The Interview

Three years later.

The coffee in my hand had gone cold twenty minutes ago, but I barely noticed.

I stood outside the Blackwood Industries tower, staring up at sixty floors of glass and steel that pierced the gray morning sky. The building was a monument to power. To wealth. To everything I had learned to survive without.

And today, I was going to walk inside and ask for a job.

I adjusted the collar of my secondhand blazer and checked my reflection in the revolving door. Not bad. The woman staring back at me was not the trembling Omega who had crawled through the mud three years ago. This woman had sharp eyes. A straight spine. Calluses on her hands from working double shifts at a diner, and a GED she'd earned at twenty years old.

This woman was nobody's victim.

Not anymore.

"Clara Vance," I whispered to myself, the way I did every morning. "You survived. Now you thrive."

I pushed through the revolving door.

The lobby was a cathedral of corporate ambition. Marble floors polished to a mirror shine. A reception desk the size of a small car. And everywhere, the scent of expensive perfume, nervous sweat, and—I inhaled deeper—wolf.

My senses, dulled from years of suppressing my wolf, prickled to life.

There were wolves here. Not many, but enough. High-ranking ones, judging by the faint pressure of their auras. I quickly masked my own scent—a trick I'd learned from a homeless witch in exchange for a hot meal. To any wolf, I would smell completely human.

That was the point.

I walked to the reception desk, where a blonde woman with a frozen smile looked me up and down.

"Name?" she asked, clearly unimpressed.

"Clara Vance. I have a ten o'clock interview for the executive assistant position."

She tapped her keyboard, then frowned. "Your resume says you have no college degree and no corporate experience."

"I learn fast."

Her frown deepened. "Ms. Vance, this position typically receives applications from candidates with Ivy League MBAs."

"And yet," I said calmly, "someone still called me for an interview. So here I am."

She stared at me for a long moment, then pressed a button on her phone. "Security, please escort Ms. Vance to the sixtieth floor."

The sixtieth floor. The executive suite.

My heart skipped, but I kept my face neutral.

A guard led me to an elevator with brushed gold doors. He swiped a card, pressed a button, and stepped back. "Good luck," he muttered. "You'll need it."

The elevator rose so fast my ears popped.

When the doors opened, I stepped into a world of black marble and floor-to-ceiling windows. The city sprawled below like a map of lights and shadows. And behind a massive desk, a woman with razor-cut black hair and cold gray eyes waited for me.

"Ms. Vance," she said, not rising. "I'm Victoria Ashworth, Chief of Staff. Sit."

I sat.

She slid a folder across the desk. Inside was a non-disclosure agreement, a contract of employment, and a single sheet of paper with two bullet points.

"Before we begin, you need to understand what you're applying for," Victoria said. "Mr. Blackwood is… particular."

"I've heard rumors."

"Whatever you've heard, multiply it by ten." She leaned back. "The last three assistants quit within a week. One of them was hospitalized."

I kept my expression neutral. "What happened?"

"She surprised him."

A chill ran down my spine. "Surprised him how?"

Victoria's eyes flickered—something ancient and predatory behind the gray. "Ms. Vance, I'm going to be honest with you. Your resume is a joke. You're underqualified, undereducated, and frankly, you don't belong in this building."

"Then why am I here?"

"Because Mr. Blackwood personally selected your application."

The air left my lungs. "He… what?"

"He doesn't know I'm telling you this. He reviewed over two hundred candidates and circled yours. When I asked why, he said—" she glanced at a sticky note on her desk, "—'She's the only one who didn't lie.'"

I blinked.

"Your resume says you worked at a diner for three years. No gaps. No fancy titles. No exaggerated achievements." Victoria almost smiled. "Mr. Blackwood hates liars more than he hates incompetence."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

"There's one more thing," Victoria continued. "Mr. Blackwood doesn't know you're coming. He fired the last assistant yesterday, and he hasn't approved any replacements. You're going to walk into his office, introduce yourself, and hope he doesn't throw you out the window."

"That's… not reassuring."

"Welcome to Blackwood Industries."

She stood. I stood. She led me down a hallway so silent I could hear my own heartbeat. At the end of the hall was a door. Solid oak. No nameplate. No window.

"Good luck," Victoria said. And she walked away.

I stared at the door.

For a moment, I was back in the pack house, surrounded by sneering wolves, watching Derek reject me in front of everyone. My hands trembled. My wolf stirred—not with fear, but with something else.

Courage.

I knocked.

No answer.

I knocked again.

A voice came from inside. Low. Rough. Angry.

"Go away."

I opened the door.

The office was enormous—twice the size of my entire apartment. A wall of windows showed the city drowning in morning fog. Bookshelves lined one wall, stuffed with leather-bound volumes. A fireplace crackled in the corner, even though it was September.

And behind a desk larger than my first car sat a man.

He was beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful. Dangerous. Unpredictable. His dark hair was disheveled, as if he'd been running his hands through it. His suit jacket was tossed over a chair, and his white shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing forearms corded with muscle.

He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at his computer screen, his jaw tight, his eyes—when he finally looked up—burning with a fury that made me want to step back.

His eyes were the color of whiskey. But for just a fraction of a second, I saw something else beneath them.

A flash of gold.

My wolf went absolutely still.

Then she screamed.

Mate.

No. No, no, no.

The man—Alistair Blackwood, the CEO, the billionaire, the most powerful wolf in the city—was staring at me with the same expression of horrified recognition.

His nostrils flared. His hands gripped the edge of his desk until his knuckles went white.

"You," he breathed.

My heart pounded so hard I could taste blood. "Mr. Blackwood—"

"You're a wolf."

"I'm not—"

"Don't lie to me." He stood. He was tall. So tall. And the golden light in his eyes grew brighter, more intense. "I can smell you. Omega. Weak. Pathetic. What are you doing in my office?"

The words were arrows. Omega. Weak. Pathetic. The same words Derek had used. The same words that had broken me three years ago.

But I was not the same woman.

I lifted my chin. "I'm your new assistant. And I don't care if you're a billionaire or an Alpha or the King of England. You will not speak to me like that."

He went very still.

The temperature in the room dropped.

"You have five seconds to explain," he said, his voice dangerously quiet, "why I shouldn't throw you out of that window."

I looked at the window. Sixty floors down.

I looked back at him.

"Because I'm the only candidate who will last more than a week," I said. "And you know it."

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Then Alistair Blackwood laughed.

It was not a pleasant sound. It was cold. Sharp. And utterly humorless.

"You're either very brave," he said, walking around the desk toward me, "or very stupid."

"I've been called both."

He stopped inches from me. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body. Close enough that my wolf whimpered with longing.

Close enough to see the golden ring around his irises—the mark of an Alpha who had not shifted in too long.

"You have no idea what you've walked into," he murmured.

"Try me."

His eyes dropped to my throat. To the place where my mate mark had once been. Something flickered across his face—surprise, then anger, then something I couldn't name.

"Someone rejected you," he said.

I flinched.

"Who?"

"That's none of your business."

"It is now." He circled me like a predator sizing up prey. "You're my mate. The Goddess bound you to me the moment you walked through that door. And I refuse to be tied to a reject."

The word hit like a slap.

I had heard it before. From Derek. From Lydia. From every wolf who had ever looked down on me.

But hearing it from him—from my second-chance mate—was a different kind of pain.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Then reject me," I said quietly. "Right now. Get it over with."

He stopped circling.

"Do it," I challenged. "Tell everyone I'm not good enough. Throw me away like everyone else. I've survived it once. I'll survive it again."

Alistair's jaw tightened. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

But he didn't speak the words.

He couldn't.

Because for all his coldness, for all his cruelty, the mate bond was a two-way street. Rejecting me would hurt him just as much as it would hurt me.

And Alistair Blackwood was not a man who enjoyed pain.

"You start tomorrow," he said finally, his voice flat. "Seven AM. Don't be late. Don't be stupid. And stay out of my sight."

He turned his back on me.

I stood there for a moment, trembling, my wolf howling with joy and despair in equal measure.

Then I walked out of his office, closed the door behind me, and leaned against the wall until my knees stopped shaking.