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The man stopped his vitriol mid-sentence and looked around for the growling beast. He didn't see me. I was already through the glass doors and heading up the stairs, tracing the scent of the woman who wasn't at home where I'd left her. She'd come to work. She was about to regret disobeying me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NELL

In the last forty-eight hours, I had learned that wolves didn't announce themselves with footsteps the way humans did. It was a change in the air pressure. A swelling of scent, like when incense is lit. A rise in temperature by a few degrees.

I had also learned in the last four hours that there were wolves working in this building.

I had been working at Sterling for ten years. Ten years of conference rooms and client calls and late nights and the indignity of watching James Sterling Jr. present my work as his own. Ten years of knowing every face in this building, every personality, every one who-was-sleeping-with-who and who-was-looking-for-the-exit and who would throw whom under the bus when the quarterly numbers came in soft.

Apparently, this whole time, some of those faces had been wolves. In business clothing. Attending the same Monday morning all-hands and complaining about the same broken coffee machine on the third floor and submitting their expense reports through the same portal as everyone else.

I had not known. I hadn't even known the woman I was closest to in the world was a damn wolf.

What I had known about was the humans who wore wool but would've bitten the hand that was feeding them. Derek Paulson, Senior Vice President of absolutely nothing he claimed to have built, had walked past my open office door for the third time without making eye contact. Patricia Hendricks from Mergers had laughed just a little too loudly at something in the break room the moment I walked in and gone quiet the moment I sat down.

Derek had been at Sterling for two years. He had been mediocre for both of them. He had also, at three separate company functions, cornered one of the interns. He had also hit Reply All and addressed Patricia about how I had been sleeping with not only Sterling Jr., but Sterling Sr. as well.

Patricia had not replied. Didn't matter. The damage had been done years ago. The difference between then and now was that then I had to pretend I didn't hear it. Now I was writing their severance package in twelve-point Times New Roman with great personal satisfaction.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

I didn't startle at Magnus’s growl. I'd been expecting him. My body had known the instant he'd walked into the building. The change in air pressure had necessitated my crossing my legs. The spicy scent of him had me rolling my head around my neck and inhaling deeply before I typed the final paragraph in the severance letters. My nipples went hard as he shut the door behind him, quietly, even though his presence was loud in my office space.

"I'm reorganizing our company to work more efficiently."

His steps stuttered. I wasn't sure if it was at the word our or efficiently. I inhaled again and knew that the man was turned on. Which was hot. If a man had ever said those two words to me in this office, then I definitely would have banged him on my desk.

"I told you it wasn't safe."

"Relax. I came with Addie. She left me with a football team of security."

"You're in a building with a big bull's-eye that has your name on the sign."

"Thank you for that. I didn't realize you'd move so quickly."

Magnus’s jaw worked. I would've sworn he wanted to say something like That's the only thing that moves quickly with me. He just gritted his jaw.

"Want to know what I figured out?"

I walked him through Vantablack R&D. The dormant vessels, the navigation patents, the cold-chain drone capability, the international waters routing that kept the operation entirely outside the visibility of anyone watching conventional shipping lanes. I told him what it could cost to reactivate, how long the integration would take, and what it would move once it was running.

When I stopped, he was quiet for a moment.

"You found this in four hours," he said.

"It was in the subsidiary holdings. Nobody was paying attention to it."

"We've had that company for six years."

I nodded.

"I just made a deal I didn't have to make." He looked at me. Something moved behind his eyes that he shut down before I could get a full picture of it.

But I was getting better at reading the space between what Magnus showed and what Magnus felt. It was a narrow space, and it was getting narrower.

He crossed the room. Not to the chair across from my desk. To my side of it.