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Fuck you, Dan Ewen, I thought viciously as I unlocked my car and climbed in, dumping my bag on the passenger seat.

I couldn’t let him get to me. Not this morning. I was starting my new job as IT manager at Goliaths of Wrestling, a secret wrestling organisation for non-humans operating out of the basement of an office building.

Wouldn’t have been my first choice of venue, but whatever. The owner, Holt Hector, had seemed a little eccentric during my interview. After I’d shaken his hand and sat down, he’d swivelled his monitor around to show me an online store selling a bunch of ironing boards and asked, “Which of these would you say is the sexiest?”

And when he’d told me how his business currently operated—still only taking bookings by fucking phone, for god’s sake—I’d been massively underwhelmed. But then he’d offered me the job, and I wanted a new job, so I took it. At least I’d be busy, because Goliaths needed dragging into the twenty-first century.

I tried not to get nervous as I made the drive to my new place of work, but the truth was, I got nervous just like everyone else. I was just good at hiding it. I was considered the ‘cool’ one in my friend group, who Dan fucking Ewen would probably call a bunch of nerds. We played Humandatory together, a game where you roleplayed as humans going about their day-to-day lives.

It was fun, and I didn’t give a shit if other people considered it nerdy. Life was too short to care about what other people thought.

Except I could admit, if only to myself, that it kind of bugged me that Ewen clearly thought I was a total loser. A dweeb. Only because he was such an arrogant asshole, and arrogant assholes annoyed the shit out of me. I’d dealt with enough of them in my life.

When I got to the plain, nondescript office building in an industrial area outside of town, I parked and gave myself a minute to steady my nerves. I’d be fine. It was literally impossible for me to make Goliaths worse, because they were pretty much operating like it was still the eighties.

I grabbed my bag and got out of the car, and when I entered the front lobby, I immediately spotted the guy who’d taken me downstairs for my interview. It was Hector’s assistant—a tall, lanky fae called Larkin with bright pink hair.

He was in his human form like me, leaning against the wall and staring down at his phone. Hiding the nerves still churning in my gut, I shifted the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder and walked toward him.

“Oh hell yeah,” I heard him mutter as I approached. “Made that lightbulb my bitch.”

I cleared my throat when I stopped in front of him. His head lifted, and he blinked blue eyes at me gormlessly for a second before he straightened and pocketed his phone.

“Yo.” He gave me a quick once-over. “Rafe, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Shweet.” He turned and pulled open the door to the back stairwell. “Congrats on joining the team, bro.”

I eyed him as I followed. “Thanks.”

He unlocked the door at the end of the stairwell and gestured me through, then locked it again behind us. At almost the same time, we shifted into our true forms. My skin turned its sickly grey shade, my fingernails grew dark, and my vision adjusted, everything becoming much brighter. I could see the pits and scuff marks on the bare concrete walls, pieces of tape left over from old posters.

“You’ll get your own key,” Larkin told me as we walked down the metal staircase, our footsteps loud and clanging. “So where’d you work before this? Human place?”

“No. Adult film site for supernaturals.”

Larkin almost stumbled on the stairs as he looked over at me quickly with wide eyes. “No shit?”

“Just in the IT department.”

“Yeah, but does that mean you just got to watch porn all day?”

I side-eyed him with a dry, unimpressed look. “No.”

“Hey, does that mean you know Asmo? Assmo Dickus. He’s Susan’s boyfriend.”

I side-eyed him again. I didn’t even know who Susan was, let alone Assmo Dickus. “No. It wasn’t a porn studio. There weren’t any pornstars actually in the office.”

“Oh.” He pouted, then shrugged. “Well, you’ll prob meet Asmo soon anyway.”

I didn’t particularly give a shit about meeting any pornstars, but whatever. “Okay.”

We lapsed into silence as he led me down the corridor, before I sensed him glancing at me as he asked, “Nervous?”

My belly clenched, but I kept my face blank. “No.”

“You’re allowed to be nervous, bro,” he said lightly. “I was nervous as fuck on my first day.”