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This is going to be even harder than I thought.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ORION

“Your girl is definitely investigating you.” Killian’s amused voice comes down the line, and I rub my face. I’m in my office in the heart of the city today doing some of my legitimate work, but I was tracking Ember all morning until I was pulled into an investors’ meeting.

“What’s she doing?”

“She was at the old warehouse, the one we moved out of six months ago because we thought someone had found the location.”

I chuckle and shake my head. It’s kind of cute that she’s trying to find the Hunter when he’s been in front of her for weeks. “Well, I guess that confirms they had.”

“Lucas is becoming a problem, Orion. He’s getting cockier, and you know what that means.”

I do. He’s not the first person who has gotten too big for their boots and thought they could take me out. Hell, the Lounder Cartel is the most recent organization that thought they could take my enterprise from my cold, dead hands. But they paid for that misconception with their lives. Just as Lucas inevitably will.

“We’ll take care of it when the time comes.”

He groans and the sound of his car turning on fills the line. “Your girl is on the move again. I wish she’d drive somewhere so I can stop being a creeper following her at a snail’s pace.”

I chuckle. “You could walk,” I suggest.

“Fuck off.”

I lean my head back against the chair and scan my remaining meetings for the day. I try not to come into the office every day, but that just means the days that I am here are full of bullshit I have no interest in.

What I want to be doing is exactly what Killian is complaining about.

There’s a part of me that feels unsettled when Ember is out of my sight, and although I’m quite aware of how insane that sounds, I don’t bother fighting it.

Why would I?

I knew this is how it would be when I found my woman.

There were traces of it with the women I’ve pursued in the past, but that was nothing compared to how it is now. How wild and unhinged my chest feels when I think about her. How much emotion she has dragged out of my cold, dead soul without her even realizing.

Honestly, I’m more worried about how I’m going to be when I can finally make her mine. When I can tie her to me in every single way possible to make sure she can never escape me. And when I can finally see her growing my babies.

I bite back a groan at the thought of seeing her swollen with my kids. It’s way too soon to be thinking about such a thing, seeing as we’ve never had a face-to-face conversation, but I don’t give a fuck. She’s mine, and I’m planning our lives to reflect that.

“Stay on her and let me know where she goes next.”

“Do you want me to organize for her to find some fake leads?”

“No.” I shake my head as a smirk tugs at the corners of my lips. “Let’s see how far she gets.”

“Are you sure? She could tell Lucas what she finds.”

“He won’t be alive long enough for it to matter.”

Ember snores softly, spread across her sheets rather than under them.

This is the third night this week I’ve found myself here, watching her dream from the safety of a dark corner, but I can’t drag myself away.

She looks so peaceful, even as her brows furrow and her head twists to the side, but I can’t help but wonder what it is that fills her unconscious thoughts.

I tug my phone from my pocket and scroll through a few emails. I’ve tried to sleep while I’ve been here the last couple of nights, but it never comes. I’d like to think it’s because my subconscious knows how risky it would be for me to fall asleep in an apartment I broke into in order to watch the woman I’m obsessed with sleep. But it has more to do with the distance between us. I’m desperate to lie next to her, to pull her into my arms and breathe in her scent as I slip into a peaceful slumber.