“Come on,” I said to Fin, standing up and stretching my back. “You can come in for a bit.”
He followed me inside, which he didn’t always do, and settled on the floor next to the couch while I brushed my teeth and changed into pajamas. When I came back out he was still there, his big dark body stretched across the rug, and I sat on the couch with my legs tucked under me and read one more chapter with my hand resting on his back.
I must have dozed off at some point because I woke up later to the sound of the front door clicking shut. The book was still in my lap and the couch was still warm where I’d been curled up,but Fin was gone. He always found his way out somehow, no matter how sure I was that I’d closed every door and window.
I sat there in the quiet room, listening to nothing, and pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. The place felt emptier without him. It always did.
3
— • —
Finneas
I was reading Andrea’s report for the third time.
It didn’t need corrections. I’d finished reviewing it an hour ago and signed off on it mentally somewhere around page six. The data was clean, the cross-references were accurate, the index was organized in a way that made it easy to pull individual sections without flipping back and forth. It was, objectively, excellent work.
I was reading it again because of the margin notes.
She wrote in pink pen and dotted her i’s with tiny circles. On page fourteen she’d scrawled a small annotation in the margin:cross-ref Q2, numbers don’t match original filing, corrected here.The handwriting was neat but rushed, like she’d been writing fast and still made it look precise. I ran my thumb overthe edge of the page where the ink sat and then caught myself doing it and set the report down.
I looked through the glass wall.
Andrea was at her desk. She was leaning back in her chair with a pen tucked behind her ear, scrolling through something on her phone, and whatever she was reading made her laugh. Her head tilted and that dimple appeared on the right side of her mouth, deep and quick, and she bit her bottom lip while she typed a reply. My wolf shoved at me so hard my chair creaked.Go to her.
I didn’t go to her. Just sat in my chair watching her bite her lip, thinking about what it would feel like if I was making her laugh instead of whatever was on her phone screen. Walking out there and saying something, anything, that made her face light up like that, made that dimple come out for me.
She smiled at everyone. At Whitfield, at the mailroom staff, at the receptionist on the first floor who she always stopped to chat with for five minutes even when she was running late. But never at me like that. What I got was sarcasm, raised eyebrows, the occasional glare, and a whole arsenal of threats involving pink office supplies. I’d earned all of it. I knew that. But I wanted the smile for myself. I wanted it so badly my jaw ached from clenching it.
A guy from the third floor was at her desk now. Young, decent suit, leaning against the partition and talking with too much hand movement and standing about six inches closer than he needed to be. Andrea was polite, nodding along, but her body was angled slightly away from him, which meant she wasn’t interested but was handling it gracefully because that’s what she did. She handled everything gracefully. Even me.
I picked up my phone and dialed the guy’s desk extension. It rang at his empty workstation two floors down. After a moment he frowned, pulled his phone out of his pocket, checked the screen, said something quick to Andrea, and headed for the elevator.
I hung up.
I didn’t have a question for the man. Had never had a question for the man. Didn’t even know his name. What I did know was that he’d been finding excuses to come up to this floor twice a week for the past month and every single time he ended up at Andrea’s desk, and every single time I found a way to make him leave.
I’d been running this play for two years. Calling desk lines, sending sudden emails requesting meetings in conference rooms on other floors, appearing in doorways at convenient moments, glaring at anyone who parked themselves within arm’s reach of her chair for more than ninety seconds. It was pathetic, possessive, irrational, and completely beneath me, and I did it anyway, every time, without hesitation.
Nobody had figured out why the CEO of Kingsley Corp seemed to have a personal interest in managing who got to talk to his assistant and for how long. The entire company probably thought I was just territorial about my floor. Which I was. But not for the reasons they assumed.
Luca had figured it out. But Luca didn’t count.
That evening I was in the study at my estate, phone on speaker, scrolling through a territory report while Luca talked.
Luca was my right hand, my beta in everything but official title. He was a few inches shorter than me with a lean, toned build and spiky hair that made him look younger than he was, which he used to his advantage constantly. People underestimated him because he had the energy of someone who’d just rolled out of bed and found the whole world amusing, but he was sharp, ruthless when he needed to be, and the only person in the pack who could tell me I was being an idiot and walk away with all his teeth.
“The rogue wolf from the western perimeter turned out to be a loner,” he said. “Young, maybe twenty. No pack. He’s requesting sanctuary.”
“Background?”
“Clean. Left his birth pack voluntarily. No criminal flags. Just a kid who didn’t want to be where he was anymore.”
A loner seeking sanctuary wasn’t uncommon, but it wasn’t simple either. Taking in a wolf from outside the pack meant vetting, integration, assigning a mentor. It meant trust, and trust was something I didn’t hand out easily. “Bring him in for an audience. I’ll decide after I’ve spoken to him.”
“Done. Council meeting tomorrow at eight. Aldric is going to push back on the eastern trade route again.”
“Let him push.” Aldric had been pushing on the eastern trade route for three months because his family held land along the border and any route adjustment would cut into their hunting grounds. It was a valid concern wrapped in self-interest, which was Aldric’s specialty. I’d handle it the way I handled everythingat council: listen, decide, move on. The elders respected efficiency even when they didn’t like the outcome.
