TAMING THE WOLF OF VOSS TOWER

At 7:42 a.m., the sixtieth floor of Voss Arcanum began to scream. Not people. The walls. Every ward-rune in the building flared red, and the glass elevators dropped three floors and stopped. Tessa Brandt was already running. She was twenty-six, round in all the places her uniform didn't allow for, with a wrench on her belt and grease on her cheek. She took the stairs two at a time, because the lifts were dead. By the fortieth floor her lungs burned, but she didn't slow down. The ward-engine was her baby. Nobody else in this glass palace even knew where its heart was. "Maintenance!" a manager shrieked, flattening himself against the wall. "Do something!" "I'm doing something," Tessa panted. "I'm climbing." The ward-engine sat in the sub-core behind a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She was the only authorized personnel who ever bothered. She slammed her palm on the lock, and the door opened. The engine was a tower of copper rings, each one humming with caged lightning. Three rings had cracked. The fourth was spinning off its axis. "Oh, you stupid, gorgeous thing," Tessa muttered, and got to work. She yanked her gloves on, braced a boot against the frame, and caught the fourth ring with both hands. The lightning bit her. She hissed, then grinned. "Sit," she told it. "Sit down. Sit." The ring shuddered and slowed. She slid a brass pin into the cracked housing, hammered it in with the heel of her wrench, and whispered the old stabilizing word her grandmother had taught her. The red light died. Every rune in the building went blue. Silence. Then a voice behind her, smooth as expensive whiskey: "Who gave you permission to touch my engine?" Tessa didn't turn around. "The engine did." "Excuse me?" "It was dying, and I'm the one who knows how to stop that." She wiped her forehead with her wrist and smeared the grease further. "You're welcome, by the way." She turned. Damien Voss stood in the doorway with his tie loose and his hair disordered, in a suit that cost more than her flat. He was thirty-two, the youngest CEO in the history of the Arcane Exchange, and the most photographed man in the city. Newspapers called him the Gilded Wolf. Gossip columns counted the women he was seen with, and the number only went up. He looked her over slowly. It wasn't admiration. It was inventory. "You're the maintenance girl." "I'm the Senior Ward Engineer," Tessa said. "On your badge it says Maintenance." "Because HR is lazy and I'm busy." His mouth twitched, almost a smile, the kind that is mostly insult. "Do you know how much that engine is worth?" "Four hundred million." "Do you know how much it's worth if the building goes dark during my merger announcement at nine?" "Considerably less." Tessa stepped past him to grab her toolbox, and he had to move or be bumped. He moved. She saw his eyebrow rise. People did not usually walk through Damien Voss. "It's fixed for now. The housing's cracked, though. If you want it fixed properly, I need two weeks, a budget, and nobody touching my engine." "Your engine." "Somebody has to love it." Damien watched her go to the door. His voice stopped her. "You didn't ask me for a reward." "Did you want to give me one?" "I was going to offer." "Then I'm glad I saved you the trouble." She looked back, and her grin was crooked and unbothered. "I know your type, Mr. Voss. You think everyone in this building wants something from you. Some of us just want the lights to stay on." She left. He stood in the humming blue light, and for the first time in years, a woman had walked away from him without looking back. He did not like it. He liked it a little. At nine o'clock, the merger announcement went perfectly. The whole building was lit, every rune glowing, and Damien stood at the podium as though the morning's disaster had never happened. Tessa watched from the back of the atrium in her uniform, eating a cinnamon roll she'd stolen from the catering table. "You should be in the front row," said a voice at her shoulder. "You saved this event." She turned. This man was different from Damien. Taller, quieter, in a charcoal suit with no flourish, dark hair cut short, eyes like the sea in winter. Adrian Voss, thirty-six, Chairman of the Board and Damien's older brother. He was the only person in the building who made the executive floor stop talking when he walked in. "Mr. Voss," she said, swallowing roll. "Which one are you?" Something almost smiled in his eyes. "The one who reads the maintenance logs." "Nobody reads the maintenance logs." "I do. Yours are the only ones that include jokes." He pulled a folded paper from his pocket. It was her last report. At the bottom, in her messy handwriting: Ring Four is a diva. Handle with flattery. Tessa's ears went hot. "That wasn't meant for the Chairman." "It's the best thing I read all quarter." He studied her, and not like his brother had. He looked at her face, not her body. "My brother was rude to you this morning." "He was Damien. It's fine." "It isn't." Adrian paused. "Come to my office at two, please. I want to hear what you need to fix the engine properly." "Two weeks, a budget, and nobody touching it." "Then you'll have all three." He walked away. Tessa blinked after him, then looked down. She was holding half a cinnamon roll and a feeling she didn't have a name for yet. By noon, the whole company knew. Voss Arcanum ran on rumor the way it ran on magic, and the rumor was this: the maintenance girl had talked back to the CEO. At lunch, three different people told Tessa she was either fired or doomed. "You told Damien Voss to be grateful," whispered Pia from Accounts, wide-eyed, over a salad. "To his face." "I said you're welcome." "He's going to destroy you." "Pia, I've fixed this building's heart with a wrench. What's he going to do, frown at me?" At that exact moment, the cafeteria went quiet. Damien Voss walked in. He never ate in the cafeteria. He crossed the room under a hundred stares, stopped at Tessa's table, and put both hands on the back of the empty chair. "Miss Brandt." "Mr. Voss." "Two weeks, you said." "And a budget." "My brother has approved it." He said brother with tightness around the word. "However, the engine sits directly beneath my office. If you're going to be in my building for two weeks, I want you where I can see you. You'll be my personal engineer. My floor, my schedule, my coffee." Tessa set her fork down. "No." Pia gasped. "No?" Damien repeated, as if the word was in a foreign language. "I'm a ward engineer, not a coffee girl. I'll fix your engine and I'll report to whoever gets me what I need. But I won't be anyone's accessory." She leaned back and crossed her arms. "Anything else?" Damien looked at her for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. A real smile, sharp and delighted, the kind a wolf wears when it finally finds prey that runs. "A bet, then." "I don't gamble." "Of course you do. You gamble on that engine every day." He leaned closer, voice low. "Thirty days. You work on my floor. If you can keep me from my usual... distractions for those thirty days, I'll double your department's budget and give you the title you've earned." "And if I fail?" "You do the job for a month and then you're mine to keep." The cafeteria held its breath. Tessa stared at him. Her heart was pounding, which was annoying. She told herself it was the cinnamon roll. "Keep you from what, exactly?" "Women, Miss Brandt." The grin widened. "Thirty days without a single one. Tame me, if you can." She should have said no. Every sensible bone told her to say no. But she thought about the budget, about Ring Four, about a hundred cracked housings nobody else would ever fix. And she thought about the way he'd said tame, as though it was a joke, as though nobody had ever dared. "I'm a tomboy, Mr. Voss," she said slowly. "I train wild dogs for fun. I don't tame things I can't handle." "Is that a yes?" She stood and held out a hand, grease still under her nails. "Thirty days. No women. And you do exactly what I say." "In my building?" "In my engine room." Damien took her hand. His palm was warm, and he held it a second too long. Neither of them noticed the figure watching from the cafeteria doorway: Adrian Voss, with a folded maintenance log in his hand and an expression he'd never worn before. "Deal," Damien said softly. Tessa smiled, because she didn't know what she'd just agreed to. She would find out soon enough.