Chapter One

Aria’s POV

"You have five minutes, Miss Blackwood. Don't waste them."

That was the first thing Damien Cross said to me.

Not good morning. Not welcome. Five minutes, as though three years of my life could be compressed into a countdown.

I smoothed my blazer with trembling hands and walked to the front of the boardroom. Twelve people sat around the mahogany table, all of them in suits that cost more than my rent. I was wearing my best outfit — a navy blazer I'd bought from a clearance rack two winters ago and pressed so many times the fabric was starting to thin at the elbows.

I didn't belong here. Every face in that room told me so.

But I had my designs. And my designs were brilliant. I knew that much.

I set up my laptop, connected it to the projector, and pulled up the first slide. Cross Tower. Three years of calculations, revisions, sleepless nights, and skipped meals. I had poured everything into this proposal, because if Cross Industries accepted it, my career would finally begin.

I looked up to check the projector angle — and I saw him.

Damien Cross sat at the head of the table, arms folded, jaw set. He was exactly what the internet said he was: tall even seated, dark-haired, with the kind of cold authority that made grown men look at the floor. He wasn't looking at my slides.

He was looking at me.

And the moment our eyes met, something happened that I had no word for.

It hit me like a wave — warm and deep and terrifying. My wolf, the quiet presence I had spent my whole life barely understanding, surged forward with a recognition so violent it almost knocked me off my feet. My chest tightened. The air between us felt charged, electric, alive.

Mate.

The word rose in my chest before I could stop it. I didn't understand it then — not fully. I had no pack, no family to explain these things to me. I had grown up alone, an orphan raised by a quiet, reserved man named Thomas Blackwood who never once spoke of wolf traditions or bloodlines. I had only vague instincts and half-remembered dreams.

But that word landed in me like a stone dropped into still water.

I blinked and looked away. So did he.

I began my presentation.

I talked about structural innovation, sustainable materials, the way natural light could move through a building like breath. I talked about the rooftop design that would make Cross Tower the most photographed skyline feature in the Pacific Northwest. I had rehearsed every word a hundred times. My voice stayed steady.

But my hands didn't.

Every few seconds, I felt his eyes on me. When I glanced up, he was always looking somewhere else — his phone, a document, the window. But the pull was there, constant and insistent, like a string tied between my ribs and his chest, tugging every time he shifted in his seat.

I told myself I was imagining it.

When I finished, there was a moment of silence. One of the board members began to nod. I saw another lean toward his colleague with something that looked like approval.

Then Damien Cross spoke.

"That's it?"

I blinked. "Sir?"

"These designs." He didn't look up from the page he was holding. "They're amateur. The load distribution on the east wing is impractical, the rooftop concept is indulgent, and the sustainability model reads like a college thesis, not a professional proposal." He set the page down. "I expected better from any firm worth our time. Clearly, the bar needs raising."

Silence.

Twelve pairs of eyes moved from him to me.

I stood there with my slides still on the screen and felt the heat rush to the back of my neck. I wanted to argue. I wanted to pull up the structural data and walk him through every calculation line by line, because I knew — I knew — this design was sound. I had had it reviewed twice by engineers I trusted.

But no one in that room spoke. No one pushed back. And I understood in that moment that Damien Cross was not the kind of man people argued with in public.

"Thank you for your time," I managed.

I closed my laptop and gathered my things with hands that had gone numb.

I was almost at the door when I heard his voice again.

"Miss Blackwood."

I stopped.

"My office. Fifteen minutes."

He kept me waiting for twenty.

His office was on the top floor, all glass and steel and cold afternoon light. When he finally walked in, he didn't sit. He stood near the window with his back to me for a long moment, as though deciding something.

Then he turned.

"You felt it," he said. "In the boardroom."

My throat tightened. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do." His voice was flat. "You're my fated mate. Your wolf recognized mine the moment you walked in."

I said nothing. Because he was right, and we both knew it.

He crossed his arms and looked at me the way someone looks at a problem they've already decided to discard.

"I'm going to be direct with you. I'm rejecting the bond. You are not someone I can be associated with — not professionally, not personally. You have no pack, no name, no standing. You are too ordinary for what my position requires."

He reached into his jacket and set an envelope on the desk between us.

"There is enough in there for a fresh start somewhere else. Take it, disappear, and tell no one about this."

I looked up at him. His hands, I noticed, were shaking.

"Keep your money," I said quietly. "And remember this moment, Damien Cross."

I picked up my bag and walked to the door.

"Because the day will come when you beg me to take you back."