Bound to the Alpha CEO

Three years ago, he looked at me and said four words that broke something inside me. "She is not worthy." I left that same night. I never looked back. Until today. Today, the universe decided it wasn't done with me yet. * * * My name is Maya Adkins. I am twenty-five years old. I am a werewolf. And I have spent the last three years of my life doing exactly two things: Working harder than anyone around me. And making sure no one ever gets close enough to hurt me again. Today is my first day at Voss Industries. I repeat this to myself as I stand on the pavement outside the tallest building in the city, staring up at forty-two floors of glass and steel and the life I have clawed together from nothing. Fresh start, Maya. This is your fresh start. I believe it. I almost believe it. I take a breath, walk through the revolving doors, and press the elevator button for the twenty-second floor. The button that lights up says forty-two. "Of course it does," I mutter. The doors close before I can fix it. * * * The forty-second floor is nothing like twenty-two. I know this the second the doors open. Where accounting is bright and busy and smells like coffee and printer paper, this floor is silent. Dark marble floors. Low golden light. The kind of silence that isn't empty — it's loaded. Like the air itself is waiting for something. Or someone. There is no receptionist at the desk. No one in sight. My wolf stirs. I pressed her down immediately. Hard. Stop it. We are not doing this today. I pull out my phone. No signal. "Perfect," I whispered. "Absolutely perfect." I looked around for another option. There was a set of frosted glass doors at the end of the room, slightly open. A voice came from behind them. Low. Measured. The kind of voice that does not need to be loud to fill a space. I crossed the marble floor and knocked twice. The voice stops. A pause. Then: "Come in." Two words. That's all. But something happens to my heartbeat when I hear them. I push the door open anyway. * * * He is standing at the window. His back is to me. Dark suit. Broad shoulders. Hands clasped behind him like a man who has never had to rush a single day in his life. Tall. So tall. And completely, devastatingly still. "I'm sorry to interrupt," I say. My voice comes out steady. I am proud of that — steadiness costs me something today. "I pressed the wrong floor. My phone has no signal, and I just need—" He turns around. And I forgot what I was saying. The photographs don't do him justice. I have seen Damien Voss in financial news, in business profiles, in the kind of articles that use words like formidable, reclusive, and visionary. The photographs showed a handsome man with cold eyes. The photographs lied. He is not just handsome. He is the kind of man who makes the air change when he moves through it. Dark eyes that miss nothing. A jaw sharp enough to cut. And the way he looks at me— My wolf doesn't stir this time. She slams against my ribcage like she is trying to get out. No. No, no, no. I know this feeling. I have felt it exactly once before in my life, and it destroyed me. The mate bond. It moves through me like electricity, warm and pulling and completely, catastrophically wrong. Because the last time I felt something like this, I was standing in a moonlit clearing in Oregon, and a man looked straight through me and said four words in front of everyone I had ever known. Is she not worthy? I survived that. I am not doing it again. I pull every wall I have built over three years up around me — brick by brick, fast — and I look at Damien Voss with the most professional expression I have ever worn in my life. "I just need to use a landline," I say. "Then I'll be out of your way." He stares at me. Something moves in those dark eyes. Something fast and involuntary, there and gone in a second. He felt it too. Of course, he did. "There's a phone on the desk," he says. His voice is perfectly controlled. So is mine. "Thank you." I cross to the desk. I make the call. I arranged for someone to meet me at the elevator. I do all of this without my hands shaking, which I consider one of the great achievements of my adult life. When I hang up, he is still watching me. "What's your name?" he asks. Not hello. Not who are you? What's your name? Like he already knows the answer matters. "Maya," I say. "Maya Adkins. New hire, accounting, twenty-second floor." I pick up my bag. "It won't happen again." I mean the wrong floor. I also mean the other thing. The thing neither of us has named. I walk back to the elevator with my head up and my hands steady and everything locked down so tight I can barely breathe. The doors close. I exhale. Three years of running and rebuilding and refusing to break — and the universe puts me on the wrong floor on my first day of my fresh start. I know, I tell my wolf, who is still pacing. I know. But we are not doing this. Not again. Never again. She doesn't agree. I overrule her. * * * — Damien — She walked out of my office two minutes ago. I am still standing at the window. I have not moved. In thirty-four years of life, I have built a company from nothing. I have negotiated deals that moved markets. I have sat across tables from men twice my age and made them feel small without raising my voice once. I have never, in thirty-four years, had to tell myself to breathe. I am telling myself to breathe. She felt it. I saw it — that split second before she pulled everything behind walls so high they were almost architectural. The recognition. The pull. The bond that my wolf has been waiting for since I was old enough to understand what waiting meant. My mate. And she looked at me like I was a problem she was solving. Like the bond was a variable she had already decided to eliminate. I should respect that. I do respect it — she has clearly made a decision and I am not the kind of man who ignores decisions. But I am also not the kind of man who ignores facts. And the fact is: she works in this building. Twenty floors below me. And whatever happened to her before — whatever put those walls up, whatever made her look at a mate bond like it was something to survive rather than something to want — I want to know. Marcus appears in the doorway. "Your nine o'clock—" "Pull her file," I say. A pause. "Sir?" "The new hire. Accounting. Maya Adkins." I turn from the window. "I want her file on my desk in ten minutes." Marcus, who has worked for me for six years and has learned not to ask certain questions, simply nods. "And clear my afternoon," I add. "You have the Meridian partners at—" "Clear it." He leaves. I sit down at my desk. I open my laptop. I stare at it for three full minutes without reading a single word. Maya Adkins. New hire. Accounting. Twenty-second floor. The woman who walked into my office felt the bond and spent exactly zero seconds being affected by it before locking it down and asking for a telephone like I was an inconvenient piece of furniture. What happened to you? I think. And who did it?