The Werewolf Assistant

Chapter 3

Adrian told himself the same thing every single night, lying awake in the dim, quiet cold of his master suite long after the city outside had gone quiet. *This is nothing. It will pass.* He repeated it like a rule, like something he could force himself to believe simply by saying it enough times.

It never worked.

Mia was different from everyone else in his life, and he knew it clearly, even if he refused to say it out loud. She didn't flinch around him. She didn't tiptoe carefully like his penthouse staff did, afraid of saying the wrong thing to the wrong billionaire on the wrong day. She teased him. She laughed at him, sometimes right to his face, and somehow that made him feel more human than he had in years.

That terrified him more than anything else.

He built arguments against her in his own head, late at night when sleep refused to come. *She deserves a normal life,* he told himself. *Someone without secrets. Someone without doors that lock once a month, without a restricted private wing hiding something no one should ever see.*

*She probably doesn't even think of me that way,* he reasoned next, though some quiet part of him didn't fully believe it. *She's young. She's kind. Maybe there was someone else waiting for her outside these walls, someone normal, someone safe.*

And even if there wasn't, love was still a risk he couldn't justify. Not with what lived inside him. Not with the beast that clawed its way out once a month, uncontrollable and violent, no matter how badly he wanted to keep it locked away in the restricted wing forever.

*This is nothing,* he told himself again. *It will pass.*

It did not pass. If anything, it grew stronger every single day since HR completed her background check and she started working as his assistant.

The full moon was five nights away, safely after Olivia's wedding, and his body already felt too tight, too hot, too aware. His senses were sharpening rapidly: the scratch of Mia's pen at her desk in his office, the soft rustle of her jacket, the faint citrus scent of her shampoo drifting across the heavy walnut desk. Every small sound pulled at something primal in him, something that wanted to follow, protect, claim.

He hated it. He blamed the blood. He blamed the moon. He blamed the curse that transformed him whenever the sky turned full and bright. But deep down, he knew the truth: it wasn't just the wolf. It was him. And that was the most dangerous part of all.

Mia, meanwhile, had no idea how loud his internal battle actually was. She simply kept doing what she always did, teasing him gently, chipping away at his careful composure one small comment at a time.

"You're wearing the blue tie again," she said one morning, setting his coffee down on his walnut desk. "That's your favorite, isn't it?"

"I don't have a favorite tie," he said, not looking up from his paperwork.

"Sure you don't." She smiled and walked back to her workspace before he could argue further.

He watched her go, longer than he meant to, and felt something shift quietly in his chest.

Days like this had become their routine. She would sit nearby during review sessions, offering casual compliments that left him flustered and unsure how to respond. Once, she told him plainly that he looked handsome in his suit, and he'd stammered through an entire sentence trying to change the subject while his ears burned bright red.

Watching him lose his composure had become her daily joy. She didn't think much about why it made her so happy. She simply enjoyed it, the way you enjoy a good game.

But slowly, without either of them noticing exactly when it happened, the game began changing into something else.

Mia found herself thinking about him outside of work hours, wondering what he was doing, whether he'd eaten dinner, whether he was lonely in that enormous, quiet penthouse. She told herself it was nothing more than concern for a friend. Deep down, some quieter part of her already knew that wasn't the whole truth.

One afternoon, everything shifted a little further.

Mia arrived in the office looking distracted, checking her phone constantly, rushing through her usual tasks faster than normal. She dropped a folder twice near his desk. She forgot to schedule a call she normally would have remembered without thinking.

Adrian noticed immediately.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, setting down the report he'd been reading.

Mia looked up, surprised. He rarely asked things like that so directly. "It's nothing important," she said, waving a hand. "My sister Olivia's wedding is coming up soon. There's a pre-wedding dinner before it too, and I haven't had a single free minute to figure out what I'm supposed to wear. Especially shoes. I clean my everyday shoes carefully, but I don't own a formal pair for a wedding."

She laughed a little at herself, already moving toward the next task on her list. "It's fine. I'll figure it out somehow."

Adrian said nothing in response. He simply nodded and let the conversation end there.

That evening, however, instead of remaining locked away in his penthouse office, he went somewhere he hadn't been in years: an exclusive high-end department store downtown.

He felt completely out of place the moment he walked through the polished doors. Sales associates approached him immediately, offering help he didn't quite know how to accept. He wandered between displays of footwear, more comfortable negotiating corporate acquisitions than picking out formal shoes.

He remembered, though, small details Mia had mentioned once in passing—her preference for clean, classic designs over flashy ones, and her practical nature. He used those small memories like a map, eventually settling on a pair that felt right.

The associate offered to wrap them with a decorative card. Adrian declined the card.

The next morning, he placed the box on Mia's desk without any grand announcement, sliding it toward her the way he might slide over a contract.

"What's this?" she asked, opening it carefully.

Inside were the formal shoes, simple and beautiful, exactly the kind of thing she needed for Olivia's wedding.

"Consider it compensation," he said, already turning back to his own desk. "You've earned it."

Mia stared at the shoes for a long moment, then looked up at him. Something in her chest tightened, warm and confusing all at once. She understood, somehow, that this wasn't really about compensation at all. A man like Adrian didn't personally shop for anyone unless it meant something to him.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and for once, she didn't tease him about it.

He simply nodded, uncomfortable being caught in the act of caring, and returned his attention to his paperwork as though nothing significant had happened at all.

That night, Mia stayed late in the office to finish reviewing a heavy stack of contracts. The city lights blurred outside the expansive windows, turning the room into a soft, glowing box. She told herself she'd just rest her eyes for a minute, leaning back against the office sofa with her arms folded over her chest.

Exhaustion pulled her under, and the dream came quickly.

In it, Adrian stood over her, his eyes dark and burning. The room felt warm, and his hands were gentle but insistent, tracing her jaw and shoulders, holding her close. He kissed her deeply, desperately, as if she were the only thing keeping him grounded.

Mia woke with a sharp gasp, her heart racing against her ribs.

For a disorienting second, dream and reality blurred together. She was on the office sofa, just as in the dream, and the dim office was quiet. Adrian was standing right beside the sofa, stepping back into the shadows as her eyes opened. His expression was tight, his breathing uneven, his hand hovering in the space where it had just been resting near her shoulder while she slept.

“Mia,” he said, his voice low and strained. “You fell asleep.”

She blinked, trying to steady her breathing. “I… yeah. Sorry.”

Adrian turned his face away, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle twitched in his cheek. He looked shaken, visibly struggling with a boundary he had just crossed while watching her sleep—a breach of control that no full-moon curse could excuse, and one he knew carried weight.

“I should have woken you immediately,” he said, stepping further away toward his desk. “You shouldn’t be sleeping here. I'll have security escort you down to the service entrance.”

Mia sat up, smoothing her yellow jacket which she'd draped over the back of the sofa. She studied his face. He looked exhausted, like a man fighting himself and losing. There was something raw and guarded in his dark eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly.

“I’m fine,” he said, too quickly, keeping his distance. “Just… go home, Mia.”

Mia hesitated, sensing the sudden, heavy shift in the air, then nodded slowly. “Okay. Goodnight, Mr. Vale.”

He didn’t answer right away. When he finally spoke, his deadpan mask had returned, though his voice was rough. “Goodnight.”

As Mia gathered her things, the dream stayed in the back of her mind.

She was embarrassed by it, but she couldn't deny that part of her had been happy to see Adrian that way, even if it had only happened in her sleep. He was really handsome, and the dream had made her imagine something she had never seriously allowed herself to consider.

But what would she actually do if it happened?

What if Adrian really kissed her?

Would she kiss him back?

Would she want something romantic with him, or would she realize that she wasn't ready for that kind of relationship?

She didn't know.

She liked Adrian. She liked being around him. She enjoyed making him blush and watching his carefully controlled expression fall apart whenever she caught him off guard. But liking someone and wanting to become romantically involved with them were not necessarily the same thing.

For now, she decided, she didn't need to answer those questions.

After she left, Adrian remained alone in the dim office, staring at his reflection in the dark glass windows. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. He had let his guard down while she slept, crossing a line that had nothing to do with corporate boundaries and everything to do with his own frayed control. He blamed the approaching full moon and the blood that ran hot in his veins. But deep down, he knew the truth: it wasn't just the wolf. It was him.

The rest of the week passed quickly in a blur of wedding preparations. Mia continued working while keeping up with the messages and arrangements surrounding Olivia's wedding.

On the morning of the wedding, Mia was in a hurry. She gathered her things and checked her phone as messages from Olivia continued arriving.

She was so focused on getting to the wedding that she completely forgot the shoebox.

The formal shoes Adrian had bought for her were still sitting in the kitchen of his penthouse.

Mia left without them.

She had no idea that the shoes were still behind her, and she certainly didn't realize that Adrian would soon notice.

Adrian eventually saw the shoebox in his kitchen.

He stared at it for a moment before realizing what had happened.

“Mia.”

He pulled out his phone and opened the transport app connected to her phone. The location service was always enabled, allowing him to see her current location even though she had not used the app to book a ride.

Her location appeared on the screen.

She was already moving away.

Adrian looked at the shoes again.

Waiting wasn't an option.

He grabbed the shoebox and headed for the door.

He was going after her.

The full moon was still five nights away, but something inside him was already urging him forward.

Adrian ran.