I Rejected My Obsessive Werebeast novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74

He didn’t say anything at first. He just came up behind me and put his arms around my shoulders, his chin resting on the top of my head. I could‘ feel the tension in his chest, the way his breathing had gone just slightly too controlled.

“I know it was just work,” he said, and his voice had that rough edge to it that came when he was holding something back. “I know it was the investigation. But reading this shit about you–it gets under my skin.”

I leaned back into him. His arms were warm through the thin cotton of his shirt. “I didn’t hide a single thing from you last night. Every detail, the moment I walked through that door. What people write about us doesn’t change what’s real.”

He made a low sound in his throat, not quite agreement and not quite argument, and tightened his hold on me.

But the problem was still there, sitting on the screen in front of us like something we couldn’t walk around. If we issued a full public statement- explaining the warehouse, the transfer operation, the reason Kane and I had been talking together–we’d be exposing Connor. We’d be handing Lucien a map of everything we’d found, and within hours every piece of evidence would be moved, burned, or buried somewhere we’d never reach. We couldn’t fight this head–on. Not without destroying everything we’d built.

I picked up the phone and called Kane.

He answered on the second ring, and I could tell from the flatness of his voice that he’d already seen the posts. I laid out the situation as quickly as I could–the photos, the speculation, the risk of a full rebuttal. He listened

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without interrupting, and when I finished there was a brief pause before he spoke.

“I understand the constraints,” he said. “We put out a minimal statement from the foundation. Something that says the meeting was project–related fieldwork and nothing more. No mention of the Colosseum, the

warehouse, or any internal sources. We give them just enough to satisfy the surface–level gossip and nothing that costs us anything operationally.”

It was the right call, and I told him so. He said he’d have the

communications team draft it within the hour and hung up without wasting words.

The foundation’s statement went live before noon. It was exactly what Kane had promised–two sentences, carefully worded, confirming that the meeting had been a routine project consultation and requesting that the public refrain from speculation. Some of the more rational commenters backed off after that. A few even posted in my defense. But the conspiracy theories kept rolling, each one more elaborate than the last, and I could tell from the speed of the reposts that Jessica’s network was keeping the whole thing alive no matter what we said.

By evening the noise had settled into a dull, persistent hum–still there, but no longer escalating. I was sitting on the couch with my phone in my lap when a new message appeared. Unknown sender. No name, no profile, just a string of numbers I didn’t recognize.

“So you found the warehouse. Congratulations. But Lucien’s eyes are everywhere, and every move you make is being reported back to him. You’re not hunting him. He’s watching you.”

I stared at the screen for a long time. The words were simple, but the implication was not. Phoebe. It had to be. She was the only person I knew who still had a direct line to Lucien’s people, and the tone was

unmistakable–that mixture of satisfaction and menace she’d always used when she thought she had the upper hand. A cold feeling spread across

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