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I proceeded to sign in and pull up my appointments for the day before emailing the schedule to the minor journalists and personal assistants on this floor.
“I see now,” he announced.
It was a struggle to keep my expression impassive as I glanced up at him. I mustered as much disinterest as I could manage.
“You’re another one of his lessons. Anothertest.”
My brows furrowed in confusion. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, dollface.” The endearment might as well have been an insult by the way disgust dripped off his words. “Did he tell you to seduce me? To do anything in your power to fuck me?”
I couldn’t help my indignant gasp even if I wanted to.
He laughed. “So, that’s what you are, another one of daddy’s little tests. Awhore.”
My cheeks heated at the derogatory term. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I shot back. He made no sense to me. “Is this how you talk to everyone? Like they’re scum on your shoe?”
I snapped, rising from my chair to stare down at him. In my heels, I had two inches on him, and the rush of satisfaction that swelled within me as he slightly tilted his head to look up at me made me giddy. I’d show this asshole a whore if that’s what he thought I was.
“I don’t,” he answered calmly. “Only those whoarescum on my shoe get treated like they’re scum on my shoe.”
His gaze was like hot coals as he dragged it along the length of my body. “You look good,” he said absently. It took a herculean effort to hide my shock. “But guess what? You can dress trash up all you like, but there’s no getting rid of that stink,darling.”
I almost reached across the space between us and slapped him in his pretty fucking face. My knuckles had whitened with the force of my grip on the desk. I didn’t give a fuck if he was new or not, I wasn’t letting any coworker speak to me like that. I would be going to HR later today to file a complaint, my pride be damned.
“Anyway,” he said, stepping back from the desk—when had we gotten so close? “telldaddy dearestnot to waste his time. I wouldn’t touch you if you were both a virginandthe last female on this shithole planet.”
With those confusing parting words, he stalked off, and I collapsed into my chair with a frustrated huff.
My wolf, meanwhile, preened beneath his attention. I wanted to shake her violently, to smack some sense into her!
His words burned through me in the silence that followed, and repressed shame warmed my cheeks. He thought I was a whore his father had sent to “test” him, which made no sense to me. Who the fuck was his father, anyway?
The days after that were a different kind of hell. Every time I convinced myself to go to HR to file a complaint against him, I chickened out, too afraid to draw attention to myself. I endured his childish bullying, letting his words dig themselves deeper and deeper beneath my skin until I could dissociate to another place when in his presence.
Some days, I imagined he was a better person, one able to knock me off my path of permanent celibacy. On other days, I imagined roasting him over an open fire like a pig, alive and screaming as I danced to the sound of his agony.
3
DISCOVERED
Aria
Working with him did not get easier. In a way, it actually got worse.
The initial sharp words and underhanded insults stopped, giving way to him simply pretending I didn’t exist. And he seemed to be familiar with quite a few other employees, since some who had previously paid no attention to me now went out of their way to sneer at me, or roll their eyes when I spoke. Some even openly expressed their dislike for me.
At the very least, after a week of him ignoring me plus me avoiding him and his friends, I settled into a routine that sucked all the joy out of working at AMH.
I didn't realize how much the things he’d said to me—even though they made no sense—had affected me, but it shined a new light on the way half of my bloodline was treated by the rest of the supernatural world. Fallen-blood wolves had drawn the proverbial short stick when it came to genetics, not even being able to control their own shifts and instead being at the mercy of the full moon.
Descendants of a race of angels who chose to run from their punishment instead of begging for forgiveness, we—well, half of me—were cursed to be outcasts in present society. Not just from humans, but from other supernatural beings, and even our own kind.
The constant anxiety that swelled in me each time I stepped into the double doors of AMH, the way I tried to shrink myself in the hopes that he would continue to ignore me, praying that he wouldn’t suddenly change his mind and decide the verbal warfare was more satisfying than pretending I wasn’t there… These things made enjoying my job, even writing and posting, difficult. The excitement of meeting some of my favorite journalists couldn’t even take me out of my funk.
My few weeks of comfort had obviously come to an abrupt end. Still, I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of seeing me weak, despite our temporary truce.
I just wish he wasn’t so nice to look at. Or that his scent didn’t turn my wolf into a damn hussy.
