Chapter 194: We Have A Situation
She grabbed the arm of the chair. "Alpha Sebastian...."
His arm wrapped around her waist.
She pushed at his arm. But he didn’t move.
"Sebastian I’m not going to sit on your lap in the middle of a...."
He shifted her.....deliberately, precisely....so she was seated directly over him. She felt exactly what that meant immediately. He was already half hard and the position left absolutely no doubt about it.
He made a sound low in his chest.
A growl. Quiet but completely audible in the room.
She went very still.
Across the desk Nicholas looked up from his screen. His silver eyes moved from Sebastian to Lilith to Sebastian’s arm around her waist. His expression didn’t change but his gaze sharpened with that look that Lilith was learning to read as Nicholas’s version of exasperated.
Sebastian looked back at him.
And smirked.
The three men who had come in behind Lucian were carefully looking at various points around the room that weren’t the scene in the chairs. Lucian had taken the sofa and looked like he was actively enjoying himself.
"If everyone is comfortable," Nicholas said, his voice perfectly even, "we can begin."
The three men arranged themselves around the room.
Callum took the standing position to Nicholas’s right....close enough to be useful, far enough to give Nicholas space. He was the oldest of the three by a visible margin, somewhere in his late thirties. He looked at Lilith once....a single assessing glance....and then looked at Nicholas and didn’t look at her again.
Eli settled into the chair beside the bookshelf with a tablet already open. Sebastian’s Beta....she could see it in how he’d positioned himself, angled slightly toward Sebastian, aware of him in the particular way of someone attuned to their Alpha. He was younger than Callum by at least a decade. Quiet in a way that felt observant rather than absent. When his eyes moved to Lilith briefly they were careful and....she thought....not unfriendly.
Finn sat on the arm of the sofa beside Lucian and immediately said: "So we are officially meeting now and not the brief encounters we have had so far when the Alphas...."
"Finn," Lucian said.
"What? I’m just saying." Finn looked at her with open curiosity and a complete absence of the careful deference the other two were demonstrating. He was broad-shouldered and dark-skinned and had the particular energy of someone who laughed easily and often. "It’s good to finally.....ow."
Lucian had elbowed him.
"As I was saying," Nicholas said, in a tone that suggested he was choosing to pretend the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened. "We have a situation."
Nicholas walked them through it. The post. The spread. Wren’s documentation showing deliberate tampering across multiple forums.
Callum asked two questions. Both precise.
Eli was already taking notes.
Finn had gone quiet in a way that was different from his earlier energy. He looked....focused.
****
Throughout all of it Sebastian’s arm stayed around her waist.
She’d stopped fighting it after the first five minutes....partly because she was losing and partly because she’d realised with some irritation that she’d actually settled into it. His chest was warm against her back. His thumb was moving in slow absent circles against her hip through her shirt, which she suspected he wasn’t fully aware of.
"The father’s name appearing is escalation," Callum said. "Whoever is doing this isn’t just trying to cause embarrassment. They’re connecting her to Beta Victor specifically. They want people asking questions about what happened."
"Questions about what," Lucian said.
"About why Beta Victor’s wolfless daughter was sent to us as payment" Callum looked at Nicholas. "And possibly about what that means for the pack’s standing."
"Someone trying to undermine us through her," Sebastian said. His voice had a different quality in it. Lower. His arm around her waist tightened slightly.
"That’s one interpretation," Nicholas said. His eyes moved to Lilith. "There may be others."
She thought about everthing Wren said. "What if it’s not about the pack," she said.
The room looked at her.
She pushed through it. "What if it’s not about undermining the Blackwoods through me. What if it’s about my father specifically. The pack connection is just a tool....a way to surface something publicly that someone can’t ask about directly."
Callum and Nicholas exchanged a look that lasted less than a second.
"Find the source," Nicholas said to Callum. "Every username. Every account. Seventy two hours."
"Yes, Alpha." Callum straightened. "And the girl? The friend....Wren Adley?"
"She’s not a threat," Lilith said immediately.
"I’ll be the judge of that," Nicholas said.
"Look into her background. Quietly. If she’s clean she’ll stay clean."
Lilith opened her mouth.
Sebastian’s hand pressed gently against her hip. A small pressure. "Not now".
She closed her mouth.
She’d talk to Nicholas about Wren later. Privately.
"Eli," Sebastian said. "Monitor the threads. I want to know the moment her name appears anywhere new."
"Already set up," Eli said without looking up. Then, almost as an afterthought: "She’s right, by the way. The posting pattern is too specific for general reputation damage. Someone has a particular target."
Sebastian looked at the back of her head.
"I know," he said quietly.
***
The Betas filed out twenty minutes later.
Finn paused in the doorway and looked at her properly for the first time.
"Your theory was the best thing said in this room tonight," he said. He glanced at Lucian. "Including anything that one contributed."
"I said two things," Lucian said.
"Both wrong." He grinned and was gone.
Callum left without speaking again....a single nod to Nicholas, a brief look at Lilith that she was starting to think was his version of acknowledgment.....and then he was gone. Eli closed his tablet, stood, and looked at her on his way past.
"Your friend did good work," he said quietly. "The documentation. That level of detail is useful."
Then he was gone too.
Lucian stood up and walked towards the door, but when he got there he lingered, he turned back and looked at Sebastian, then at Nicholas.
"Well," he said.
"Go away Lucian," Nicholas said.
Lucian smiled and nodded, then he walked out of the room.
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