Chapter 134: Chapter 133: Meeting Damien
Maya had decided that the Blackwood estate was either the most beautiful place she’d ever been or the most intimidating. Possibly both simultaneously.
She’d woken up that morning in a guest bedroom that was larger than her entire apartment, in a bed so comfortable she’d genuinely considered never leaving it. The sheets were some kind of thread count that probably had its own zip code. The bathroom had a rainfall shower with approximately forty-seven settings, most of which she hadn’t been able to identify. There was a heated towel rack.
A heated towel rack.
Maya came from a world of lukewarm radiators and bath towels that had been washed so many times they were essentially decorative. The heated towel rack alone had nearly reduced her to tears.
After showering and getting dressed in her usual jeans and leather jacket....feeling slightly underdressed for a mansion but refusing to apologize for it....she’d found breakfast waiting in the small dining room adjacent to the guest wing. Fresh fruit, pastries, eggs made to order by a kitchen staff member who’d appeared silently and efficiently the moment Maya had sat down.
Eve had stopped by briefly to let her know she had an early training session with Raphael and would join her for lunch. She’d introduced Maya to Lora....the quiet, efficient omega who would apparently be her escort for the morning....and then disappeared with a guilty smile that suggested she knew exactly how overwhelming the estate could be for first-time visitors.
"So," Maya had said to Lora across the breakfast table. "What’s there to do around here besides contemplate how the other half lives?"
Lora had smiled. "There’s quite a lot, actually. The library has over four thousand volumes. There’s a cinema room, an art gallery of sorts in the east corridor, extensive gardens, a music room...."
"Can we walk?" Maya had asked. "I’m a walker. I think better when I’m moving."
"Of course," Lora had said. "I can show you the approved areas of the estate."
The approved areas. Like she was a visitor to a government facility with security clearance restrictions. Maya had filed that detail away alongside all the other slightly-off things about the Blackwood estate....the patrols she glimpsed through the windows, the way every staff member moved with an alertness that didn’t quite fit the domestic setting, the wards she could almost feel at the estate’s boundaries even though she had no idea what wards were or why she could sense them.
There was something fundamentally different about this place. About the people in it. About the energy that seemed to hum beneath the surface of everything.
Maya was good at reading people. Always had been. It had kept her safe during her years at the Eclipse, helped her identify which clients were fine and which ones weren’t. And everything her instincts were telling her about the Blackwood estate was that normal didn’t live here.
But Eve was happy. Genuinely, deeply, luminously happy in a way Maya had never seen her before. So whatever was going on....whatever secrets this place was keeping....it was clearly good for her friend.
Maya had decided to file her questions under things to investigate later and just enjoy the morning.
The estate’s interior was extraordinary. Lora led her through corridors lined with artwork that looked like it belonged in museums, past rooms that revealed themselves through partially open doors as spaces designed for every conceivable activity. They passed a music room with a grand piano that gleamed under morning light. A library that made Maya stop and press her face against the glass door panel like a child at a candy store.
"Can I go in there?" Maya asked.
"Of course," Lora said. "The library is fully accessible."
Maya spent forty minutes in the library, running her fingers along shelves of books that ranged from ancient leather-bound volumes in languages she didn’t recognize to modern first editions she’d have killed to own. She pulled several out, examined them, put them back with the careful reverence of someone who genuinely loved books.
Eventually, Lora had gently mentioned continuing the tour, and Maya had reluctantly left the library with a mental list of volumes she intended to come back for.
They made their way through the west corridor, past the formal dining room with its table that seated approximately thirty, past a conservatory full of plants that Maya was fairly certain shouldn’t have been able to grow in this climate, and around a corner that led toward the main staircase.
"The upper floors house the private family quarters," Lora explained, gesturing upward. "Those are restricted areas. But the main floor and the east wing gardens are all..."
She stopped.
Because rounding the corner from the opposite direction, moving with the kind of controlled efficiency that suggested a man who had places to be and the authority to get there, was Damian Blackwood.
He was wearing a dark charcoal suit that had clearly been tailored specifically for his frame...broad shoulders, lean waist, the kind of fit that made regular suits look like they were apologizing for existing. His dark hair was immaculate. His gray eyes were focused on his phone, reading something with a slight furrow between his brows that managed to look powerful rather than confused.
He was, objectively, one of the most beautiful men Maya had ever seen. She’d thought that when she’d glimpsed him briefly in the sitting room with Eve, but catching him in full natural habitat was something else entirely.
Then he looked up from his phone and saw them, and the furrow smoothed out, replaced by polite acknowledgment.
"Lora," he said. Then his eyes moved to Maya. "Miss Maya. Good morning."
Maya opened her mouth to respond with something normal and coherent.
What came out was: "You’re really tall."
There was a beat of silence.
Damian blinked. Then one corner of his mouth curved upward in what was probably the most restrained smile Maya had ever witnessed....like he was allowing exactly three percent of his actual amusement to show on his face.
"I’ve been told," he said.
