THE ALPHA CEO'S REJECTED MATE

Chapter Three

Sloane's POV

Three weeks. That’s how long it took me to run out of places that would hire me.

“Yes, Ms. Marlowe, we did speak with your previous employer,” said the recruiter on my phone, in the careful voice of someone setting a vase down on a very clean table. “They described you as a cultural misfit.”

“A what?”

“I’m sure it was a misunderstanding. We’ll keep your résumé on file.”

She hung up. I looked at the phone for a while.

“A cultural misfit,” Tessa repeated from the other end of the couch, where she’d been listening with a bowl of cereal. “That’s not even a thing. That’s just what you say when someone hurt the boss’s feelings.”

“It’s an Alpha thing,” I said, before I could stop myself.

“A what?”

“A… boss thing. Like an alpha boss. The type with the vest.” I took a very big bite of toast.

Tessa looked at me for a long moment. Then she went back to her cereal. She did that a lot. Years ago she’d decided I had secrets, and she’d also decided to be patient.

She’ll be wonderful when she finds out, said my wolf.

She’s not finding out.

Mm.

My wolf had opinions about everything. The couch (too lumpy), Tessa’s cooking (excellent), the city (loud, but the rain smelled good), and my wardrobe. She made a small noise whenever I put on the gray blazer. She still wouldn’t tell me anything useful. Every time I asked about the silence, or the moon, or who that man at the bus stop was, she said with time, like a doctor who already had the results.

And the world was so loud now. I could smell the neighbor’s coffee through two walls. I could hear Tessa’s pulse in the next room when she got nervous. I’d always known wolves had good senses, but nobody warns you what it’s like to wake up at twenty-four with all of it at once.

Ronan’s card was in my wallet, behind my library card. I hadn’t called. I hadn’t thrown it out, either.

“Okay.” Tessa put down her bowl. “New plan. Thorne Industries.”

“No.”

“They have an opening for a PR coordinator. It’s your old job, but with a gym.”

“Tessa, that’s the biggest company in the city.”

“So they have money. And you have four years of cleaning up an i***t’s mess. I mean experience.” She waved her phone at me. “Interview tomorrow at ten. I already applied for you.”

“You what?”

“I used your email. It’s basically a joint account. You don’t have to thank me.”

I put down the toast.

It wasn’t a bad idea. And I was running out of toast.

The Thorne Industries building was a spike of black glass, forty-one floors, and it looked like it was holding up the sky by itself.

The lobby smelled like polished stone and people. And now I could sort them. Human. Human. Human. Wolf. Human. Wolf. Wolf. Half the people crossing that floor weren’t human at all.

Walk like you belong, said my wolf.

I don’t.

You do.

I walked in still nervous but trying not to show it. I was wearing my gray blazer, black shoes I’d shined with a tissue, résumé in a folder, hair pulled back so tight my eyebrows were doing their own thing.

“Visitor?” The guard at the desk had a gray mustache and a name tag that said WALT. He slid a badge across. “HR’s on thirty-eight. Elevators on the left.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t let them scare you,” Walt said. “They’re all bark but no bite.”

“That's good to know. Thanks, Walt”

“Good luck, kid.”

I stood in front of the elevators, pressed the button, and breathed. In for four, out for six. You’ve been rejected in front of over two hundred people. This is a job interview. The worst they can say is no.

The elevator chimed. The doors slid open.

And the smell hit me.

I can’t describe it right. People say the world went quiet, and it did, a little, but that wasn’t it. It smelled like smoke, cedar, fresh rain on grass, like i was in log cabin surrounded by trees, grasses and rain. And under it, something dark and warm that made my knees wobble.

My whole body leaned toward it before I could process what was happening. Nia, my wolf was howling so loudly in my mind. She was restless, trying to locate and get closer to the source of the amazing scent that was driving us nuts.

Inside the elevator was a man. He was tall, wearing a black suit with no tie. The suit fit him like a glove and couldn't hide the fact that he worked out a lot. He had black hair, chiseled jaw and hazel eyes that drew me into them. He had one hand on the rail, his head bent over his phone. He’d just started to look up when it hit him too.

I saw when it clicked.

He stopped moving. The phone slipped out of his hand and clattered onto the floor. His eyes came up and found mine, and they weren’t brown anymore. They were gold now.

Mate, said Nia.

Mate. Mate. MATE.

“Oh,” I said out loud, very stupidly. But you can't really blame me, I'd just rejected and got rejected by my mate.

Ex-mate, Nia snapped. The moon goddess gave us another one.

How is this even possible?

I had heard that there was a chance that one could get a second chance mate but I'd always thought it was a myth or rumor spread to give rejected wolves hope.

He looked at me. His chest rose and fell. For one second I thought he might say something. His mouth opened.

Then his face went blank, like someone had turned off a light.

“Get off," he said.

His voice was low and rough.

"I'm sorry?"

"Get off the elevator. Take the next one."

"I have an interview on the thirty-eight floor."

"Then take the next one."

I didn't move. I don't know why. I think some stubborn part of me needed to hear it more than once to believe it. He looked at me, I looked at him, and his jaw worked like he was biting down on something.

"Please," he said, quieter.

I still didn't move.

Something crossed his face then, fast, and gone. Then it went blank, his expression became unreadable.

He stepped around me. Close enough that the smell hit again and I had to grab the rail. Then he was out, striding across the lobby with his shoulders locked, not looking back.

"Mr. Thorne!" someone called. "Mr. Thorne, the car is..."

He didn't stop.

"Well," Walt said, very quietly, from his desk. "That's new."

I stood alone in the elevator with the doors held open on nothing. His phone was lying on the floor by my shoes. I picked it up. The screen was cracked.

I walked it back across the lobby and set it on Walt's desk.

"Leave it with me, kid," Walt said gently. "He'll send for it."

"I didn't do anything."

"I know." He looked at me with a lot of kindness and no explanation at all. "Go to your interview."

I went and stood in front of the other elevator, and my face was burning, and I pressed the button three times for no reason.

He doesn't want me, I thought.

Three weeks ago, a man had decided in front of two hundred people that I was nothing. Now a man who made my knees go soft had looked at me for ten seconds and said get off. Twice. Then left in a hurry like it hurt to even be around me.

Little one, said Nia.

Don't.

Sloane. Her voice was warm and very close, like a hand on my back. Listen to me. His wolf likes us.

His wolf can like us from across the lobby, then.

I'm serious. Did you see his eyes? He was fighting it. His wolf was howling so loud I could feel it from here. He likes us very much. There must be a reason for our mate's strange behavior.

Then why did he say get off?

Because he's afraid. Nia sounded certain, and a little sad. Not of us. For us.

That doesn't make sense.

It will.

With time?

With time, Nia agreed, sounding sheepish.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. The elevator chimed. I stepped in alone, and the smell of smoke and cedar and rain was still hanging in the air, thinner now though.

I pressed the button for the thirty-eight floor.

My hand shook all the way up.