Primal Instinct

6–ALPHA AT WORK

My desk was directly outside Trenton’s office—a sleek L-shaped setup with two monitors, a phone, and a clear view of the glass wall and the door. It felt less like a workspace and more like guard duty.

Elias walked me through systems, logins, the layered security on the internal network. Everything was efficient, streamlined. Nothing here was slapped together or halfway done.

“And this,” he said, pointing at a program that looked like a calendar on steroids, “is where you’ll earn your paycheck. His time is currency. You’re the only one who gets to spend it.”

“No pressure,” I said.

“Oh, there’s pressure,” he said matter-of-factly. “He’ll never say thank you when you get it right, but he’ll know. And he’ll definitely know when you get it wrong.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said, before I could talk myself out of it.

“Shoot.”

“You called him Alpha. Is that…like a nickname? A title? An ego thing?”

His mouth quirked. “Bit of all three.”

“And Gamma?” I added. “That you? Is this some Greek alphabet club I missed the rush week for?”

He leaned against the edge of my desk, arms folded. “You’re not wrong. It’s…rank. Internal structure. Don’t overthink it.”

“That’s not an answer,” I pointed out.

He studied me, head tilted slightly. “You ever been camping, Nai?”

I snorted. “I’m Black and from Atlanta. My idea of nature is a patio brunch.”

He grinned at that, but his eyes stayed serious. “Okay. So imagine you’re in the woods, it’s dark, you hear something move in the trees. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there. You can go looking for it, sure. Or you can wait until the thing wants you to see it.”

I stared at him. “Did you just give me a metaphor about minding my business?”

“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “And for you? I highly recommend it. For now, anyway.” He pushed off the desk. “Don’t worry. You’ll understand more than you want to soon enough.”

Comforting. Again.

The rest of the morning blurred into a rhythm that felt familiar and strange at the same time.

Emails. Calendar blocks. Calls to confirm meetings. Drafting responses for him to approve. The work itself wasn’t new; I’d been doing this dance for years. Read between the lines. Decide who gets access. Smooth over egos. Anticipate needs before they show up in the subject line.

The difference was… him. Even when he was quiet, even when his door was closed, I could feel him. It was ridiculous. Borderline dramatic. But every time he moved, every time his voice rumbled low through the wall on a call, the hum under my skin responded. Not loud, not overwhelming. Just a pulse of awareness.

He never raised his voice, not once. But there was one moment around mid-morning when it dropped, soft and deadly. The door was cracked open. I was pretending not to listen, focused on an email that needed a very diplomatic “absolutely not” response.

“You had one job,” he said. Too calm. “One.” The man standing in front of his desk didn’t look small, but he shrank a little under that gaze.

“We hit delays on the trucking line—”

“That’s not an answer,” Trenton said. “That’s an excuse. Freight Tech does not deal in excuses. We deal in outcomes.”

“We’ll redirect, sir. We can reroute the shipment by—”

“You should’ve rerouted it before it became my problem,” Trenton said, and this time, there was a thrum under the words. A low vibration that made the hair on my arms stand up. “If it touches my desk, that means three levels of leadership failed to do what they are paid to do. Do you understand what that tells me?”

The man swallowed hard. “That…we weren’t prepared, sir.”

“It tells me I made a mistake,” Trenton said. “And I don’t make mistakes twice.”

Silence. Heavy, thick. My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“Fix it,” he said finally. “Or I’ll find someone who can.”

There was no yelling. No slammed fists. Just that quiet promise. The man left a moment later, face pale, collar damp. Our eyes met briefly as he passed. There was something like relief in his gaze as he let go of his fear.

I looked back down at my screen, heart thudding a little too fast. This wasn’t like my last job. There were no man-babies stomping around, throwing tantrums because their flight got delayed. There were no fake nice emails followed by whispered complaints in private.

This was cleaner. Sharper. Colder. It should’ve scared me. Instead, a traitorous part of me... liked it. The clarity. The lack of pretense. The way his standards weren’t personal. Brutal, but consistent.

At lunch, Elias coaxed me into the break area with promises of decent chicken and gossip. Damien swung by for ten minutes, teasing Elias about his “hot intern phase” and making sure I was eating like a mother hen with muscles.

By the time three o’clock rolled around, I’d stopped checking the time every ten minutes just to make sure I wasn’t behind. My fingers flew over the keyboard, my brain slipping into that comfortable zone where I could anticipate a question before it was asked.

At one point, I knocked lightly on his door to drop off a set of documents he’d requested.

“Come in,” he said.

He was pacing this time, jacket completely off, sleeves pushed up higher. The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing a hint of a gold chain against warm skin. His eyes flicked to the folder in my hands, then to my face.

“Contracts from the Atlanta region lead. I highlighted the discrepancies and flagged the sections that—”

He didn’t take it right away. He just looked at me. That still, assessing stare that made my mouth go dry. When he finally reached for the folder, his fingers brushed the edge of mine, just barely and it felt like touching a live current.

“Hmm.” The sound was dismissive. He flipped through the first few pages, eyes scanning fast. “You caught the duplications?”

“Yes, sir.”

His gaze lifted at that. Sir. The corner of his mouth twitched, not in approval — in warning.

“You don’t need to call me that,” he said quietly. “I’m not your savior, Ms. Carter. I’m just your employer. Keep the difference clear.”

I blinked. “Noted.”

“Good. I don’t tolerate worship.” His tone was silk over steel. “It breeds expectation, and expectation leads to disappointment. I prefer obedience.”

My pulse stumbled. I shouldn’t have liked that word as much as I did. Obedience. The way it rolled off his tongue like a promise he didn’t need to make. He caught the shift in my breathing before I did. His nostrils flared slightly. A faint silver flickered through the brown of his eyes.

“Is there something amusing about that?” he asked.

“No.” I forced the word out evenly. “Just… unexpected.”

He stepped closer, slow enough that I felt it before I realized he’d moved. The air seemed to compress around him, sharp and charged.

“Unexpected,” he repeated, voice low. “Do you think you understand what’s expected of you, Ms. Carter?”

I straightened my spine. “I understand my job perfectly fine.”

“Your job,” he echoed. “Which part? The part where you follow instructions, or the part where you talk back?”

I swallowed hard. “I wasn’t—”

“You were.” His tone cut like glass. “Don’t mistake my conversation as patience. You’re not special here. You’re a body filling a position that happens to be closer to me than most. That proximity is not a privilege. It’s high pressure. You either perform under it, or you burn in it.”

My stomach tightened. The logical part of me knew this was humiliation dressed as discipline but the darker part, the one that had been humming ever since I met him, couldn’t look away. His cruelty wasn’t random, it was control. Precise. Cold. Intoxicating.

“I can handle pressure,” I said softly.

He stopped just in front of me, so close I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes. The scent of him hit me. Cedar, smoke, the faint metallic edge of something wild beneath it all. He looked down at me like he could see the lie sitting on my tongue.

“Can you?” he murmured. “Because I can smell your fear, Ms. Carter. I can smell a lie. And right now, I can smell something else entirely.”

My face heated instantly. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t smile. “You’re aroused.”

The words landed like a slap and a touch all at once. My breath caught. My body betrayed me with a tremor I prayed he didn’t notice.

His gaze dropped to my throat, then lower, not lascivious, but clinical, dissecting. “It happens sometimes,” he said softly. “Adrenaline. Fear. Confusion.” His voice darkened. “Or maybe you just like being spoken to like that.”

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. My heart pounded so hard I felt it in my fingertips.

“I—”

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “You’re about to say something else reckless and it’ll just piss me off more.”

The warning was quiet but absolute. My mouth shut before my brain even caught up. He held my gaze a moment longer, as if testing whether I’d push back anyway. Then, suddenly, his expression flattened, the mask sliding back into place. He turned away, walked back around his desk, and dropped the folder onto the wood with a soft thud.

“You moved faster than I expected,” he said. “That’s an observation, not a compliment. Don’t expect praise for meeting standards. You’ll know when you’ve exceeded it. I’ll still probably say nothing.”

He sank into his chair, one hand dragging across his jaw, the faint glint of his pinky ring catching the light. “Now go.”

I hesitated. “Mr. Steele—”

He looked up slowly, eyes cutting to mine. “That was not a request. Get the f**k out.”

The command hit harder than it should have. I turned and left before I could embarrass myself further. By the time I reached my desk, my pulse was still tripping over itself, my skin too warm. I told myself I hated him. That I wanted to quit. That no paycheck was worth this kind of power play.

But the hum in my veins said otherwise. It said, he sees you, run, but it also said, stay. And God help me, I didn’t know which one I wanted more.