THE WEREWOLF CEO’S SECOND ACT

CHAPTER ONE POV: Anabel (Female Lead) The trick to controlling a shift is breathing before you feel the urge, not after. Anabel learned that in the second month, when she was still knocking over furniture and waking up on the floor of her bathroom with her fingers bent at angles that should not have been possible. Now she breathes in cycles of four at the first sign of heat behind her eyes, and the shift stays down like a dog that has been trained but not broken. She does it three times this morning before she even gets out of bed, because today is Tuesday and Tuesdays mean her standing call with Victor. He heads the Crescent Vale pack's administrative office and who cannot make a single budget decision without asking her first. Victor is not incompetent. He is just a man who has run a pack of forty-seven werewolves for twenty years and has never once had to think about an operating expense ratio until Anabel arrived and made him care about one. "You are three thousand over projections on the eastern residence repairs," she tells him, cradling her phone between her ear and shoulder while her coffee brews, "and I need the contractor receipts by Thursday or I cannot close the quarter." "They are coming," Victor says, which means they are not coming. "Victor." "They are almost coming.” She writes herself a note that says 'chase receipts' with two underlines and sets the phone on the counter. Her apartment is small by every standard she used to hold herself to, one bedroom, a kitchen that fits two people only if one of them does not move, and a window that looks out onto a street where a woman sells boiled corn every morning from a red cart. Anabel watches her sometimes between calls. There is something clarifying about watching a person who knows exactly what they are selling and asks an honest price for it. Her phone buzzes again. Not Victor this time. The name on the screen is Sandra, her only real friend from old life, one of the few people who did not quietly distance herself when the board made its announcement and the press made its feast. Sandra texts in full sentences, always,which Anabel has always respected. The message reads: "There is a man named Julian looking for a consultant. He asked two people before he asked me for your name and I gave it because I trust my gut. Do not be angry. Also eat something." Anabel stares at the message for a moment longer than she means to. She has had three consulting requests in the past six months. One was a pack trying to outsource their conflict mediation to someone who would not take sides. One was a paranormal investment group that turned out to want her name on their letterhead more than her actual work. One was genuine and paid well and she took it and finished it in eleven days and the pack elder cried when she presented the final report, which embarrassed both of them.She does not need Julian, whoever he is. She is not in the business of needing things she has not vetted. She pours her coffee and opens her laptop and types his name into the paranormal governance registry, because that is the first place anyone really shows up. Julian. No surname in the search bar. She adds the pharmaceutical flag Sandra's message had mentioned and the registry returns one result. She reads the file twice. Then she reads the organizational structure attached to it, and her coffee goes cold in her hand without her noticing, because whoever built this company understood something that she has only ever seen in her own work, the specific way you weight an internal hierarchy so that it bends without breaking, so that the people at the bottom have enough stability to carry the people at the top without ever being crushed by them. It is not a standard corporate model. It is not a standard pack model either. It is something she would have built, which means whoever Julian is, he has either been in her boardrooms or he has been in her head. She closes the laptop. Open it again then close it. Then she picks up her phone and replies to Sandra. "Send me his contact information." Sandra replies in four seconds with a string of information and then a single line at the bottom that reads: "He already knows you are going to say yes.” Anabel sets the phone face-down on the counter and looks out the window at the woman with the red cart, who is laughing at something a customer said and not trying to hide it at all. Anabel cannot remember the last time she laughed like that, open and unguarded and completely uncalculated, and the memory of not remembering sits in her chest like something with weight. She turns away from the window, picks up her phone, and starts drafting the reply to Julian. She tells herself it is just money. But her wolf, which has not reacted to anything without being provoked in seven months, lifts its head inside her chest and goes so completely still that she stops breathing for three full seconds before she even realizes it. She does not know what that means yet. She will.