I Never KNEW MY HUSBAND IS A WEREWOLF ALPHA

Chapter 2:The Paper Trail Of A Predator

The sunrise over North Ridge didn't bring clarity; it only brought a sharper light to the questions Sloane had stayed up all night cataloging. By 7:00 AM, the penthouse was bathed in a cold, sterile gold. Roman was gone. He hadn’t come to bed. He hadn't even left a note. There was only the faint, lingering scent of ozone and expensive cedar in the air, and a single espresso cup sitting rinsed and inverted on the marble counter.

Sloane stood in the kitchen, her reflection in the dark obsidian backsplash looking more like a ghost than a woman who owned half of a billion-dollar empire. Her eyes were rimmed with a faint fatigue, but her mind was humming at a high frequency.

"Patterns," she whispered, her voice sounding small in the vast, open-plan living space. "Focus on the patterns."

In her world—the world of forensic accounting—everything had a digital footprint. You could hide a body, you could burn a ledger, but you could never truly delete the movement of energy. And in the 21st century, energy was money.

She sat down at the mahogany dining table and pulled out her "work" laptop—a high-end machine encrypted with layers of security that even Roman’s IT department didn’t know about. She didn't have an official "agent code" from a government bureau, but she had something better: the administrative backdoors she’d built into Pierce Holdings when she’d helped Roman restructure the firm’s auditing protocols two years ago.

"Let’s see where the money goes when it wants to disappear," she murmured.

She began to bypass the standard firewalls. Her fingers flew across the keys, a blur of practiced precision. She wasn't looking for the millions Roman spent on art or real estate. She was looking for the 'Zero Accounts'—the ones that balanced perfectly at the end of every month but saw massive, erratic spikes in activity every twenty-nine days.

The lunar cycle.

Click. A window popped up. Project: Fenris.

Sloane leaned in, her breath catching. It wasn't a standard investment folder. It was a logistical map. The data didn't show stocks or bonds; it showed coordinates. Dozens of them, scattered across the dense, old-growth forests that bordered the North Ridge district.

"You aren't buying tech startups, Roman," she whispered, scrolling through the entries. "You’re buying land. Thousands of acres of it."

She cross-referenced the coordinates with the $4.2 million she’d seen the night before. Every payment to Lupine Guard and Silverback Management correlated to the purchase of these "Green Zones." To the public, it looked like a massive environmental conservation play. A billionaire CEO trying to offset his carbon footprint.

But the line items beneath the land purchases were what turned her blood to ice.

• Item 304: Medical Grade Grade-S Silver-Free surgical kits.

• Item 412: High-protein biological supplements (Raw/Unprocessed).

• Item 911: Specialized acoustic dampening for 'Holding Cells.'

"Cells?" Sloane’s heart hammered against her ribs.

She stood up, her legs feeling unsteady. This wasn't just a secret hobby or a hidden mistress. This was a paramilitary operation. Her husband wasn't just a CEO; he was the financier for a private army.

She looked toward Roman’s private study—a room that had always been off-limits. Usually, she respected his privacy. It was the foundation of their marriage. But that foundation had cracked the moment his eyes turned gold and his skin healed itself in front of her.

She walked to the heavy oak door. It was locked with a biometric scanner. Sloane hesitated, then reached into the pocket of her silk robe. She pulled out a small, high-tech kit—a legacy of her days auditing high-stakes corporate espionage cases. She didn't need his fingerprint. She needed his heat.

Using a thermal spray, she highlighted the most recently touched areas of the scanner. Roman’s residual heat was still there, glowing faintly. She mapped the pressure points and used a bypass chip to mimic the sequence.

The lock clicked. The door swung open with a heavy, expensive silence.

The study didn't look like a CEO's office. There were no awards on the walls, no photos of him shaking hands with politicians. Instead, the walls were covered in ancient, hand-drawn maps of the North Ridge. The bookshelves were filled with leather-bound volumes in languages she didn't recognize—Latin, Old Norse, and something that looked like runic script.

On the desk sat a single, matte-black laptop. It was open.

Sloane approached it like it was a live bomb. She touched the trackpad. A prompt appeared: ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE.

She froze. She didn't have a code. But she knew Roman. He was a man of deep, hidden sentiment. He didn't use birthdays or anniversaries; those were too easy. He used symbols.

She looked around the room. Her eyes landed on a small, bronze statue on the mantelpiece—a wolf standing over a fallen stag, its head tilted toward a crescent moon. On the base of the statue was an inscription: Vincit qui se vincit. He conquers who conquers himself.

Sloane turned back to the laptop. She didn't type the words. She typed the date Roman had given her that statue—the day he’d proposed to her on the cliffs of North Ridge.

09-21-23.

The screen flickered. ACCESS GRANTED.

Sloane’s breath hitched as she saw the desktop. There were no spreadsheets here. There were live video feeds.

One feed showed a high-tech training facility deep in the woods. Men—massive, broad-shouldered men—were sparring without shirts. They moved with a speed that was physically impossible. Their strikes were loud enough to be picked up by the microphone, sounding like small explosions.

Another feed showed a drone's-eye view of a perimeter fence. At the edge of the frame, a massive dark shape moved through the brush. It was too big to be a dog, too lean to be a bear. It was a wolf, but it stood nearly four feet at the shoulder. Its eyes reflected the drone’s infrared light, glowing with that same, haunting amber she’d seen in Roman’s gaze.

"Oh my god," she whispered, her hands shaking.

Suddenly, a new window popped up on the screen. It was an encrypted messaging app.

USER: GREY_MANTLE: Alpha, the South Pack has crossed the creek. They’ve scented the female. They know she’s in the Tower. Orders?

Sloane’s blood ran cold. The female. She knew instinctively they were talking about her.

USER: ROMAN_P: Move the Enforcers to the lobby. If a single claw touches the glass of that building, I want their heads on the Ridge. I am five minutes out.

Sloane jumped back from the desk, her heart racing so fast she felt dizzy. Five minutes.

She scrambled to close the laptop, her mind a whirlwind of terror and logic. She had to get out of the study. She had to act like she hadn't seen anything. She had to be the "clueless wife" for just a little bit longer until she could process the fact that she was the target in a war between monsters.

She ran out of the study, closing the door just as the chime of the private elevator echoed through the penthouse.

She dove onto the sofa, grabbing a random fashion magazine from the coffee table. Her hands were trembling so violently the pages rattled. She took a deep breath, forcing her heart rate down, using the grounding techniques she used during high-stakes audits.

Five, four, three, two, one.

The elevator doors opened.

Roman stepped out. He didn't look like the disheveled man from last night. He was wearing a fresh navy suit, his hair perfectly combed. He looked every bit the billionaire. But the air around him was different. It was charged. Electric.

He didn't say hello. He walked straight to the center of the room, his head tilted as if he were sniffing the air.

"Sloane," he said. His voice was calm, but there was a sharp edge to it. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"I was just... reading," she said, her voice remarkably steady. She looked up and gave him a faint, practiced smile. "You’re home early. I thought the 'personnel issues' would take all day."

Roman walked toward her. He didn't sit down. He stood over her, his shadow stretching across the floor. He leaned down, his face inches from hers. Sloane didn't flinch. She looked into those dark brown eyes, searching for the amber. It was there, just a tiny sliver around the pupil, vibrating with suppressed rage.

He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers were burning hot.

"The building is under a security lockdown," Roman said softly. "A technical glitch. I don't want you leaving the penthouse today, Sloane. Not for work, not for anything."

"A glitch?" Sloane asked, her forensic mind already cataloging the lie. "Or is it the 'South Pack'?"

The silence that followed was deafening.

Roman’s hand froze against her face. The temperature in the room seemed to spike by ten degrees. The amber in his eyes exploded, flooding the brown until his gaze was entirely gold.

"What did you say?" he growled. The sound was no longer human. It was a deep, guttural rumble that shook the glass windows.

Sloane stood up, meeting his gaze. She was a foot shorter than him, but she stood her ground. "I saw the screen, Roman. I saw the land purchases. I saw the 'Enforcers.' And I saw that someone is coming for me."

She took a step closer, poking him in the chest. "I’m a forensic accountant, remember? I don't do 'glitches.' I do truths. Now, you have exactly sixty seconds to tell me why I’m being hunted by wolves before I start looking for the exit."

Roman stared at her, his chest heaving. For a moment, she thought he might snap. His muscles were coiling under his suit, his fingernails digging into his palms.

Then, he did something she didn't expect.

He laughed. It was a dark, dry sound, filled with a mix of terror and genuine admiration.

"I told the Council you were too smart for this," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "I told them a gilded cage wouldn't hold a woman who hunts secrets for a living."

He stepped back, stripping off his suit jacket and tossing it onto the floor. He began to unbutton his shirt, his eyes never leaving hers.

"You want the truth, Sloane? You want to see the discrepancy in the ledger?"

He ripped the shirt open, and Sloane gasped. His chest was covered in ancient, silver scars—runes carved into his skin that glowed with a faint, blue light.

"The South Pack isn't coming for my money," Roman said, his voice beginning to distort, becoming thicker, heavier. "They’re coming for the Luna. They’re coming for the only thing that makes me human."

Outside, a wolf howled. It wasn't from the woods. It was from the street level, forty-eight floors below.

Sloane looked at the window. A massive, grey wolf was perched on the ledge of the building across the street, its eyes locked on theirs.

"Okay," Sloane said, her brain finally switching from 'Accountant' mode to 'Survivor' mode. She reached out and grabbed Roman’s hand. "We’ll deal with the wolves. But after this? We are going over your payroll, because your 'Security' budget is a disaster."

Roman blinked, the gold in his eyes softening for a split second as he looked at her in shock. "You're... auditing my pack?"

"Somebody has to," Sloane said, a sharp, dangerous smile touching her lips. "Now, show me how you fight."