Wolf in the Glass Tower

The Paper Trail

Clara POV

Sleep had been a stranger to me last night. I had spent the hours in my cramped apartment staring at the ceiling, the silver wolf’s head on my new keycard glowing in the moonlight on my nightstand. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt that phantom prickle on my skin—the same one I’d felt under Emanuel’s gaze.

I was at my desk at Sterling Enterprises by seven-thirty a.m., a fresh coffee in hand. The executive floor was a tomb. It was so quiet I could hear the hum of the HVAC system and the faint, rhythmic ticking of my own heart.

I didn’t mind the silence. Silence was safe. Silence meant I could work without looking over my shoulder.

I pulled up the mountain subsidiary file I’d found yesterday. Branch 04-North. On paper, it was a specialized training facility for high-end security personnel. But the numbers were screaming a different story.

“Three hundred thousand dollars in medical trauma kits? In one quarter?” I whispered to the empty room.

I chewed on the end of my pen, a habit I’d never quite kicked. I began cross-referencing the shipments. It wasn’t just the trauma kits. It was the “specialized dietary requirements.” Thousands of pounds of high-protein, raw animal matter delivered weekly to a facility that supposedly only housed forty security guards.

Unless those forty guards were actually a small army of Olympic athletes with the metabolic rate of hummingbirds, the math didn’t work.

Liars, a voice hissed in the back of my mind. It was that cold, analytical part of me that had survived John Hayes by learning to spot a lie before it was even spoken. My father used to tell me he was “working late” when the bruises on his knuckles suggested he’d been in a bar fight. Sterling Enterprises was doing the same thing, just on a billion-dollar scale.

A sharp click of heels on the mahogany floor made me jump. I instinctively minimized the window and straightened my spine.

A woman stood in my doorway. She was striking—tall, with a lithe, athletic build and platinum blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail so tight it looked painful. She was wearing a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my car, but it was the way she looked at me that made my blood run cold.

It was the look of a queen staring at a cockroach in her throne room.

“You must be the consultant,” she said. Her voice was smooth, cultured, and carried the subtle edge of a razor blade.

“Clara Hayes,” I said, standing up. I tried to project the same professional calm I used when auditing Fortune 500 CEOs. “And you are?”

“Jessy. Mr. Sterling’s executive assistant,” she said, stepping into the office without an invitation. She didn’t offer her hand. Instead, she began walking the perimeter of the room, her eyes scanning my desk, my bag, and finally, me.

She stopped three feet away. Her nostrils flared, a quick, sharp movement that reminded me hauntingly of Emanuel at the front desk. Her expression shifted from professional disdain to something much darker. Something hateful.

“You smell... different,” she murmured, her blue eyes narrowing.

“It’s just shampoo, Jessy,” I shot back, my patience already thin. “I’ve already had this conversation with the lobby security.”

“Emanuel is an i***t,” she snapped, her posture stiffening. “I handle Mr. Sterling’s schedule, his personal affairs, and I monitor his network security. If you want to keep this contract, you stay in this office. You do not wander. You do not dig into files outside of your remit. And you certainly do not try to make yourself at home.”

“I’m here to save this company millions in wasted capital,” I reminded her, keeping my voice level despite the frantic pounding in my chest. “If those restricted files show inefficiencies, I’m going to review them.”

Jessy leaned over my desk, her hands flat on the wood. Up close, I could see a faint, fresh scratch on her jawline. Her eyes seemed to catch the light in an odd way—turning almost silver for a heartbeat, though I told myself it was just the overhead LED panels.

“Roman doesn’t like prying eyes, Clara. And I don’t like you.” She straightened up, smoothing her jacket. “He’ll be back tonight. Don’t be here when he arrives. He’s had a long trip, and the last thing he needs is a human headache waiting for him.”

She turned on her heel and marched out, the scent of her expensive, cold perfume—something floral but unnervingly sharp—lingering in the heavy silence she left behind.

I sank back into my chair, my hands trembling slightly. A human headache? The way she had said ‘human’ sounded like a slur, as if I were a different species entirely.

I turned back to my monitors, but the numbers were blurred. My survival instinct was screaming at me to pack my bag and leave, but the completion bonus was the only thing standing between me and the debt collectors.

I forced myself to stay. I worked through lunch, skipping the cafeteria. I dug into the ‘logistics’ of the northern facility, mapping out the GPS coordinates of their delivery trucks. They weren’t just going to the facility. They were stopping at various points deep in the woods—places where there were no roads, no warehouses, nothing.

By six p.m., the office was dark. The floor was empty again. I was exhausted, my eyes burning from the screen, but I had a map. A map of where Sterling Enterprises was hiding its real operations.

I shoved my notebook into my tote bag, Jessy’s warning echoing in my head. He’ll be back tonight. Don’t be here when he arrives. I wasn’t scared, exactly, but the last thing I wanted was to deal with an exhausted, demanding CEO on my first day, especially when his assistant had made it so clear I wasn’t welcome.

I locked my terminal, slung my bag over my shoulder, and made the long walk down the mahogany hallway to the executive elevators.

I pressed the call button. A soft chime echoed through the silence, and the silver doors immediately began to part.

“...get the med-bay ready for the border teams,” a deep, gravelly voice was saying from inside the car. The sound of it settled straight into my marrow. “Alex, I want the sightings mapped by dawn. We are missing something.”

“I’m on it, Roman,” a familiar voice replied.

The doors slid fully open, and my breath caught in my throat.

Three men were stepping out. I recognized Alex, looking unusually haggard. Next to him was a massive man with a shaved head and a dark scowl who looked like he belonged on a battlefield rather than a corporate floor.

But it was the man in the center who pulled all the oxygen from the air.

He was tall—impossibly so—with shoulders that filled the space. He was wearing a black tactical jacket and dark jeans. There was a smear of dark grime along his sharp jawline, and his knuckles looked bruised, like a soldier returning from a brutal war zone. His hair was ink-black, and even from a few feet away, I could feel the sheer, overwhelming heat radiating off him.

Roman Sterling. My boss.

He stopped dead in his tracks the second the doors opened. He didn’t blink. He just stood there, his broad chest heaving with a sudden, deep inhale.

His eyes locked onto mine. I couldn’t tell exactly what color they were in the dim hallway lighting, but they seemed to glow with a strange, amber intensity that pinned me perfectly in place.

For a second, no one moved. The air between us felt incredibly thick, vibrating with a heavy, electric tension that made me feel like I was drowning and flying all at once.

“Excuse me,” I managed to say, my voice surprisingly steady as I broke the trance and stepped to the side to let them pass. “Just heading out for the night.”

Alex blinked, seemingly shaking himself out of his exhaustion. “Ah. Ms. Hayes. Have a good evening.”

Roman didn’t say a word. His gaze followed me—heavy and burning—as I slipped past them and stepped into the empty elevator car.

I hit the lobby button. As the doors slid shut, sealing me away from that terrifying, amber gaze, my knees finally began to tremble.

Roman POV

Shadow was pacing.

Usually, after a sweep, he was content to doze in the back of my mind while I handled the paperwork. But the second the executive elevator doors began to open on the top floor, he slammed against my consciousness, his hackles up, his claws unsheathed.

The scent hit me like a physical blow.

It wasn’t Jessy’s aggressive perfume or the sterile smell of the office. It was vanilla. It was sweet orange. It was something so clean and intoxicating it made my head spin.

The doors slid open, and there she was.

The most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

She was standing in the hallway, her tote bag clutched in her hand, staring back at me with wide, intelligent eyes.

Scent. Sweet. Ours, Shadow roared, the realization snapping the dormant mate bond instantly into place the second our eyes locked. Mate. In our territory.

I froze, my boots rooted to the floor. Every primal instinct I had screamed at me to close the distance, to pull her against my chest and mark her right there in the hallway. My lungs expanded, dragging in as much of her scent as I could.

“Excuse me,” she said, her voice a soft, steady melody that sent a shudder down my spine. “Just heading out for the night.”

She stepped past me. The sheer force of will it took to let her walk by without grabbing her nearly cracked my ribs. But as she moved closer, a sudden, cold spike of panic pierced through the haze of the mate bond.

The blood.

I had fought in the dirt. I had torn throats out. I was covered in the dried, flaking blood of the rogues, hidden only by the dark fabric of my tactical jacket and the dim lighting of the hallway. I held my breath, my jaw clenched tight enough to shatter teeth, praying she didn’t look down at my stained, bruised knuckles. I prayed she couldn’t smell the metallic stench of death lingering beneath the sweat and pine.

I turned my head, my eyes tracking her every movement as she stepped into the elevator, seemingly oblivious to the horrific violence painted across my skin.

The silver doors slid shut, taking her and that intoxicating scent away.

“Roman? What is it?” Alex’s voice sounded like it was coming from underwater.

“Nothing,” I rasped, though my throat felt like sandpaper. I forced my feet to move toward my own suite before Shadow took the wheel and ripped the elevator doors back open. “Just... tired. Go. I’ll be in my office.”

I shut the heavy doors behind me and leaned my back against the wood, my lungs burning. I had been in the forest for thirty-six hours. I was an Alpha. I was the law in this city.

And yet, I was standing here terrified because of a single look from a human woman. Terrified she would look at me and see the monster I truly was.

“You’re home early.”

Jessy was sitting in the leather chair in front of my desk, her legs crossed, a glass of amber liquid in her hand. She had changed into a silk blouse, but she still smelled like the border—like violence and desperation.

“We finished the sweep,” I said, my voice cold. I moved past her, heading for the private bath attached to the suite. I needed to wash the smell of death off me immediately.

“I met your little human today,” Jessy said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. She stood up, following me to the door of the bathroom. “She’s a mousy thing. Very jumpy. I don’t think she’ll last the week, Roman. She’s already digging into the northern branch files.”

I stopped, my hand on the doorframe. Shadow let out a low, dangerous growl. He didn’t like her tone. He didn’t like her anywhere near our mate.

“She is here to do a job, Jessy,” I said, turning to look at her. My eyes were still fluctuating, the gold of the wolf bleeding into the brown of the man. “Leave her alone.”

Jessy’s expression hardened. She stepped closer, her hand reaching out to touch my arm. “You’re stressed. Let me help you unwind. We don’t have to talk about the business or the rogues.”

I looked at her hand, then back at her face. Usually, I would have accepted the distraction. But tonight, the thought of her touch made my skin crawl. The air in the room felt tainted, crowded. All I wanted was to be alone with the vanilla scent still clinging to my senses.

“Get out, Jessy,” I said. It wasn’t a request. It was a command.

Her jaw tightened, her eyes flashing with a spark of pure, unadulterated jealousy. “Fine. But don’t come crawling to me when that little human breaks your rules. You know how they are. They can’t handle our world.”

She slammed the glass down on the desk and walked out, the scent of her anger nearly as foul as the rogues.

I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower, letting the scalding water beat against my back. As the water turned pink, carrying away the blood and the dirt, I closed my eyes. I didn’t see the border or the bodies.

I saw Clara.

Tomorrow morning, I would have to call her into my office. I would have to sit across from her, scrubbed clean, and pretend I wasn’t a monster fighting the urge to claim her.

Shadow huffed, a dark, expectant sound in my mind.

“She’s human, Shadow,” I muttered into the steam. “She’s just a human. It’s too dangerous.”

We shall see, the wolf replied.