Chapter 80: Shadows and Claims

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: Shadows and Claims

Alexander’s left eyebrow arched gracefully. "You displayed immense foolishness trespassing onto the grounds of men you knew nothing about. Had my men not recognized your face from your file, you would not have survived the perimeter."

"Technically, I was conducting investigative journalism."

"You were trespassing and sticking your nose into an apex predator’s den."

"Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive," Zoey countered, though her voice lacked its usual bite.

Behind Alexander, Oliver cleared his throat, turning his face slightly toward the dark window to conceal a faint smile.

Alexander ignored his second-in-command entirely. "When I was notified that you had breached the outer boundary, I instructed the guards to handle you gently. Derrick was dispatched to escort you off the grounds without incident."

Zoey’s shoulders dropped a fraction. She rubbed her arms, suddenly looking very tired. "Well... thank you for not letting your security guards eat me."

Alexander gave a single, curt nod.

Iris hadn’t taken her eyes off Alexander. The anger in her chest was warring with the strange, pull of the mark beneath her collarbone. "Let’s go back to what you said. You investigated me the moment we met."

"I did."

"Why?"

A faint, enigmatic smile touched Alexander’s lips, softening the hard, sharp angles of his aristocratic face.

"Because you are not an ordinary variable, Iris. And because you and your friend had already begun piecing together truths that most humans spend their entire lives blind to. Miss Brooks even attempted to breach my private information two weeks ago... right around the time you left for Spokane."

Zoey straightened up so fast her head nearly hit the wall. "Wait. You knew about the deep-web query? You know who fried my proxy server?"

"I do."

"Who was it?" Zoey demanded, her hands curling into fists. "Because that asshole bricked my secondary drive. He owes me two hundred dollars and a formal apology."

"Jeremy alerted me to your breach attempt the moment your IP touched our firewall," Alexander said smoothly. "When he showed me how far you had managed to tunnel into our non-classified routing, I told him to trace it, isolate it, and leave the rest to me."

"Jeremy?" Zoey spat the name out like a bad taste.

"He manages our network security," Alexander explained. "He is, like you, quite skilled with digital infrastructure. Though... considering he bypassed your encryption in under four minutes... he is somewhat more refined."

Zoey’s mouth tightened into a hard, indignant line. Her pride was clearly wounded far more than her fear had shaken her. "Whoever this Jeremy is, I hate him. I spent three weeks writing those bypass scripts."

"You left a trailing port open on your local gateway," Alexander remarked casually. "You were careless."

"I was running on three hours of sleep and cheap energy drinks!" she snapped. "I was not careless!"

"You left a breadcrumb trail a blind man could follow."

Zoey folded her arms tightly, glaring at the rug. "I haven’t even met this guy and he’s officially on my hit list."

Iris looked between them, a surreal wave washing over her. For a split second, the oppressive terror of monsters and shadows slipped away, replaced by the mundane bickering of everyday life. But the heavy throb in her neck quickly pulled her back to reality.

Alexander’s focus shifted smoothly back to Zoey. "Given your history, I wasn’t surprised when your curiosity eventually drove you to Blackthorne Estate. Your file noted a persistent habit of inserting yourself into dangerous situations."

"My file," Zoey repeated under her breath, rolling her eyes. "Right. The super-secret dossier you keep on college students. Normal. Totally normal."

"You are alive to complain about it," Alexander noted smoothly.

"That is such a condescending, billionaire-alpha response."

Oliver cleared his throat again, stepping forward half an inch. "To be fair, Miss Brooks, you did bypass three clearly marked warnings, scale a reinforced security fence, and attempt to access a private server room."

Zoey turned her glare on him. "Are you seriously taking the side of the guy who had me wiretapped?"

Oliver offered a slight, apologetic shrug. "I’m merely providing context for why you were being watched."

"That’s worse. You’re enablers, the both of you." She looked at Iris, pointing a dramatic finger at Alexander. "Did you hear that? He knows everything. He probably knows my blood type and my middle school embarrassments."

Iris let out a soft, exhausted breath. "Alexander... what else is in my file?"

Alexander’s dark eyes locked onto hers, the playfulness vanishing from his posture in an instant. "Only what I required to ensure your safety."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It is the only one you need right now."

Zoey opened her mouth to shoot off another retort, but Iris raised a hand, cutting her off. Her heart was hammering against her ribs now, the heat beneath her skin intensifying, drawing her gaze directly into Alexander’s dark, hypnotic eyes.

"You said earlier that our theory was right," Iris said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper.

Alexander didn’t break eye contact.

"How did you know what we were talking about before you walked in?" Iris asked, her brows pulling together. "How did you know what we guessed?"

"We arrived earlier than you realized," Alexander said quietly.

A small chill ran down Iris’s spine.

"When you fled the university after witnessing Jason and his little circle... unveil themselves," Alexander continued, his tone dropping into a deeper, lower register that sent a shiver straight down her spine, "you were terrified. I saw the look in your eyes. I knew if I approached you in that moment, you would run from me. You would hide. You would treat me as a monster."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. The distance between them shrank, and the air between them grew thick with an overwhelming, electric tension.

"And I couldn’t allow that," he added softly, his voice laced with an intensity that made Iris’s breath catch in her throat. "I could not bear the thought of you looking at me with fear."

Iris swallowed hard, her pulse hammering in her ears. "So you followed me."

"I ensured you arrived home without interference." he corrected softly.

"Where I come from, that’s called stalking."

A faint trace of genuine amusement glimmered in his blue eyes. "We arrived shortly after you did and I kept my distance. I waited until I knew you were within your own walls, safe."

He paused, his gaze dropping briefly to the pulse fluttering in her throat before returning to her eyes. "When we arrived at your door, you and Miss Brooks were already deep in conversation. We remained outside until you and Miss Brooks had finished processing what you saw and had reached your conclusion. I wanted to give you the time to speak freely before I intruded. Once I knew you were finished, I knocked."

Zoey’s expression went completely flat. "So, to summarize: you stood on our welcome mat and eavesdropped on two women who could be in their pajamas, like a couple of corporate creeps."

Alexander didn’t tilt his head. "Technically, I would not frame it in such crude terms."

"How would you frame it, then?" Zoey asked, throwing her hands up.

"We were standing in the hallway. We did not press our ears to the wood. We simply heard you."

"You were listening to a private conversation!"

"Your door is remarkably thin, Miss Brooks. And as you’ve already deduced... our senses are not human." Alexander said, without looking away from Iris. "With our auditory perception, distance is somewhat irrelevant. We did not need to press our ears to your door to hear your conversation."

"That is literally the textbook definition of eavesdropping!" Zoey exclaimed, gesturing wildly toward the window. "You used supernatural hearing to spy on us!"

"Also to correct him a little bit, we were sitting in the car down the street for most of it, actually," Oliver supplied quietly from the side.

Zoey rounded on Oliver instantly. "That makes it so much worse! You used super-hearing from a parked vehicle down on the street?"

Oliver kept his face entirely neutral, though the faint twitch of his cheek betrayed him. "It is an involuntary sensory input. We cannot simply turn it off."

"You are shameless. Both of you." Zoey turned back to Iris, gesturing wildly. "They’re literal voyeurs with super-powers."

Despite the terror, despite the heavy, suffocating aura in the room, a tiny, breathless chuckle almost escaped Iris’s lips.

Oliver coughed into his fist, turning his head slightly toward the kitchen to hide the visible twitch of his lips. Zoey caught it instantly. "Oh, don’t you start! You’re just as bad as he is! Sitting out there in your luxury car listening to us panic!"

"Miss Brooks," Oliver said calmly, turning back to her with perfect composure, "I assure you, we were only monitoring the situation to ensure no other rival pack members, knew about you both and attempted to approach this building."

Iris raised a hand, cutting off Zoey’s impending retort. She couldn’t focus on the banter. She couldn’t focus on Jeremy, or Blackthorne Estate, or the absurd reality of their apartment being monitored from the street.

Her entire universe had narrowed down to the man sitting three feet in front of her—the dark elegance of his posture, the absolute authority in his presence, and the burning sensation beneath her skin that seemed to draw her toward him like gravity...