Chapter Two - Not Worthy
1007 Words
The night he rejected me, I didn't cry.
I think that scared them more than anything else.
* * *
The twenty-second floor is everything the forty-second is not.
Noisy. Bright. People eating lunch at their desks and laughing too loudly and complaining about the coffee machine, which Oliver — my new desk mate, who introduced himself by offering me half his sandwich — informs me has been broken for six months.
"Why doesn't someone report it?" I ask.
"The facilities form is seventeen pages long," he says, with the serenity of a man at peace with injustice. "One of them is a risk assessment for the hazards of your proposed change."
"For a coffee machine."
"For a broken coffee machine," he corrects. "The distinction is important, apparently."
I almost smile. Almost.
It has been four hours since the elevator. Since the wrong floor. Since the bond hit me like a freight train, and I spent the entire ride down to twenty-two talking my wolf off a ledge.
I am fine.
I am completely fine.
"You've gone pale," Oliver observes.
"I'm always this color."
"You went paler, then." He tilts his head. "Was it the forty-second floor? Because I've worked here for two years, and I've never been above thirty-five. What's it like up there?"
"Quiet," I say.
"Did you meet—"
"Oliver." My supervisor, Carla, appears in her office doorway without looking up from her clipboard. "Meridian account."
"On it," he says instantly.
He mouths sorry at me and turns back to his screen.
I turn back to mine.
I open the first reconciliation file.
I do not think about dark eyes and a bond that moves through me like gravity.
I think about numbers.
Numbers have never let me down.
* * *
— Three Years Ago — Silverpine Pack, Oregon —
I was twenty-two on the night of the autumn moon ceremony.
I had been looking forward to it my whole life.
Every wolf knows what the ceremony means — the mate bond, if it exists, will make itself known. The Alpha will feel it first. And if he turns to you — if those silver eyes find yours in the clearing — it means you are chosen. It means you are his, and he is yours, and everything you have ever hoped for is real.
Lucas Vane turned to me.
I felt my heart stop.
I felt the bond — warm and pulling and enormous, the most beautiful thing I had ever felt in my life.
He looked at me for exactly three seconds.
And then he looked away.
"She is not worthy," he said. To the elderly. To everyone. To the two dozen wolves standing in that clearing who had known me my entire life. "I reject this bond."
Twelve seconds.
Seven words.
The bond shattered like glass.
And the clearing went so quiet I could hear the pine needles falling.
I did not cry.
I stood there, and I counted my breaths — one, two, three — and then I walked out of the clearing. I did not run. I did not let my legs shake. I walked, because running would have told everyone watching that he had broken something, and I refused to give him that.
I packed one bag.
I drove south.
I did not stop until the city swallowed me whole.
And I promised myself — on that dark road, with nothing but headlights and distance and the sound of my own breathing — that I would build something so solid, so undeniable, so completely mine that the words not worthy would never be able to find me again.
Three years later, I was doing it.
Three years later, I had almost started to believe it.
And then I pressed the wrong button in an elevator and felt the bond again.
Life,
I think he
Has a very specific sense of humor.
* * *
At six o'clock, I was the last one on the floor.
I have been through three reconciliation files. I found a discrepancy in the second one that the previous analyst had missed for four months. I documented it, cross-referenced it, and flagged it in the system.
Carla, on her way out, stopped at my desk.
"Good catch," she said, looking at my notes. "Keep that up."
High praise, from Carla. Oliver had warned me she was not generous with compliments.
I save my work and reach for my bag.
My phone buzzes.
Internal message. From the forty-second floor.
My hand freezes over my bag.
I stare at the notification.
I should not open it.
I open it.
Ms. Adkins. The Meridian file has been assigned to your team. I believe you'd find the discrepancies interesting. — D.V.
I read it three times.
Then I type back before I can stop myself.
I already found one in the standard reconciliation file. Your previous analyst was missing them for months. — M.A.
Send.
I stare at what I just sent to the CEO of the company.
I already found one.
"Smooth, Maya," I mutter. "Very smooth."
The reply comes in forty seconds.
I know. I've been watching the system. Which is exactly why I assigned you to Meridian. — D.V.
He has been watching the system.
He has been watching my work.
On my first day.
Four hours ago, he felt the bond, and I shut it down and walked away, and apparently, his response to that was to watch my reconciliation work in real time.
I do not know what to do with this man.
I put my phone in my bag and walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby — twenty-two floors down, away from him, away from the bond, away from everything.
But in the elevator, going down, I felt it.
That warmth in my chest.
Low and steady and completely unwelcome.
Present.
Persistent.
Like a fire in a room, I have decided not to enter.
Stop,
I tell it.
It does not stop.
It never does.
- Writer
