Chapter 139

Amelia

The clothes felt wrong.

Not in the way they hung or fit, but in the way they dulled everything. The textures were too flat. The fabrics too quiet. I missed the mess of the nest, the sweat and skin and tangle of sheets that made everything feel vivid. Now the world had too much space in it, and I couldn’t stop noticing it. My senses were turned up too high, like I’d come back from somewhere louder than this.

The council chamber doors creaked open. My heels clicked twice before the carpet swallowed the sound. I walked in alone.

They were all watching me.

Richard sat at the head of the long table, stone-faced. But when our eyes met, something flickered. He didn’t smile. Didn’t shift. But I caught the faint tightening in his jaw, the breath he held just a second too long. He hadn’t walked me in. That had been my choice. I was here to speak for myself.

So I did.

They asked every question they thought I might flinch at. Protocol. Propriety. Whether my presence had compromised Richard’s leadership. I stayed even. Cited precedent and outlined process. I deflected when I had to, and when I didn’t, I let the truth sit plainly between us.

By the time it was over, a few of the older councilors were nodding. The rest couldn’t stop glancing at the side of my neck.

In the hallway, I finally let myself exhale. My palms were damp.

I didn’t slow down after that. I filled the rest of the day with work. Patrol reports. Resource maps. Any task I could grab. Every document smelled faintly like static. Every person I passed gave off a cocktail of emotion: stress, exhaustion, hunger. I catalogued them all without trying. I couldn’t stop. My body was doing something I hadn’t asked it to do.

And underneath all of it, I was still aching.

Not the kind of ache that begged for attention. Not yet. Just the kind that hummed, low and insistent, like a thread pulled too tight. My legs shifted in my chair every few minutes. My shirt felt wrong on my skin. I couldn’t tell if it was physical or something deeper. But I knew it wasn’t gone. Whatever had woken up during my heat had not gone back to sleep.

I tried to ignore it.

But others noticed. The glances lasted too long. A whisper floated up behind me in the elevator. “She still smells like it.”

At the evening debrief, Richard sat beside me. When I lost track of the point I’d been making about perimeter shifts, he stepped in cleanly and redirected the conversation.

His hand brushed mine once. Then again, more deliberately. A pause. A touch that lingered half a second too long. I wasn’t sure if it was a warning or a promise.

I didn’t dare look at him. If I did, I knew what I’d see. And I wasn’t ready to be honest about what I’d do next.

I excused myself before the final item. Claimed I had to be somewhere else. Nobody questioned it.

Back in my office, I tried to meditate. It didn’t last. My thoughts wouldn’t slow, and my body refused to be still. I pulled up maintenance reports, just to find something concrete to focus on.

And I found it.

Old expenses. Emergency work orders from firms I didn’t recognize. One flagged in a sector Nathan had already linked to the wolfsbane dispersal. A firm that shouldn’t exist anymore. Officially dissolved. No payroll. No active employees. Yet it had routed over eighteen thousand credits through silent contracts.

I froze.

Opened a link to Nathan.

Tracing a shell company. Might be connected to the dispersal network. Sending now.

He answered fast. Got it. I’ll stay quiet unless you say otherwise.

The moment the channel closed, the quiet pressed in again. And so did the ache.

It wasn’t just heat anymore. It was something more layered. Like my body was adjusting to a new rhythm, one it hadn’t been built for. My thighs clenched reflexively. I tried to ignore it. Tried to think.

Failed.

I didn’t even knock.

Richard opened the door like he’d known I was coming. His shirt was wrinkled. His hair wasn’t perfect. His expression was complicated.

“I can’t sleep,” I said. “I’ve tried.”

He didn’t speak. Just let the door fall shut behind me.

It was slow this time. Careful. His hands traced every inch of me like he was trying to memorize something, but when I kissed him, his restraint cracked.

He deepened the kiss instantly, fingers sliding up my spine like he needed to relearn the shape of me. "You don’t sleep anymore," he said into my mouth.

"Neither do you," I whispered. "So stop pretending this doesn’t help."

He exhaled like it hurt, then lifted me easily, carrying me to the bed. His hands didn’t leave me for a second. "You’re still running too hot."

"Then do something about it."

I tugged his shirt over his head, dragging my teeth over the slope of his shoulder. He groaned, low and ragged, and shoved his pants down with a kind of impatience I hadn’t seen since the first night. I stripped myself bare and lay back, my pulse pounding in my ears.

"Look at me," I said.

He did. Slowly. Like he was afraid of what he’d do if he let go.

"Do you want me slow or rough?"

"Yes."

That cracked something in him. He crawled over me, one hand dragging up the inside of my thigh. "You’re already soaked."

"I’ve been soaked all day. Every time I think about your hands. Your voice. The way you looked at me in the council chamber."

He kissed me like I’d challenged him, open-mouthed and hungry. His fingers slid through me and I moaned into his mouth, arching up. "Fuck, Richard. I need you. Please."

He didn’t tease. He pushed inside with a slow, careful thrust, stretching me until I gasped. He caught the sound and swallowed it, moving with long, deep strokes that had me shaking almost immediately.

"You feel better every time," he murmured, breathless. "Like you were made for this."

"Maybe I was," I said, tightening my legs around him.

He cursed into my neck. "I’m not going to last if you keep talking like that."

"Then make me come first."

He did. Fingers working me in tight circles while he thrust into me slow and deep. I came with a startled cry, clenching around him, and he followed after only a few more thrusts, gasping my name like a prayer.

We stayed tangled together long after, both of us too spent to move.

“I don’t think it’s over,” I said into the darkness.

He didn’t ask what I meant. I don’t think he wanted to.

The next night, I told myself I’d behave.

I wore something modest. Perfume that muted everything. I sat across the car from him, posture perfect. We made small talk. Patrols. Budget overflow. Nathan’s threat to fake his own death if he had to fill out one more requisition form.

Richard chuckled at that. Brief. Then he adjusted his cuff. And again. His knee bounced once before he caught himself. The silence stretched longer than it should have.

Then the light turned red.

I looked at him. He didn’t look away.

The ache flared.

I climbed across the seat, into his lap, catching his breath with my mouth.

“Amelia,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“Don’t tell me to stop.”

He didn’t.

His hands gripped my waist. I pressed down hard, the rhythm fast and reckless. My palm hit the window. The glass fogged under my breath. I barely swallowed the sound that tore from my throat when I came. His head dropped against the seatback, lips parted, eyes closed like he couldn’t believe this was happening. Like he didn’t want it to end either.

We didn’t speak the rest of the drive.

The next morning, the silence broke.

Nathan entered with a file and a frown. “One of David’s people made it past the east perimeter. Disguised as a trader. He’s been watching us.”

My stomach dropped. Richard swore under his breath.

I was already pulling up shift logs. Scanning for mistakes.

And I found one.

A name I didn’t recognize, logged in two days prior. Right when I’d been in his bed. Right when my brain had been too full of skin and breath and need to see clearly. I should have caught it. I had the access. I had the responsibility.