In the shower, I turn the water ice cold against my overheated, sweat-soaked body, quickly rinsing off, not lingering. I step out, pull on fresh clothes, one of my suits, and I’m ready. The whole thing takes me seven minutes.
"We can head down," I say as I step into the living room, where Blue is sitting on the couch, focused on his tablet.
He nods seriously, and we leave together. We walk in silence, but I can feel his attention on me, like a faint brush of something soft.
The change in him is so pleasant…
A minute later, we’re two floors down in the Malden department. My legs still feel like jelly, but I don’t let it show. I just slip my mesh mask back on.
At the sight of us, Blue’s second assistant, Dimitri’s eyes go wide. "How did you even get here? I thought the elevators weren’t working," he says.
"They aren’t," Blue replies calmly. "My alpha carried me up."
My mouth falls open.
What did he just call me? My alpha? That’s almost like a claim. I don’t understand anything anymore. Dimitri stares at us, even more stunned than Simon was earlier.
"That’s eighty-two floors… wow."
"Gabriel is a true fighter," Blue says evenly, and I practically have asmall orgasmbecause I know that in those few words he genuinely appreciates what I did. Yeah, the jelly legs and burning lungs are worth it.
"That’s impressive. Respect," Dimitri replies, almost reverently.
Blue and Dimitri head into a small conference room to connect with the Japanese side, while I stay in the hallway. The moment the door closes behind them and the meeting starts, standing with dignity is no longer an option. My legs just refuse to cooperate.
After a moment, I give up and sit down on the floor, leaning my back against the wall, letting my body recover after the effort. Every now and then I shake my legs lightly, trying to ease the stiffness in my muscles and even massage them from time to time.
Minutes and then longer stretches pass in a kind of numb haze as my body slowly returns to normal, though I’m fully aware my muscles are going to burn for the next two days.
One of Blue’s assistants passes through the hallway at some point and, seeing me on the floor, asks if I’m okay. I tell him I am, but ask him to bring me some water, which he does right away, with surprising eagerness. I figure either Dimitri or Simon told him what I just pulled off.
But if I think the day is just going to end like that, I’m very wrong.
The meeting with the Japanese side ends about forty minutes later, and by then I feel mostly fine again, my breathing is back to normal, my legs a bit more under my control.
Young alphas regenerate very quickly, and I'm in good physical shape.
Blue and Dimitri step out of the room. Dimitri turns toward the assistants’ office next to Blue’s, while Blue looks at me and says,
"Simon texted me. The elevator won’t be working for another hour and a half, so we’re stuck here for now."
Suddenly, I start to feel a strange pressure at the back of my head, something hard to define. Is it just leftover exhaustion, or is something about to happen?
Blue notices the shift in my expression and stops mid-sentence.
A cold shiver runs down my spine.
"Blue," I whisper, my voice almost too high, "aside from my five-second sense, sometimes I get this… pressure at the back of my skull when something potentially dangerous is about to happen."
Blue’s pupils widen. "You’re feeling that now?"
"Yeah, it’s getting stronger… fuck." I grab the back of my head, the sensation hitting so hard it almost makes me dizzy.
In the next second, we both turn to the right at the same time. The hallway on this floor is long, maybe about two hundred feet, and we both stare toward the far end. I already know what I’m going to see.
A few seconds later, a lone figure appears at the far end.
A tall alpha.
