TOO LATE TO REJECT ME, ALPHA

Chapter 3: Monday Has Teeth

Kira made it out of the hotel with her shoes in one hand, her dignity in the other, and a heartbeat that would not calm down.

She did not look back at the bed.

That was the rule she gave herself in the hallway, and again in the elevator, and a third time in the lobby, where a sleepy night clerk pretended not to notice a rumpled woman in last night's dress creeping across the marble at dawn. *Do not look back. Do not go back. Do not think about the way he said your name that wasn't your name.*

The rain had thinned to a mist. The street shone like wet glass. Kira stepped into the gray and drew the borrowed coat tighter around her shoulders before she realized she was still wearing his coat.

It smelled like cedar and storm. It smelled like him.

"Stupid," she muttered, and wrapped her arms around herself anyway.

She had almost reached the corner when her hand went to her collarbone out of habit.

Bare skin.

Kira stopped so fast that a passing cyclist swore at her.

The pendant was gone.

Her stomach dropped into her shoes. She checked her neck, her pockets, the borrowed coat, the inside of her bag. Nothing. Only a faint, cold line on her skin where the chain had been, and the memory of it snapping in the dark, a small bright sound she had not stopped to hear.

The moth. Her mother's moth. The only thing she had left of a woman she barely remembered and a name she had never been allowed to speak aloud.

She turned back toward the hotel.

Took two steps.

Stopped.

*You can't go back.* Not up to that suite. Not to a man with gold in his eyes and a voice that had made her wolf, her silent, impossible wolf, say a word.

*Mine.*

Kira pressed her palm flat against her sternum. Nothing answered. The place where the voice had been was quiet now, an empty room with the echo still in it.

Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe exhaustion and whiskey and one very good night had conjured a hallucination out of loneliness.

She almost believed that.

"I'll come back for it," she told the misty street, and walked away, and hated herself the entire time.

---

Theo was awake when she got home, which was a bad sign.

He sat cross-legged on the couch with a blanket around his shoulders and a bowl of cereal in his lap, and his face, thin and pale and far too old for a boy his age, tilted up as she came through the door.

"You," her brother said, "look like you lost a fight with a hurricane."

"Good morning to you too."

"Nope. I want details." He narrowed his eyes. "You smell like rain. And cedar. Kira, is that a *man's* jacket?"

"Theo."

"I'm not judging." He waved his spoon. "I'm impressed. I'm also going to need you to take a shower before you go near anyone with a nose."

She hung the coat on the back of the door, ignoring the way her fingers lingered on the collar. "It's nothing. It was just... a night."

"Was it a good night?"

"Theo."

"That's a yes."

She threw a pillow at him. He caught it, laughing, and then the laughter turned into a cough, and the cough turned into a shiver that ran through his whole body. He tried to hide it. He always tried.

Kira crossed the room in three strides and put a hand to his forehead. Cold. Clammy. Colder than yesterday.

"It's nothing," Theo said, before she could speak. "Just a bad morning."

"Theo."

"You start work today," he said, quietly. "You're not skipping it because of me."

Her throat closed. "I wasn't going to."

"Liar." But he smiled, the sweet crooked smile he had never lost, not even when the Fading had begun to carve hollows under his cheekbones. "Go to work, Kira. Save my life. And then tell me everything."

She kissed the top of his head and did not tell him that she was terrified.

---

Armone Tower rose over the financial district like a blade set into the sky.

Sixty floors of black glass and steel. A lobby the size of a cathedral. A security desk staffed by men who looked at every arrival a beat too long, as if measuring them against some private scale.

*Wolves,* Kira thought, and tugged at the collar of her one good suit.

She had known, of course. That was the entire reason she had applied. Armone Global was a human company on paper and a wolf pack in every way that mattered. It was the only place in Northmere where a wolf child with a wasting sickness could be treated without questions, and the only place in the world where a woman named Banar was most likely to be recognized.

A gamble. A terrible one.

But Theo's hands had been so cold this morning.

"Kira Banar? Legal?"

A woman in a crisp cream blazer hurried across the lobby with a lanyard already extended. She had a wide, warm face, dark hair twisted into a knot skewered with a pen, and the tired brightness of someone who ran on coffee and optimism.

"Poppy Lin," she said, pumping Kira's hand. "Senior paralegal. Your guide to surviving the fourteenth floor. Please tell me you're not a morning person, because I will not be able to handle it."

Kira blinked. "I'm... not?"

"Perfect. We're going to be best friends." Poppy steered her toward the elevators. "Fair warning, the department head called in sick, so you're going to hit the ground running. Also, the CEO wants to see the vendor revisions today, and I have never in my life seen anyone survive the sixtieth floor without sweating through a blazer."

"The CEO?"

"Aiden Armone." Poppy lowered her voice, as though the walls themselves might gossip. "Nobody's ever seen a photo. He hates cameras. He fires people for looking at him wrong. He is also, and I say this with love and professional distance, unfairly gorgeous, if the rumors are true."

Kira's mouth went dry.

Aiden.

She had read the name on the offer letter. She had never once tried to picture it.

"That's... a lot of rumors."

"That's the *good* ones." Poppy grinned and punched the elevator button.

The morning blurred. Onboarding forms. A tour of a legal floor full of glass-walled offices and stacked binders. A hundred names she promptly forgot. She kept catching herself touching the bare place at her collarbone, and each time, something hot and restless turned over in her chest.

It was almost noon when the phone on her new desk rang.

"Ms. Banar? This is Executive Services. Mr. Armone has requested the vendor revisions in person. Now, please."

Kira stared at the phone.

"Me?" she asked. "I've been here for three hours."

"Mr. Armone specifically requested the new analyst."

There was a click, and the line went dead.

"Oh, you poor lamb," Poppy whispered from the next desk. "Take deep breaths. Don't make eye contact. If he growls, just nod."

"If he *what?*"

"Figure of speech!"

The elevator to the sixtieth floor was empty and impossibly quiet. Kira watched the numbers climb and gripped the folder of contracts so hard it creased. She rehearsed. *Good morning, Mr. Armone. Here are the revisions. Yes, sir. No, sir. Thank you, sir.* She had faced landlords, creditors, and one very unpleasant hospital administrator. She could handle a CEO.

The doors opened on a hushed, glass-walled corridor, all pale carpet and low light. At the end of it, a woman sat behind a curved desk. She looked up as Kira approached, and her polite smile flickered, just slightly, as she took a discreet breath.

Scenting her.

"Ms. Banar," the woman said. "He's expecting you."

Kira's pulse thudded. "Thank you."

The double doors were dark wood, tall and heavy. A brass plaque beside them read:

**AIDEN ARMONE**

*Chief Executive Officer*

Kira straightened her shoulders and knocked.

"Come in."

The voice was low. Familiar. It sank into her spine like a hook.

She stopped with her hand on the door.

*No.*

*No, it can't be.*

She pushed it open anyway.

The office was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling glass. A desk the size of a small boat. And standing at the window with his back to her, one hand in the pocket of a charcoal suit and the other pressed flat against the glass, was a tall man with dark hair and a stillness that filled the entire room.

"Close the door, Ms. Banar," he said, without turning.

Cedar smoke. Rain on stone.

Her knees very nearly gave out.

He turned.

There was no warmth in his face now. No teasing smile, no gentle hands, no gold in his eyes. Only a cool, controlled, perfectly blank mask, and behind it, so fine she might have missed it, a flicker of something raw.

The man who had taken her apart last night held her gaze across an ocean of polished floor.

*Ash.*

Kira had spent the whole morning telling herself she would never see him again.

She had never once considered the worse possibility.

That she would have to work for him.