The Alpha's Rejected Mate: His Boss

Chapter 2: The Obsidian Tower

I don't sleep.

I tell myself it's the coffee. Four cups of cold brew before midnight will do that to a person. But the truth sits in my chest like a stone I can't swallow—every time I close my eyes, I feel him. Not a memory. Not a ghost. Him. A presence seventy blocks north, radiating through the mate bond like a low-frequency hum I'd trained myself to ignore.

At 5:47 AM, I stop pretending. I shower in water hot enough to scald the wolf out of my skin. I blow-dry my hair into a sleek curtain that says VP, not prey. I choose my armor: a charcoal Tom Ford suit, tailored sharp enough to draw blood, and heels that turn my five-foot-seven into six feet of don't you dare.

The woman in the mirror looks human. Smells human. The perfume I dab behind each ear costs three hundred dollars and contains enough synthetic pheromones to mask anything wild.

Liar, the wolf whispers.

I ignore her.

Blackwood Tower is uglier up close.

From a distance, it had seemed elegant in its aggression—a dark blade slicing into the Manhattan skyline. But standing at its base, craning my neck to follow the obsidian glass upward until it vanishes into the morning haze, I feel small in a way I haven't since I was eighteen years old, standing before the pack elders with my voice shaking and my heart breaking.

The lobby is all black marble and gold veins, a deliberate imitation of a wolf's den rendered in corporate materials. The receptionist behind the curved desk is bone-thin, bone-blonde, and smiles with teeth that are conspicuously even.

"Ms. Thorne." She doesn't check a list. She doesn't need to. "Sixty-sixth floor. Mr. Blackwood is expecting you."

Of course he is.

The elevator doors slide open with a whisper, and I step inside alone. The walls are mirrored. I watch myself multiply into infinity a hundred Lilas, a thousand, all of them trapped in a box hurtling upward toward a fate they'd spent five years running from.

The scent hits me on the forty-third floor.

Sandalwood. Rain on hot stone. Something underneath that's purely animal, purely him the smell of a predator who has never needed to run because nothing has ever been fast enough to escape him.

My knees lock. My wolf surges against the cage of my ribs, and I have to brace one hand against the mirrored wall to keep from doubling over. The bond ignites like a gas leak meeting a match sudden, consuming, treacherous.

No. No, no, no.

I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper. The pain clears my head. Grounds me in the human. I am Lila Thorne. I am thirty years old. I have a corner office and a 401(k) and I am absolutely not going to let one whiff of alpha pheromones undo five years of carefully constructed self-possession.

The elevator dings.

The doors open.

And there he is.

Caden Blackwood stands at the far end of a corner office that makes mine look like a supply closet. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the city in silver light. The furniture is dark wood and darker leather, understated and obscenely expensive. His desk could seat twelve. I notice all of this in the space between heartbeats, because my brain is desperate to catalogue anything that isn't him.

But him is unavoidable.

He's taller than I remember. Broader. The boy I'd known had been all angles and arrogance, power unshaped and unearned. The man standing before me is something else entirely. His shoulders fill a bespoke navy suit with the casual dominance of someone who has never once questioned his right to take up space. His jaw is sharper. His cheekbones could cut glass. His hair is the same dark mess I remember, but styled now, deliberate in its dishevelment.

And his eyes.

God, his eyes. Gold-flecked amber, the color of autumn leaves trapped in whiskey, and when they lock onto mine from across the room, the entire sixty-sixth floor ceases to exist. The city outside the windows disappears. The ten other executives standing around his desk because of course there are other people here, of course I'm not special enough for a private audience dissolve into background noise.

Those eyes are not surprised to see me.

They are satisfied.

"Ms. Thorne." His voice is lower than I remember. Smoother. It rolls across the room like whiskey poured over ice, and every hair on my arms stands at attention. "How kind of you to arrive early."

I step out of the elevator on legs that feel borrowed. The other executives turn—I recognize a few of them, Sterling & Cochran partners who now wear the hunted expressions of gazelles who've just realized the watering hole belongs to lions. None of them know what I know. None of them understand why their new CEO's nostrils just flared, or why his fingers have tightened almost imperceptibly around the edge of his desk.

None of them smell what I smell.

Mate, my wolf whines, and the sound is so pathetic, so desperate, that I want to slap her. Mate, mate, mate.

"Mr. Blackwood." My voice is steady. I am proud of that steadiness. It is the steadiness of a woman who has spent five years negotiating hostile takeovers and never once let the opposition see her sweat. "I wasn't aware Blackwood Industries made a habit of acquiring firms just to restructure them."

One dark eyebrow lifts. A micro-expression, barely there, but I catch it. I used to read that face like my favorite book. I used to know every flicker of those gold eyes, every twitch of those lips.

"I wasn't aware Sterling & Cochran's junior VPs made a habit of questioning their new CEO's business strategy." He pauses, and the pause is a weapon. "On the first day. Before coffee."

A few of the executives titter nervously. I don't look at them. I can't look away from him.

"You're right," I say, and the concession tastes like broken promises. "My apologies."

"Accepted." He turns to the group, dismissing me with the economy of a man who knows exactly how much power he holds and exactly how little everyone else has. "Ladies and gentlemen, the transition will be comprehensive. I've personally reviewed every senior portfolio. Restructuring will be announced by department. You'll receive individual assignments by end of day."

Individual assignments. The words land on my shoulders like an executioner's blade.

"Dismissed."

The executives scatter. I should scatter with them. I should retreat to the elevator, ride it down to the lobby, walk out of this obsidian monument to everything I left behind, and never look back. I should draft my resignation on my phone in the Uber. I should be in the air by noon.

Instead, my feet stay rooted to the marble floor.

The last executive—a man I vaguely recognize from compliance—casts me a nervous glance as he steps into the elevator. The doors close. The floor empties.

Caden and I are alone.

He doesn't speak immediately. He circles his desk, movements fluid, predatory, and leans against its edge with his arms crossed over his chest. The pose is casual. The eyes are not.

"Five years," he says.

Two words. That's all. But they land like a blade between my ribs.

"Five years," I echo. "And you still can't take a hint."

Something flickers in his expression. Amusement? Anger? I used to be able to tell the difference. Now his face is a language I've forgotten how to read.

"The hint," he says slowly, "was received. Publicly. Thoroughly. You made your position clear." He pushes off the desk and takes a step toward me. Then another. "What you didn't make clear was whether you meant it."

My throat tightens. "I meant it."

"Did you?"

Another step. He's close enough now that I can see the individual threads in his tie, the microscopic shift of his pupils as they dilate. The mate bond is screaming, a chorus of instinct and hunger and closer, closer, closer, and I have to lock my knees against the urge to sway into him.

"I built a life," I say, and my voice cracks on the last word. "I built a human life. A good one. I have a career and an apartment and a—"

"A 401(k)," he finishes. "I know. I read the file."

The file. Of course there's a file. Blackwood Industries probably has files on everyone who's ever breathed in Caden's direction, and mine is likely the thickest of all. The one who got away. The one who ran.

"If you're expecting me to apologize"

"I'm not."

"Then what do you want?"

The question hangs between us, dangerous and raw. His jaw tightens. The gold in his eyes flares brighter, and for a moment, the mask slips. The CEO vanishes. Beneath it, I see the boy I left behind the one who had stood in front of three hundred pack members and watched his fated mate declare him not enough.

The boy whose heart I had broken because I was too afraid to let him break mine first.

"What I want," Caden says, voice dropping to something barely above a growl, "is six months."

I stare at him. "What?"

"Six months. You work for me. Directly. As my executive assistant while I restructure Sterling & Cochran's portfolio." He says it like it's reasonable. Like it's a business proposition and not a life sentence. "When the restructuring is complete, you're free to go. I'll write you a recommendation that will get you a corner office at any firm in the world. I'll even make sure it's in a city without wolves, if that's what you still want."

"And if I refuse?"

His smile is a s***h of white. "Then I'll exercise the non-compete clause in your Sterling & Cochran contract. The one you signed when you made senior VP. The one that says if you leave the firm within eighteen months of an acquisition, you can't work in finance anywhere in North America for two years."

The air leaves my lungs. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

I search his face for the boy I knew. The one who used to trace patterns on my palm when he thought I was sleeping. The one who had whispered forever against my throat, his voice reverent as a prayer.

He's still there. Somewhere. Buried under five years of what I did to him.

"You want revenge," I whisper.

"I want answers." He closes the distance between us. One step. Two. His hand comes up, and I flinch but he only reaches past me, pressing the elevator call button. The doors slide open behind me. "But I'll settle for six months."

His scent wraps around me like a fist. Sandalwood. Rain. Regret.

"Report here tomorrow. 7:00 AM. Don't be late, little wolf."

The nickname undoes me. It's a knife slipped between my ribs, so precise I don't feel the pain until he's already stepped back, already turned away, already dismissed me like I'm just another employee and not the woman whose name is still carved into his bones.

I stumble into the elevator. The doors close.

And for the second time in five years, I run from Caden Blackwood this time without moving my feet.