Switched Bride, True Luna - Chapter 42: Chapter 42

Logan
The park wasn’t supposed to get under my skin.
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 quiet. Still, I found myself glancing up. Expecting her.
That was the problem. I didn’t want to be caught looking forward to her.
And yet here I was.
I opened my tablet again and tapped through to a secure message thread. 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.
The door opened without a knock interrupting my thoughts. I didn’t look up. I didn’t need to.
Only one person entered a room like that around me—like she had the right to. Like she didn’t care if I said yes or no.
Emily crossed the room with quiet steps, a manila folder tucked under one arm, a loose cardigan hanging over the dress that I couldn’t stop tracing her curves in.
Her hair was tied back in a hasty twist, strands falling loose near her temples.
She looked tired. She looked real. And beautiful.
“You’re working late,” she said simply.
I marked the line in my report and finally lifted my gaze. “So are you.”
She set the folder between us on the edge of the desk. “There’s a discrepancy in the vendor invoicing for the East Ridge contracts. Might be a duplicate filing, but it could also be someone trying to hide a kickback.”
I nodded, flipping it open. The red marks on the copy were precise—clean notations, margin questions, proposed solutions. Not just a complaint, but a fix.
“Did you pull this from our records or your own?”
“Mine,” she said. “But I cross-referenced it here. Carla flagged it as an archive, but I remembered it from a report Iris covered last month.”
A flare of pride rose up in my chest. Emily was thorough. I squashed that feeling before I could look too far into it.
We worked in silence for a few minutes, shuffling papers, highlighting lines. The rhythm was familiar. Comfortable in a way I hadn’t let myself consider too closely.
She didn’t fill space with chatter. She didn’t wait for praise. She just… worked. Efficient. Focused.
At some point, I passed her another file, and she reached for it at the same time. Our hands touched—palm to palm, skin to skin, just for a second longer than was necessary.
But neither of us moved.
Her fingers were warm. Steady.
The contact was nothing. And also everything.
I let my hand slide back first, slower than I should have.
But Emily kept reading, unbothered. Or pretending to be. But I wasn’t pretending. My pulse had shifted gears.
I sat back slightly, studying her. The way her brow furrowed when she read fine print. The way her lips moved silently when she rephrased bad clauses. The way she always tucked her left foot under her chair when she was thinking.
Everything about her presence was becoming familiar now.
Too familiar.
I remembered the fortune teller at the gala. Her words were etched into the corner of my mind like a thorn I hadn’t bothered to pull: “Your mate is already beside you.”
I hadn’t believed it then. I couldn’t. Emily’s wolf was dormant. She couldn’t feel the bond. Couldn’t recognize it.
But I could. And I wondered if I had.
The first night I met her, before I knew her name, her scent had done something to me. Not just aroused—it anchored. Like the world had tilted and reset around her.
I hadn’t trusted that feeling. I’d told myself it was circumstance. Timing. Rebellion. Anything but fate.
But now?
Now I could feel a kind of pull in moments like this—no declaration, no kiss, no fanfare. Just the way my body leaned toward her without thought.
Emily shifted and said something under her breath—I missed the words entirely. I was too focused on the shape of her mouth when she spoke. The cadence of her voice when it dropped below its usual pitch.
I didn’t ask her to repeat it. I just watched her. And wondered if I’d already ruined it by pretending I didn’t care.
She reached for the next folder, her fingers brushing mine again—this time on purpose. Or maybe not. I couldn’t tell.
I only knew I didn’t want her to pull away.