Alpha's Wrong Match, Fated Mate

Chapter 3: High-Tech Leash

- LIAM

“Three weeks,” I said, not looking up from the glass tablet on my desk. “The Pack Council is already twitching. They don’t like unpredictable variables. And your brother, Olivia, is a walking system error.”

The office was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Outside, the city hummed, but in here, it was just the sound of Olivia Jones breathing and the rhythmic click of a pen.

I looked up. Alex Jones, or whatever disaster-in-a-suit he’d made himself, was fidgeting with my limited-edition fountain pen. Click. Click. Click.

He was slouched in the guest chair with his legs apart, looking like he’d bought his suit from a vending machine. A thin, rascally mustache sat on his upper lip, and his hair was a tangle of messy strands, as though he’d wrestled a lawnmower and lost his path.

"Three weeks?" Olivia spoke in a monotonous voice, but I noticed her hand grasping her handbag. “Liam, that is hardly time to breathe, much less organize a Moonstone wedding of this scale.”

“The scale doesn't matter,” I countered, crossing my arms. “The stunt your brother pulled at the hotel has already started a ripple. If we wait, it becomes a wave. We move the date up, we control the news cycle with 'True Love' and 'Strategic Union,' and that hotel incident becomes nothing but a shadow.”

“It was a party, Kane,” Alex piped up. His voice was a low, gravelly scrap that sounded like he’d spent the last decade yelling over loud music. “You’re the one who looked like you’d seen a ghost when the champagne ran out.”

I turned my gaze to him. He didn’t startle. Most people flinched when I gave them my full attention; my Alpha scent alone usually made them hit the floor. This kid just grinned, his eyes flashing with an irritatingly rebellious look.

“You’re a disaster in an oversized suit,” I snapped. “You are noisy, undisciplined, and now you are chewing a pen that is more expensive than your shoes.”

Alex spat out the pen cap. “Tastes like money. Is that what you mean?”

“Liam,” Olivia interrupted, her voice suddenly sharpening into something tactical. “If you move the wedding up, I have a condition.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Go on.”

“Keep Alex here,” she said.

“He’s already at the manor,” I said. “That’s enough of a security breach.”

“No,” Olivia leaned forward. “He works here at Kane Corp. He needs an internship. He needs a reason to wake up before noon, and I need someone to keep a leash on him while I’m busy with wedding arrangements. If he’s out in the city with nothing to do, he’ll find a camera and a microphone.”

I examined Alex. He even looked like he was trying to see whether he could get my desk stapler on his nose.

“You’re telling me to carry a human hand grenade into my headquarters?” I asked.

“I’m more of a sparkler, really,” Alex grumbled. “Bright, fun, and a little dangerous if you keep me too close.”

“Think about it, Liam,” Olivia pressed. “If he’s an intern, he’s under your roof. You control his time. You decide who he talks to. He becomes part of the Kane Corp story, the lost brother-in-law seeking his path under your brilliant guidance.”

It made sense. Irritating, but logical. I didn't leave loose ends. I assigned them a task to observe the output.

“Fine,” I bit out, the word feeling like grit in my teeth. “He’s an intern. But he’s not going to some mid-level marketing group where he can play with the employees and spread gossip. He’s mine. He reports to my office, and he sits where I can see him.”

Alex let out a low whistle. "Personal intern? Do I get a coffee budget? Since I have high expectations of my caffeine.”

“You’ll get a desk and a list of tasks that will make you wish you’d never crawled out of your hole,” I told him. “Tomorrow. 06:00. One minute late, and the deal is off.”

"06:00?" Alex groaned, sliding down the chair until he was nearly under the desk. “Does the sun even work that early?”

“Be punctual,” I said, turning back to my screen. “Or don't. I’d prefer the latter.”

I expected him to fail the next morning. I was counting on it.

At 06:05, the heavy glass doors to my outer office swung open. Alex stumbled in, looking like a hurricane had sprayed him down. His tie was crooked, his suit was bunching at the shoulders, and he smelled strongly of a pine-scented cleaning product and some cheap gin.

“You’re late,” I said, standing in my doorway with a coffee.

“Traffic was a monster,” Alex hissed, dropping a battered messenger bag onto the clean glass desk I’d set up for him. “And by traffic, I mean I couldn't find my shoes for ten minutes.”

“That’s your desk,” I said, ignoring the excuses. “There’s a pile of hardcopy files in the corner, archives from the 90s acquisitions. They need to be scanned, sorted, and cross-linked. Manually.”

Alex gazed at the mountain of paper. “Are you joking? This is a tech firm. And you have no robot about this?”

“I have you,” I said, a small, cold spark of satisfaction warming my chest. “Think of yourself as the robot. Get to work.”

I returned to my office and shut the door. I assumed he would complain, knock, or quit within the hour. Instead, there was silence: occasional shuffling, a bang of a stapler, but no shouting.

Two hours later, I went out for water. Alex bent over the desk, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. He was drawing on a scrap of paper, his hand moving with a smooth, practiced grace that didn't match his disordered character.

"Progress?" I probed, looming over him.

He jumped, nearly knocking over a tray of paperclips. "Geez, Kane! Don’t you have bells on your shoes? You move like a ghost.”

"It’s called walking quietly." I stared at what he was doing. It wasn't the archive log. It was a sketch.

It was a sketch of the lobby, the angular, geometric outlines of the atrium, the way the light struck the steel beams. It was stunning. Even better than good. It was accurate, drawn with a lot of confidence, using some pencil strokes.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, reaching for the paper.

“Do you have a drafting background?” I asked curiously. “The Jones family did not produce artists; they produce socialites and debtors.”

Alex snatched it away, his face turning a sudden, deep red. “Nothing. Just a doodle. My brain works better when my hands are moving.”

“I told you I studied things abroad,” Alex said, his voice dropping again to that strained, forced growl. “Mostly, how to stay awake in boring meetings. Is the interrogation over? I'm starving. Does this place have a cafeteria, or do you eat your employees' souls?”

“Lunch in ten minutes,” I said, still staring at the spot where the drawing had been. “You’re coming with me. We have an appointment with the tech-dev team. You will sit in the corner, eat your sandwich, and not say a word. Understood?"

“Sit, stay, don't bark,” Alex muttered, grabbing his jacket. “Got it, boss.”

When we walked in, the meeting was a disaster.

My lead developers were haggling over the interface for the new project, Vertex. The jargon was thick, and the tension was visible. I sat at the head of the table, trying to steer the conversation back to the logic-gate problems.

Alex was in the corner as promised. But he wasn't eating. He was watching us. His eyes darted between the speakers, his head tipped as though he were hearing a frequency the rest of us couldn't detect.

The lead coder snapped back, "It needs the data points!”

Suddenly, a loud clack echoed through the room. Alex had dropped his pen.

“The UI is overloaded, Marcus,” the head of design scowled. “It’s more of a cockpit than a lifestyle app.”

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all, though. He leaned forward, ignoring my warning glare. “But can’t you just move the secondary nav to a haptic slide and put the visual noise out of the way?”

The room went dead silent. Marcus gazed at Alex. I felt a throb beginning in my temple.

“Who are you?” Marcus asked.

“The intern,” Alex said, shrugging. “And I’m just saying, as a guy who spends a lot of time looking at messy things... that screen is untidy. It makes noise. It’s a disruption. People want a flow, not a fight.”

He was using the exact words I’d used to describe my own preferences.

“Get back to your sandwich, Alex," I told him in an icy voice.

“He’s right, though," Marcus said, looking back at the screen. “A haptic slide. Why didn't we think of that?”

After the meeting, I caught up with Alex by the elevators. He felt smaller than he seemed, thinner, almost frail in the boxy suit.

“What was that?” I demanded.

"A suggestion?" Alex replied, pulling his arm away. “Look, Kane, I might be a disaster, but I’m not an i***t. You want me to be a respectable member of this family? Then let me use my brain.”

I pinned him against the elevator wall, my hand mere inches above his head. As I drew nearer, the smell of gin and pine vanished. In its place was something far off and sweet, jasmine or expensive paper. It was a puzzling scent for a tiny guy like him.

“You’re here to shut your f*****g mouth,” I said, my voice dropping. “Stop meddling with my team. I need them on track, and right now, you’re just noise in the signal.”

Alex raised his eyes. A smirk played on his lips, just beneath that absurd mustache.

“Then I suppose you’re going to hate me very much, Liam," he whispered.

The elevator doors opened. He swaggered away down the hall as though he owned the place, leaving me there with my heart kicking a red flag against my ribs.

He was supposed to be under my control. But as I watched him go, I realized I was the one holding my breath.