We were supposed to go over a new line of potions we were stocking on the website—quick solutions for modern problems that mages wouldn’t have to take time to brew themselves.
It was a similar idea to a food delivery service. Sometimes, you wanted kimchi and didn’t want to have to make it. Potions required patience and attention that mages didn’t always have, and Prudence had vouched for these makers.
More and more, I was turning to her for guidance on the magical side of our business. It was one thing to offer ingredients and books to people—to provide microdoses of wolfsbane to shifters whose animal sides were out of control or quick solutions to problems I understood.
If we kept on like this, I’d need to put her on the payroll, and I wasn’t sure she’d like that.
Not that she’d be pissed that I wanted to compensate her for her time, exactly, but I thought she liked the flexibility to live life on her own schedule. As much as she seemed to enjoy herfreedom, she’d given a lot of time and energy to Dakota, and had been a reliable ally of ours for years.
I wasn’t expecting her to commit to a nine-to-five or anything. I just felt guilty asking her opinion on so much that was beyond my comprehension. Even if I had a mage nearby to ask for help with this kind of stuff, Dakota was new to magic, and I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on him.
Anyway, maybe Dakota could convince her to let us pay her as a contractor.
Or no, that was a lot to put on him too.
Jillian was good with people, and as COO, she could rework our contract with Prudence. If Prudence wouldn’t accept payment outright, we could adjust our contract with her so she got a higher percentage of royalties on book sales.
I was sitting at my desk, writing out a checklist of things I wanted to accomplish that day—talking to Jill about Prudence now included—when Kent knocked on my door.
Already, I was halfway through the day and the only thing I’d done was write out a list of stuff I wanted to do.
We were doing great in here. I wasn’t distractedat all.
“Hey, boss. Coffee?” Kent asked. He came into my office with as much confidence and comfort as I hoped any member of our pack would, and went right to the coffee maker at the side of the room.
Most of the time, I went to the break room to grab a coffee if I wanted one. It gave me a chance to catch up with people.
This CEO thing would always be weird—the expectation of hierarchy and pressure to stay locked away in my office didn’t come naturally to me.
Fuck, working in a high-rise didn’t come naturally to me.
If I let my wolf have any say about it, it was no saner to work up in the executive suite than it would’ve been for us to perch on a branch in a high tree and try to get things done.
We were meant to be on the ground, our paws in dirt, and with the wolf riding so close to the surface, it was hard to argue. I was supposed to be out patrolling our territory, keeping the pack safe.
Sure, I trusted Seth to do it, but my wolf was restless in my hindbrain, and all day, sitting behind my desk had been the next best thing to torture.
“Please,” I said. Maybe the caffeine would help me focus.
Kent clearly wanted some, and by the time I responded, he’d already plucked a pack of ground coffee beans from the basket beside the coffee maker to fill the filter.
While he waited for it to brew, he returned his attention to the rest of the basket.
The gift the high fae had sent us—sent me, as much as I refused to think of it that way—was still sitting on the sidebar in my office between the coffee maker and a set of unused tumblers over a small shelf with extremely expensive liquors I kept for client visits.
For better or worse, it was hard to get buzzed as a shifter, so the collection was only for show and hospitality.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that gift basket, even if Prudence had assured me it was safe to enjoy it. Gifts like this, from clients and business partners, always felt strange to take. Sure, I was CEO of Crescent, but I had no illusions that the whole place couldn’t run, by and large, without my direct oversight.
I’d brought on great people, and the whole pack was motivated to make this work for all of us. I couldn’t have done it alone.
So why the hell did I get a bunch of fancy snacks?
It made me want to go out and order gift baskets for every employee. Then I figured, well, I could just pay people enough that they could comfortably buy as many gift baskets as they were inclined to buy.
For most of them, I expected they were pretty comfortable with the gift-basket-to-useful-purchases ratio they’d established in their lives already.
Nevertheless, it was probably a good idea to talk to Maia about stocking the break rooms with a little extra, just to thank everyone for a job well done and for most of them holding it together while the pack was under threat.
