Novels by Nora25G

I found the drawing book two days later.Not because I was looking for it. Alaric had left it on the kitchen table when he went out to his morning session with Aldric, and I came in to refill my coffee. There it was, open, the pages spread the way a book spreads when it's recently been used, and the spine was still warm from a hand.I didn't mean to look. I looked anyway.The page it was open to was not the view from the wall, which I'd seen him working on two nights ago. This was something different. Something I hadn't seen him work on, which meant he'd done it this morning before the session or last night after I'd gone to bed, in whatever hours he occupies when the rest of the house is quiet. His particular way of seeing the world doesn't have to accommodate anyone else's.It was a figure.Not detailed—he doesn't draw people with much detail, preferring the shape of things to their surfaces. But the outline was clear enough. Someone is sta

The channel took until mid-morning to establish.I sat through the preparation without useful occupation, which is its own particular difficulty. There are things I am better at than I was two years ago: delegation, patience with ambiguity, and the recognition that not every problem benefits from my direct intervention. Sitting in a chair while Aldric made fine adjustments to instruments whose function I only partially understood, doing nothing, is not one of them.Kael brought coffee at some point. He set it beside me without comment and sat down on the low bench near the door, where he stayed for the next hour, requiring nothing from me. The coffee was excellent. I drank it and watched Aldric work and tried not to think about what three weeks of increasing signal might mean.You should eat something, my wolf said.I ignored her.I'm noting that for the record.She has developed over the past year a dry quality that I find both useful and a

The signal came back at 4:47 in the morning.I knew the exact time because I was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea that had gone cold somewhere between the second and third hour of not sleeping. The window above the sink faces east. I wasn't watching it deliberately. I was looking at the grain of the wood on the tabletop, following one dark line where the tree had curved around something in its growth. Then the light caught the edge of my vision, and I looked up without meaning to.Silver. Clean and brief, just above the treeline.Gone before I could be certain I'd seen it.I put the cup down carefully.You saw it, my wolf said. She is not excitable. When she says something directly like that, without qualification, I have learned to trust it.I sat still for another moment, then I got up, rinsed the cup, and went to find Aldric.He was already in his workspace.This did not surprise me the way it on

Aldric was presented as the anchor and interpreter for the parts that required translation. A thirty-minute window. Cassius was somewhere in the deeper realm, in whatever configuration Cassius occupied when not in full physical presence.I sat in on the first four and then stopped because I understood that my presence was changing what happened. Alaric said things to Cassius that he might not have said with me there—not secrets, not anything I needed to be protected from knowing, but things that were his to have.A relationship that was his own, not mediated through me.What I did instead was wait in the hallway and talk to him afterward.He always came out and sat on the bench across from my room's door and told me the relevant parts. The updates on Cassius's research into Vael—ongoing, without urgency, but ongoing. The state of the deeper realm, which Cassius monitored with the patience of someone who had been doing it for centuries. Occasional obse

There was nothing. He offered two possible explanations: that Vael, having lost the vehicle he'd spent years developing, had retreated to assess and plan, or that the work's disruption of his presence in the Realm had cost him more than we'd realized, and he was recovering.“Which do you think it is?” I asked.“The second,” Aldric said. “He is old, but the work was thorough. What we did there was not small.”“But he's not gone.”“No, he is not gone.” He met my eyes. “There will be more. That threat exists, and it has not been resolved. But the immediate vector through Alaric is closed, and Alaric himself is no longer vulnerable in the way Vael needed him to be.”“So we have time.”“We have time. And we should use it

A wolf in the outer settlement, older, established, someone who had been at Black River since before I arrived, who saw Alaric in the market square and whose wolf-sense produced an instinctive alarm.He didn't act on it. He stood still and then removed himself from the situation with the self-possession of someone who understood that his instinct was not the same as the truth. But Alaric felt it. He came and found me an hour later with the contained expression of someone working through something.“Someone feared me,” he said.“Yes.”“I felt it.”“I know. You have a sensitivity to people's states that you didn't have before.”He thought about that.“Is it going to happen often?”“Probably yes, for a while. Fewer people

Scarlett POVBefore I could even twist away, he hauled me inside and threw me onto the back seat. I hadn’t even caught my breath when the door slammed shut with a heavy, final thud, locking me in with him.The driver didn’t wait for Jaxen’s order.The privacy partition hummed upward with a smooth, final click, sealing us in the back of the car.The outside world disappeared. It was just him and me and the heavy weight of everything we’d never finished.I twisted around in the leather seat, heart slamming against my ribs.“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jaxen Hale?”“Removing you from a situation you had no business being in.” His voice was low, controlled, that arctic calm he wore like armor. As if the last twenty minutes—dragging me out of Denise’s building, ignoring my protests—had been nothing more than a minor inconveni

Jaxen POVThis time was different.Scarlett didn’t turn her face away the second she saw me. No familiar flicker of irritation, no awkward dodge. Instead, she looked… repulsed. And somehow, that stung more than her old clinginess ever had.I used to take her constant need for me for granted. The way she’d wrap herself around me like a damn koala, those sparkling eyes locked on me like I was her entire world. I’d push her off sometimes, annoyed by how glued she always was. But she never took the hint; she just kept coming back, happy and relentless.Now she couldn’t stand being in my arms.When had those bright eyes gone dull? When had I blurred into them, replaced by everything else in the room? She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking for an escape.My wolf stirred inside me, a low, restless growl vibrating through my chest.“Allen! There’s a creep here, help

Scarlett POVAllen must’ve forgotten something downstairs because he came stomping down and caught me on the terrace. The look on his face said it all: pure disgust that I wasn’t scrubbing floors on my hands and knees.I wasn’t about to explain that a human being needs to breathe once in a while. I’d already busted my ass all day at Great Vision. Babysitting this spoiled genius at night, too? Might as well just spin like a damn top 24/7.I gave up on the delightful view and started wandering through the house. It was already pretty clean—someone clearly came in regularly to maintain it. A few things were improper, but after nearly killing myself organizing last time, I wasn’t doing it again. Denise said any expenses related to Allen were reimbursable, so I pulled out my phone, hired a cleaning crew, and parked my ass on the huge sectional sofa.While they worked, I happily scrolled through

Scarlett POVWednesday.I was glued to my desk, wrapping up the last bits of the day’s work, when a coworker popped her head in.“Hey Scarlett, are you coming down for dinner with us?”I smiled politely. “Can’t tonight. Still buried in this.”“You cook? Or got someone at home doing it for you?” she teased.“Single life’s rough, huh?” another one chimed in with fake sympathy.I just laughed it off without saying much. Only Denise and the HR person who’d done my second interview knew I was still technically married. Everyone else assumed I was single, and I let them. My personal life was staying in its lane.After they left, I powered through and finished early. Denise had made it clear: every Wednesday and Sunday, I needed to stop by Havenwoods.This was my second time, so I knew the route. I pulled up to Allen’s h

Scarlett POVDitching the Jaxen-centered life felt like finally breathing fresh air.No more orbiting him, no more twisting myself into knots to keep his attention.My new role at Great Vision had real teeth, challenging projects that filled my head from the second I woke until I crashed at night. Work was my new obsession, and I was damn good at it.Tonight, Denise Scott was dragging me to a high-stakes business dinner.Different crowds, different rules.As President’s Assistant at Hale Group, I’d tagged along to these things with Jaxen, but nobody saw me as an employee. I was just the Alpha’s wife, the shiny accessory on his arm.That identity shift meant I had to show up differently now.Professional. Focused. No bullshit.Like picking the perfect restaurant. Done.I was grabbing my coat to head out with Denise when my phone buzzed. Jaxen’s mom.&ldq

Jaxen POVMy phone buzzed. Gary.“Hey man, you’ll never guess who I ran into at my place tonight—Scarlett, your wife.”“And?” I asked, voice flat.“She was in a bad mood. Cussed me out pretty good.” Gary paused. “She didn’t have a ride, so I offered to take her home. She shot me down.”“She cursed you out, and you’re calling me to play referee?”“Nah, it’s just… I’m saying Scarlett’s getting a little too wild lately. She doesn’t just represent herself—she represents you, the Alpha.” He sighed. “Liliana knows how to carry herself.”I hung up.Gary called right back.“What?” I snapped.“Look, I’m just being real. Scarlett’s acting is entitled as hell. Liliana’s more… appropriate for the position.&rdqu