Page 237 of The Curse Trilogy

My lips press against his arm as I lean into him, and he holds me to his body momentarily before his eyes move to Hale. I’m curious as to why he’s so intensely focused on him, but he kisses me lightly on the forehead to distract me.

“Captain Mordel,” Clay asserts. “I need you to contact all the full bloods in leading commands to tell them we’ll be making base in Hershian for a while longer. Use Nicholas’s office if you don’t mind. It’s very soundproof and swept for bugs regularly.”

“Of course, Commander,” Brazen formally offers, and then he leans down to gently stain my lips with the sweet taste of his before walking away.

“Araya, I need you to be ready. You’re our best interrogator by far, and we’re going to need you more than ever right now. We’ve got too much going on at once. We’ve never had such large scale concerns, and I’m worried what will happen if we miss even one piece of the puzzle that keeps getting scattered around,” Clay sighs out.

“You know I’ll be ready,” I say comfortingly, and his arm wraps around my shoulders as he starts leading me down the hall.

“Are you okay? I heard about your incident with Alex.”

“I’m fine. Is she pressing charges?” I grumble.

“She filed a report, but Hale convinced her to only ask for you to be on probation. That means no direct contact or communication, you can’t be in a room without three or more people, and you can’t even breathe a word in threatening context to her for the next two months, or I’ll be forced to demote you. You’ll be investigative interrogator instead of lead interrogator for the United if that happens. I don’t want that, and quite frankly, the United can’t afford to lose you as lead. Alex agreed… thankfully.”

She fucks my man, and I’m the one to be chastised. Now I’m supposed to be grateful she didn’t press charges. Isn’t justice grand? Fucking irony.

“Well isn’t she the sweetheart,” I snark.

“I think you need to speak to Hale about what went on today. He said he tried to talk to you earlier, but he knew you were on the verge of losing it when Brazen broke you away from the group, so he left before you came out.”

“I’m sure he was more concerned with caring for Alex,” I grumble in distaste.

“He didn’t care for Alex, Angelica did. She was the first one to plead your case, and she explained about your situation with your new full blood father as an explanation for why you acted the way you did.”

“Alex knows damn well why I did what I did, and don’t call him my fucking father. He’s the sperm donor. That’s it.”

“You need to speak with Hale,” he sighs out as if he’s hiding something.

“I have no intentions of speaking with Hale ever again unless absolutely necessary. I told Brazen I’d marry him, and I feel it would be a betrayal to keep speaking to the man he fears the most when it comes to me. Not to mention, I’m done talking to Hale. All he does is hurt and confuse me. For a man who never loved me, he sure as fuck knows how to break me over and over again.”

Tears fall free, and Clay’s arm around me tightens as we round the corner close to my office. I don’t feel like falling apart right now - not in front of him. He has more than enough shit to deal with to have to worry about my sick triangle.

“I’ve got some things I need to catch up on while I’m here. I don’t want to leave the replacement for Hershian in a bind. I’ll call you later.”

He purses his lips, and then he nods. “Let me know if you have a hard time finding a new permanent residence, though I can’t imagine any compound not wanting you.”

“Thank you,” I murmur softly while heading to my office.

The dark, deeply padded room hides behind my windowless steel door, and I open it to see it’s not dark after all. There’s a small light casting its glow around the room, and a movement startles me into a screech.

“Sorry,” Hale murmurs as he steps into the light, and I exhale very loudly.

“What the fuck are you doing in my office?” I pant out in my breathless rattle.

“I needed a heavily secure room to make these calls,” he utters mildly.

“So you chose my office?”

“Yes I did. It seemed a little less cold than the others.”

I take a deep breath, and then I cringe when I see he has found my secret stash of pictures I keep in my lower desk drawer. There are pictures of me and him all over my desktop now.

“Fuck,” I mumble while collecting the scattered pile. “I suppose you had to ravage my drawers too?”

“I was looking for a pen. You have everything in the world in your desk except for a pen,” he murmurs softly as his hand brushes mine.

I jerk away and rip open one of the top drawers to reveal at least fifty pens.