Chapter 64
Logan
The park wasn’t supposed to get under my skin.
+25 BONUS
It was overgrown, half–rotted, and completely useless in terms of optics. No press platform. No dignitaries. Just cracked stone, tangled vines, and the memory of someone who used to believe in playgrounds and benches and places for children to feel safe.
And Emily. Moving through that ruin like she belonged to it.
No, that wasn’t right. Like it belonged to her.
I’d expected something symbolic. Maybe a display of sentimentality she could leverage later. But she hadn’t looked for a camera
once.
She didn’t even seem to care if I said yes to helping her. She just wanted me to see it.
That stayed with me.
Now, hours later, I sat at my desk while a breeze rattled the window, flipping the edge of a legal report I’d already read twice.
I pressed my palm flat to keep it in place, forcing myself to focus on the content instead of where my thoughts kept circling. To Emily Blackwood.
I skimmed the update from her legal team. They’d been granted limited access to her mother’s estate records through the Blackwood Pack council archives–an impressive win, especially considering the resistance.
The footnotes made it clear the case was gaining momentum thanks to a paper trail that began here. My office.
Or more accurately–Emily’s audits.
She’d found the gaps. The discrepancies in account dates and asset holdings. She’d quietly flagged financial inconsistencies tied to Pack–led trusts, some of which were now being subpoenaed.
She hadn’t said a word to me about it. She didn’t ask for my help either. That, more than anything, made me pause.
She wasn’t waiting for someone to save her. She was building her own scaffolding and scaling the damn walls herself. And she wasn’t asking for my money to do it.
I closed the file and leaned back in my chair.
This wasn’t supposed to matter to me. Not like this.
It was a contract. A mutually beneficial arrangement. She needed protection. I needed a Luna with grit to win my bid for Alpha King. That was the extent of it.
Except I kept thinking about her hand brushing mine. Her laugh–real and unguarded–when she pointed out the moss- covered bench and said she once carved her initials there.
The way she looked when the wind caught her hair and the sun came through the broken arch.
Like something living in the middle of what had died.
I rubbed a hand across my jaw and stared at the spot where she usually dropped her folders.
There was a faint smudge on the desk from where she spilled tea last week and tried to hide it with a sleeve. I hadn’t told her I noticed.
She’d started doing that more–moving through this space like she belonged here, too.
A knock at the door didn’t come. No footsteps in the hall. Just quie Still, I found myself glancing up. Expecting her.
Chapter 64
That was the problem. I didn’t want to be caught looking forward to her..
And yet here I was.
+25 BONUS
I opened my tablet again and tapped through to a secure message read. The note I typed to my legal team was brief: Send the ledger trail from the charity review accounts to Emily Blackwood’s attorneys. No Titanfang signature. Let it look like it came from her end.
I didn’t want credit. I didn’t want to make it political. I just wanted her to have everything she needed.
The cursor blinked on the screen.
I told myself it was strategy. Stability. Optics.
But it didn’t feel like that. Not when I could still feel the echo of her voice in the park. Or the moment her breath caught when I kissed her cheek.
I didn’t know what I was doing. But I was sure of one thing.
I didn’t want to stop.
