Wolf in the Glass Tower

The Audit

Clara POV

The Sterling Enterprises building did not feel any more welcoming in the daylight. If anything, the stark morning sun only highlighted how severe and uncompromising the glass monolith truly was.

By eight a.m. on my second day, I was standing outside the heavy mahogany doors of the CEO’s office. My knuckles were white as I gripped my tablet. I hadn’t even had the chance to sit at my desk before Jessy had intercepted me in the hallway, her platinum ponytail swinging like a whip as she delivered the message: Mr. Sterling wants you in his office. Now.

I took a deep, steadying breath, smoothing down my blazer. The memory of our brief encounter at the elevator last night flashed in my mind—the sheer size of him, the dirt on his jaw, and those intense, amber eyes that seemed to burn straight through my defenses. I pushed the memory down. He was just a man. A very powerful, intimidating man, but a man nonetheless. I had dealt with worse.

I pushed the doors open.

Roman Sterling’s office was less of a workspace and more of an empire’s command center. Two walls were made entirely of floor-to-ceiling glass, offering a dizzying, panoramic view of the Seattle skyline and the dark waters of Puget Sound. There were no photographs on the walls, no personal touches. Just sleek, dark wood, black leather, and brushed steel.

Roman was standing by the window, his back to me, looking out over the city.

The bruised, dirty soldier from the elevator was gone. In his place was the billionaire CEO. He wore a perfectly tailored navy suit that stretched across his impossibly broad shoulders, his dark hair neatly styled. But despite the expensive clothes, the dangerous, electric tension I had felt last night was still there. It filled the massive room, pressing against my chest and making it hard to draw a full breath.

“Ms. Hayes,” he said, turning around.

My heart did a painful stutter-step. In the clear morning light, his eyes weren’t the glowing amber I thought I’d seen in the dim hallway. They were a rich, dark brown, sharp and calculating. His jaw was clenched, the sharp lines of his face unreadable.

“Mr. Sterling,” I replied, forcing my voice to remain even. I walked toward the two leather chairs positioned in front of his massive desk but didn’t sit down. “You wanted to see me.”

He didn’t move toward his desk. Instead, he simply watched me. His gaze traced the line of my posture, the tight grip I had on my tablet, and the pulse I knew was fluttering visibly at the base of my throat. As he breathed in, his nostrils flared slightly.

The room smelled incredible—a mix of sharp cedarwood and crushed black pepper. It was his cologne, I assumed, rich and distinctly masculine, and it triggered a sudden, heavy warmth in my stomach.

“Alex tells me you were still logged into the network at six p.m. last night,” Roman finally said, his deep voice carrying a slight rasp. “I don’t pay consultants to burn themselves out on day one.”

“I was cross-referencing anomalies,” I said, lifting my chin. “When the data doesn’t add up, I don’t stop looking until I find the missing variable.”

Roman’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He moved to his desk, sinking into the large leather chair with a fluid, terrifying grace. “And what anomalies did you find in my perfect system, Ms. Hayes?”

I stepped forward, tapping the screen of my tablet to wake it up. I placed it on the desk and slid it toward him.

“Branch 04-North,” I said, keeping my tone strictly professional. “On paper, it’s a high-altitude training facility for your executive security teams. But the supply chain logic is broken. In the last three months, that facility has consumed three hundred thousand dollars in field trauma medical supplies and nearly four tons of raw, high-protein dietary shipments.”

Roman looked at the tablet, his expression completely blank. He didn’t even blink.

“I pulled the GPS tracking logs for the delivery trucks,” I continued, feeling a surge of adrenaline as I laid out the trap. “They aren’t dropping these supplies at the main facility. They are dropping them off-grid, deep in the mountain terrain. So, Mr. Sterling, unless you are running an illegal, off-the-books mercenary militia out of those woods, your managers are bleeding you dry and selling stolen goods on the black market.”

The silence in the office was deafening. The ticking of my watch sounded like a metronome.

Roman slowly lifted his eyes from the tablet to my face. The dark brown of his irises seemed to catch the morning light, flashing with a sudden, brilliant gold that made my breath hitch.

“A private militia,” he repeated, his voice dropping an octave into a low, rumbling vibration.

“It’s the only logical conclusion,” I said, fighting the sudden, terrifying urge to take a step back. “If you want me to optimize this company, I need clearance to audit the northern branch in person. I need to see what they are hiding.”

Roman leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk. The sheer, imposing size of him seemed to eclipse the room. When he spoke, his voice was absolute ice.

“You will do no such thing.”

I blinked, taken aback by the sheer hostility in his tone. “Excuse me?”

“You were hired to optimize our shipping lanes and find tax inefficiencies in our standard logistics, Ms. Hayes,” Roman said coldly. He pushed the tablet back toward me with a single finger. “Branch 04-North is classified. The supplies are part of a specialized wilderness survival program for elite operatives. It is none of your concern.”

“But the numbers—”

“The numbers are exactly what I signed off on,” he interrupted, his voice cracking like a whip. “You are an outside consultant. You do not have the security clearance to question how I run my elite divisions. If you cannot stick to the parameters of your contract, I will have Jessy terminate it and have you escorted from the building.”

My blood ran cold. The threat of termination—of losing the money that would finally free me from my father’s debts—hit me like a physical blow. But the fear was instantly swallowed by a burning, defensive anger.

I recognized this behavior. I recognized the harsh, uncompromising tone of a powerful man trying to intimidate a woman into silence. My father had used that same tone right before he threw a glass at the wall.

I locked my knees, refusing to shrink. I reached out and picked up my tablet, holding his gaze with everything I had.

“Understood, Mr. Sterling,” I said, my voice tight and clipped. “I will stick to the standard logistics. But for the record, if you are bleeding capital to cover up a mess in the mountains, ignoring it won’t make it go away.”

Roman’s jaw ticked. His hands were gripping the edge of his mahogany desk so hard his knuckles were bone-white. For a second, I thought he was going to fire me on the spot.

Instead, he looked away, his jaw rigid. “Get out of my office, Clara.”

It was the first time he had used my first name, and the sound of it on his lips sent a bizarre, unwelcome shiver down my spine. I turned on my heel and walked out, my spine perfectly straight, refusing to let him see how badly my hands were shaking.

Roman POV

The heavy doors clicked shut, but her scent—vanilla, sweet orange, and the sharp tang of her anger—still lingered in the air, driving my wolf absolutely insane.

Mate! Shadow roared in my mind, thrashing against my ribs. Call her back! Beg her forgiveness! Submit!

A low, painful groan escaped my lips. I dropped my head into my hands, my fingers digging into my scalp as I fought the agonizing urge to tear the doors off their hinges, chase her down the hall, and drop to my knees in front of her.

It took every ounce of Alpha control I possessed to stay in my chair.

She is too smart, I thought to my wolf, trying to use logic to calm the beast. One day. She has been here for one day, and she found the pack’s primary supply drops.

Clever mate. Strong mate, Shadow purred proudly, his anger momentarily replaced by deep, primal satisfaction.

“Too clever,” I muttered to the empty room.

I had hired her to fix the human side of the company, to make our cover impenetrable. I hadn’t expected her to immediately zero in on the massive amounts of meat required to feed a pack of three hundred shifting werewolves, or the exorbitant trauma supplies we burned through dealing with rogue attacks.

I leaned back in my chair, staring at the empty space where she had just stood. Clara Hayes. She was breathtakingly beautiful, but it was the fire in her eyes that had nearly undone me. When I had used my Alpha command—the same cold, ruthless tone that made grown men cower—she hadn’t flinched. She had locked her knees, lifted her chin, and looked at me like she wanted to go to war.

She was a human, fragile and oblivious to the monsters lurking in the shadows of this city, yet she possessed the spirit of a Luna.

A sharp knock on the door pulled me from my thoughts. The door cracked open, and Alex stepped inside, closing it quickly behind him. My Beta took one look at my white-knuckled grip on the desk and the glowing gold in my eyes, and he stopped in his tracks.

“Roman?” Alex asked carefully, keeping his voice low. “I just saw the consultant practically storming down the hallway. What happened?”

“She found the northern drops,” I growled, running a hand over my face to try and force my eyes to shift back to human brown. “The meat. The medical kits. She thinks I’m running an illegal human militia out of the mountains.”

Alex’s eyes widened in disbelief. “In twenty-four hours? Our last three financial auditors didn’t catch a single discrepancy in those files.”

“She isn’t our last three auditors. She’s relentless.” I stood up, pacing to the window, needing to move before the restless energy in my muscles tore me apart. “I had to shut her down. I had to threaten her contract to get her to back off.”

“That was a risk,” Alex warned. “If she gets suspicious and goes to the human authorities...”

“She won’t,” I said, though my chest ached at the memory of the cold anger in her eyes. “She needs the money. She’ll stay in her lane for now.”

Alex’s brow furrowed. “How do you know she needs the money?”

“Because I read her full background report before I signed off on her contract,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck. “Her father left her drowning in debt. This completion bonus is her lifeline. She won’t risk losing it.”

Alex sighed, walking over to pour two glasses of bourbon from the crystal decanter on the sidebar. He handed me one. “You look like you’re going to snap a desk in half, Roman. It’s just a human auditor. If she’s too much of a liability, we pay out her contract and send her away.”

I stared at the amber liquid in the glass, Shadow letting out a low, territorial rumble at the mere suggestion of letting her leave.

I looked up at my Beta. “We can’t send her away, Alex.”

“Why not?”

I took a slow, burning sip of the bourbon, letting the heat of the alcohol ground me before I spoke the words that would change everything for the Sterling pack.

“Because the human auditor,” I said quietly, “is my mate.”

The glass in Alex’s hand slipped, shattering against the hardwood floor.