THE LAST HUMAN EMPLOYEE

The Second Warning

Renata Kestrel's office occupied the northeast corner of the thirty-seventh floor, positioned deliberately three floors below Damon's own so she could watch the comings and goings of his visitors without ever appearing to watch anything at all. She'd designed it that way herself, along with most of the quiet architecture of influence she'd built over the fifteen years since her father's death had left her the senior Kestrel voice on Meridian's board, a voice that had grown louder and more patient with every passing year.

She replayed the security footage a third time, watching Damon lean toward the human woman in a way that had nothing to do with corporate courtesy and everything to do with an instinct he clearly hadn't managed to master, whatever he told himself in whatever quiet moments he allowed himself to think about it.

"You wanted to see me." Marcus's voice came from the doorway, flat and unwelcoming, the tone he reserved specifically for conversations with Renata that he had no interest in having.

"Close the door."

He did, though the set of his shoulders made it clear he considered the request an imposition rather than a courtesy. Marcus had never bothered pretending to like her, which Renata found almost refreshing after years of board members who smiled at her in meetings and undermined her in private.

"I assume this is about the elevator." He nodded at the paused footage on her monitor without needing to be shown it directly. Wolves talked. Especially on the fortieth floor, where every conversation eventually made its way down through the pack's informal channels regardless of how carefully anyone tried to contain it.

"It's about six years of patterns I've been documenting quietly, in case you were under the impression I only started paying attention yesterday." Renata turned the monitor toward him, though she suspected he already knew every detail of what it showed. "The apartment lease that opened up exactly when she needed it. The internship spot that materialized out of nowhere three years before that. The promotion that landed the same month her savings account dipped low enough to worry her, which I only know because our Alpha apparently has access to human banking records he has no legitimate reason to possess."

"You've been surveilling a human employee's personal finances."

"I've been protecting this pack from a liability our Alpha refuses to acknowledge exists." Renata's voice stayed level, controlled, the same tone she used in board meetings when she wanted a point to land without appearing to be trying too hard. "Six years, Marcus. Six years of resources diverted, security protocols bent, an entire private security detail nobody outside a handful of people even knows exists, all built around one human woman who has no idea any of it is happening. Do you understand how many ways that could go wrong? How many ways it already almost has?"

"The Ashgrove file."

"The Ashgrove file is the least of it, and you know it. She's sharp. Sharper than Damon apparently accounted for when he decided a forensic accountant with excellent instincts was a safe person to imprint on." Renata leaned back in her chair, studying him with the particular patience of someone who had already decided how this conversation would end and was only waiting for the other person to catch up. "If she finds the Kestrel trail before we've finished restructuring it, she brings federal regulators into a company built on hiding an entire species from public view. That's not a hypothetical risk anymore, Marcus. That's a countdown."

Marcus was quiet for a long moment, and Renata recognized the particular stillness of a man weighing loyalty against evidence, a scale she'd watched him balance for years without ever quite tipping all the way to her side. "What do you want, Renata? Say it plainly."

"I want a vote of no confidence brought before the full council. I want Damon's fitness to lead formally reviewed, given clear evidence his judgment has been compromised by an unbonded attachment he's let dictate pack resources for six years." She said it without heat, the way she said most things, as though she were simply reading aloud from a document that had already been finalized somewhere else. "And I want it done before Elena Cross gets close enough to the Kestrel accounts to force our hand into something considerably messier than a boardroom vote."

"You're talking about removing an Alpha over a woman he hasn't even touched."

"I'm talking about removing an Alpha who has spent six years building an entire private infrastructure to protect a human he's never once approached honestly, all while telling himself and everyone around him that it's nothing." Renata's composure cracked, briefly, into something sharper. "You've seen the footage as many times as I have, Marcus. Tell me honestly. Does that look like nothing to you?"

Marcus didn't answer, which was, in its own way, an answer.

"I'm not your enemy," Renata said, softer now, a tone she used far more rarely and with far more calculation than most people realized. "I've watched this pack for fifteen years. I watched my father hold this territory before Damon's father ever took it from him in a challenge half the old wolves still whisper about. I don't want a war, Marcus. I want an Alpha who puts this pack's survival above a bond he never asked for and clearly can't control."

"And if the council votes to keep him?"

"Then I'll accept it, the same way I've accepted every vote that's gone against me for fifteen years." Renata's smile was thin, precise, entirely without warmth. "But I don't think it will. Not once they see what I've put together. Not once they understand exactly how much has been risked, and for what."

Marcus left without agreeing to anything, which Renata had expected. He was loyal in the old way, the kind that didn't bend easily even under the weight of clear evidence, and she respected that even as she found it inconvenient.

Alone again, she turned back to her monitor, to the frozen frame of Damon leaning toward a woman who had no idea what she'd wandered into the middle of, and beneath the calculation, beneath the careful political maneuvering she'd spent fifteen years perfecting, something older and more territorial stirred in her chest, an instinct as old as the first pack that had ever chosen a den over open ground.

Weakness invited challenge. It always had, long before boardrooms and shell companies replaced forests and blood, and Renata Kestrel had built her entire life around being the wolf who never mistook mercy for strength.

She picked up her phone and dialed a number that connected, after two rings, to a voice she'd used sparingly over the years, reserved for situations that required a particular kind of quiet handling.

"I need a full financial history pulled," she said, "on Elena Cross. Everything. Bank records, background, family, anyone she's ever trusted. If Damon's built her a fortress, I want to know exactly where the walls are thinnest."