He Never Marked Me

Chapter 4: The New CEO Is Him

(Isolde's POV)

I barely slept.

Every time I closed my eyes, it came back. Garrett's flat, disgusted stare. That strip of light under the door. His voice, low and wrecked, whispering Victoria's name like a prayer.

And then, underneath all of that, something worse. A face I had no business thinking about. Calm ice-blue eyes. A quiet, steady voice in an examination room.

I gave up on sleep somewhere around four in the morning.

By the time I walked into the building the next day, I'd already yawned three times in the elevator. My eyes felt like they were full of sand. I knew I looked terrible and I didn't have the energy to care.

But the second I stepped into the hallway, I noticed something was off.

Every woman I passed was touching up her makeup. They were huddled in small groups, whispering, checking their reflections in their phone screens.

Sarah appeared out of nowhere and grabbed my arm.

"You haven't heard?" she said, her voice dropping low. "We're getting a new CEO. Today. He's coming in this morning."

"Oh," I said.

I turned toward my desk.

"Isolde." Sarah yanked me back and shoved me into a chair. She already had her makeup bag open. "You look like you haven't slept in three days. You cannot meet the new boss looking like this."

I pushed her hand away gently. "I'm fine. And it doesn't matter. I have files to get through."

"Files." She stared at me. "The new CEO is arriving and you're worried about files."

"He's not coming for me, Sarah."

I meant it. I wasn't being modest.

After I graduated, it was Luna Margaret who arranged this job for me. She called it an opportunity. A chance to gain experience in the neutral territory.

What it actually was, was a door being shut in my face.

The Silvercrest Pack's future belonged to Marcus and Victoria. Marcus had been taken in by the Luna as a child, raised as a legitimate heir. Victoria had everything else - the attention, the status, the love of every person in that pack.

And me? I was the illegitimate daughter. The Alpha's secret, kept at a comfortable distance.

My grades had always been better than theirs. I had worked harder than either of them for as long as I could remember. None of that mattered.

Margaret didn't want me anywhere near the pack's real business. My mother, Rosalind, never said a single word in my defense. So the moment I finished school, I was placed here, in this human company in neutral territory, out of sight and out of the way.

I had accepted it. I kept my head down. I didn't push for promotions or raises or recognition. The less visible I was, the safer I was.

A new CEO had nothing to do with my life.

Sarah was not giving up.

"He's young," she said, sitting on the edge of my desk. "And he's strong. People are saying he's not the type to let good people get buried. If he notices us - really notices us - Derek can't touch us anymore. Nobody can."

I looked at her.

She wasn't wrong. Derek, our manager, had been making my life small and miserable for two years. He was Margaret's instrument in this place, bribed to keep me in line. Having a boss who actually paid attention would change things.

But people like that didn't notice people like me.

"I hear you," I said. "I just don't think it applies to me."

Sarah opened her mouth to argue.

(Author's POV)

At ten o'clock, HR gathered the entire company in the open area on the ground floor.

Sarah somehow managed to push both of them into a spot near the front, center.

Isolde tried to step back. She didn't make it.

Outside, two black SUVs pulled up in formation, flanking a third car that was low and dark and expensive in a way that didn't announce itself. The kind of car that didn't need to.

The door opened.

A man stepped out.

He was tall. Black suit, no tie, dark sunglasses. He moved through the space between the cars and the building entrance like the crowd was simply not a factor he needed to consider.

It wasn't the height or the clothes.

It was something underneath all of that. A pressure that had no visible source. The kind of weight that made every person in the room go still without knowing why. It wasn't something a human executive could manufacture.

It was the presence of a top-tier Alpha, walking into a room full of people who had no idea what they were feeling or why they suddenly couldn't speak.

He walked through the front doors and into the lobby, and the entire building seemed to hold its breath.

(Isolde's POV)

I looked up.

My heart stopped.

Everything in my chest locked up at once. My eyes went straight to his face - or the half of it that wasn't covered by the sunglasses - and I knew.

I knew that jaw. That posture. The exact way he held himself.

It was him.

The doctor from yesterday.

I shut my eyes hard and shook my head once, fast. I thought maybe I was hallucinating. I hadn't slept. My body had been through a lot. It was possible I was just seeing what I expected to see.

I opened my eyes.

He had stopped walking.

He was standing directly in front of me.

The air went out of my lungs completely.

He turned his head, slowly, and looked at me. Not at the crowd. At me. Like he had walked through a room full of people and known exactly where I was standing.

Chloe lurched inside me so hard my knees nearly buckled.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. The face I had spent all night trying not to think about was standing three feet away from me, real and solid and completely unreadable.

His gaze stayed on me for less than two seconds.

Then he looked away. Completely. Like I was part of the furniture.

He walked to the private elevator. The doors closed behind him.

The whole lobby exhaled at once.

I dropped my head and pinched the inside of my wrist as hard as I could.

Pain. Sharp and immediate.

Not a dream.

I held onto the only rational explanation I had left. Maybe it was just a resemblance. Maybe this man and that doctor only looked similar. Maybe I was so sleep-deprived that I was connecting things that had no connection.

Sarah appeared at my elbow. "Do you know him?"

"No."

"He stopped right in front of you. He looked at you."

"You imagined it." I was already moving. "I need the bathroom."

I ran cold water over my wrists and pressed my wet hands against my face until the heat faded. Then I stood there and breathed.

By the time I got back to my desk, everyone around me was already deep into it.

"His mother runs the top private medical group in the region-"

"His father's on the werewolf council-"

"He did dual graduate degrees, medicine and business, on the East Coast-"

"He was supposed to take over the medical group but ended up here instead-"

I stopped moving.

Private medical group.

The clinic I had gone to yesterday.

Every piece clicked into place at once, cold and final. The doctor. The clinic. The dual degrees. The timing.

That was Orion Nightshade. And Orion Nightshade was now the CEO of this company.

I sat down slowly.

At least he was the CEO and I was nobody. Our worlds didn't overlap. They never would.

I reached for the first file on my desk.

Heavy footsteps crossed the floor. I looked up.

Derek was standing over my desk, looking down at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Silvercrest," he said. "The boss wants you in his office."

Every head in the room turned toward me at once.

The file slipped out of my fingers.

My palms went cold and wet, and I sat there unable to move while the whole office stared at me.