
Made into examples.
The words turned over slowly. Mira's face stripped of its warmth, afraid for a man who hauled furniture and kept to himself. And him, stepping out of the dark to warn her away, his expression faltering for half a second before the wall went back up. She didn't understand any of it. Not Mira's fear, not Jax's name in his mouth, not why he had come to find her at all only to look through her like none of it had happened.
The road opened ahead of her, dark and long. She breathed in slowly. Let it all out.
She was not staying away. Not from Alaric. Not from the estate. She was done filing things away and acting like she didn't notice them. She needed to understand what she had walked into, and she was not the kind of person who drove away from a question just because the answer might be difficult.