Chapter 1 Dangerous Pressure

"Darcy, get ready."

The PR director dropped a thick stack of files onto Darcy's desk with a heavy thud, rattling the coffee cup on the surface. The sound echoed through the open-plan office, drawing a few glances from nearby cubicles.

The director braced both hands on the edge of her desk, looking down at her with feigned concern. Her eyes swept over Darcy's face, searching for any sign of weakness. "The risk control assessment for this billion-dollar merger, you'll present it to the board on behalf of the PR department. The department has trained you for a full year. This is a rare opportunity to grow. Nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Do a good job. Don't let us down."

Her voice was smooth, almost warm, as if she were offering a promotion rather than a death sentence.

As the words landed, heads popped up from neighboring cubicles. Some coworkers pretended to be busy, suddenly absorbed in their screens. Others let a flicker of schadenfreude slip through their eyes. They knew exactly what that stack of files really was.

Everyone knew. A mess of bad debts and falsified data woven together. Whoever stood up there to present would be nailed to the cross as the scapegoat, their career destroyed, their reputation shattered beyond repair.

Darcy looked up at the director's hypocritical face. She could see the calculation behind that smile, the careful planning that had gone into choosing her as the fall girl.

Eight years of crawling through the undercurrents of the lowest ranks had taught her one thing above all else: hide every sharp edge deep where no one could find it. She had learned to swallow her pride, to bow her head, to make herself small and forgettable. It had kept her alive.

"Understood, Director." Darcy reached out with slender fingers and gathered the heavy files, her voice flat and obedient. The papers felt dense in her hands, thick with the weight of someone else's fraud. "Thank you for the opportunity. I'll stay late tonight and make sure everything is in order."

The director walked away satisfied, her heels clicking against the floor with the confidence of someone who believed their trap was foolproof.

Only when the figure disappeared at the end of the corridor did Darcy slowly unclench her jaw. The muscles in her jaw ached from the effort of keeping her expression neutral. Her fingertip pressed hard against the deliberately altered data on the last few pages, tracing the lines of falsified numbers.

She had kept her head down in Kingston for a full year. She had taken the abuse, the extra work, the dismissive glances from colleagues who saw her as nothing more than a replaceable cog. They thought she was a soft target, someone without connections, without backing, without the spine to fight back.

They had no idea they were handing her the very hammer that would smash them down.

11:30 p.m. The towering Kingston conglomerate headquarters had fallen into dead silence. Most of the lights had gone dark, leaving only the dim glow of emergency lighting along the corridors.

Darcy had finished compiling all the counter-evidence. Her screen had gone dark minutes ago. She gathered the heavy stack of documents and walked quickly to the elevator bank. Her wrists ached from hours of intense keyboard work, a dull throb that radiated up her forearms. The cold air in the corridor cut through her thin work jacket, raising goosebumps along her arms.

A security guard's flashlight beam swept across her. His voice carried the blunt edge of late-night patrol, impatient and gruff. "PR department? Pack it up and head down. The regular elevators shut down ten minutes ago. Building clears at eleven-thirty sharp."

Darcy walked to the CEO's private elevator at the far right. A dim blue indicator light was glowing, the car was stopped on this floor. The only one still running.

"Executive meeting ran late tonight. This one's still running." The guard swiped his card and gestured inside. "Get in. Take it to the first floor and head out through the west exit. Don't dawdle."

Darcy nodded slightly and stepped in, the files hugged tightly to her chest. The weight of them pressed against her ribs.

The heavy alloy doors slid shut behind her, slowly swallowing the hallway light. The silence closed in around her.

But the moment the doors fully sealed, a thick, violent cedar scent crashed down on her, accompanied by an overwhelming sense of pressure. The air in the elevator seemed to condense, growing thick and unbreathable.

The old scar on Darcy's left shoulder, the one that had been dormant for eight years, suddenly flared with searing, jolting pain, as if a white-hot brand had been pressed into it. The pain was so sharp and sudden that her vision swam for a moment.

She sucked in a cold breath, her fingers tightening around the files.

Someone was in the elevator.

In that narrow, cold metal box stood a man of terrifying stature. He leaned against the handrail, dressed in a black tailored suit, radiating the brutal Alpha energy of someone who had just stepped out of a closed-door war room. His presence filled every inch of the small space, pressing against her like a physical weight.

Asher Kingston. The supreme ruler of Kingston.

Darcy retreated to the farthest corner, pressing her back against the cold metal. She instinctively drew her shoulders tight, forcing her breathing to stay light despite the throbbing pain in her old scar. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but she kept her face still, her expression unreadable.

But the atmosphere in the confined space was spiraling out of control at a visible pace.

Asher had been gripping the handrail with white-knuckled force, trying to anchor himself, fighting something she couldn't see. But the moment that faint, elusive scent reached him, like cedar and agave washed clean by a thunderstorm, his entire body jolted violently.

That scent. It overlapped almost perfectly with the memory buried deep in his mind from the North Barrens blizzard twelve years ago. The girl who had saved him. The scent he had never been able to forget.

Runaway desire shattered his restraint.

He released the dented handrail, his grip had actually warped the metal, and lunged toward the corner, his massive frame casting a suffocating shadow.

BANG.

Darcy's back slammed against the cold metal wall. The files scattered across the floor. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs.

Asher's left hand pressed flat against the wall above her head, his body leaning into her with barely contained force. His breathing was ragged, his scorching breath brushing against her sensitive neck. The old scar on her left shoulder throbbed even worse under the proximity of his Alpha presence, burning like fire.

"Don't move."

His voice was hoarse, scraped raw as if dragged across North Barrens gravel. There was barely any control left in it.

The beast inside him was howling. His nails lengthened involuntarily, trembling with the effort of restraint, hovering half an inch from her delicate neck. She could see the struggle in his eyes, the war between instinct and control.

A jolt of electric tension shot down Darcy's spine. Her legs went weak. Her breathing grew shallow. The scar on her shoulder burned hotter under the raging Alpha pressure, sending waves of pain through her entire left side.

But she didn't retreat. She pressed the back of her head against the wall, forced herself to look up, and met his gaze head-on with those clear, defiant amber eyes. Hard-boned. Unyielding. She refused to show fear.

Asher met that cold, stubborn fire in her eyes. Veins bulged across his forehead. His jaw clenched so hard the muscles stood out like cords.

His canines had already pressed hard against his lower lip, and he bit down. Hard.

The moment the taste of blood exploded in his mouth, his hand, which had been about to close around her waist, stopped mid-motion. A low, strangled growl tore from his throat as he used the pain to drag himself back from the edge. Blood dripped from his lip.

Ding.

The elevator reached the first floor.

Asher flinched as if doused in ice water. He used the shock to shove himself backward, stumbling several steps until his back hit the opposite corner. The impact was heavy, his body slamming against the metal.

He leaned against the wall, gasping for air. His dark hair hung messily across his forehead. Blood beaded at the corner of his mouth where he'd bitten through. His dark gold eyes locked onto her from the shadows, wild and dangerous.

"Get your things." His voice was wrecked, barely above a whisper. "Three seconds. Gone."

Darcy pressed a hand to her heaving chest, crouched down, and scooped up the scattered papers. Her hands trembled slightly, but she forced them steady. As she gathered them, her fingertip brushed against his half-retracted claws. Three thin lines of blood welled up across the back of her hand.

She clutched the documents and strode out of the elevator. The heavy alloy doors sealed shut behind her with a soft hiss.

Standing in the night rain, the cold wind cutting through her damp coat, Darcy finally let herself exhale. The breath came out shaky, uneven.

She stood by the lamppost, looking down at the three bleeding scratches on her hand, then glanced back at the towering building looming silently in the rain like a monstrous beast. The lights were dark. The streets were empty.

That brutal, cold-blooded Alpha Lord who held the city's lifeblood in his grip. He had just lost control to that extent in front of her. She had seen the hunger in his eyes, the barely restrained violence. And more than that, why had the scar on her left shoulder, sealed for eight years, suddenly flared with pain at his scent? It had been dormant for so long she'd almost forgotten it existed.

She couldn't make sense of it. But her risk-control instincts immediately flagged the incident as a highest-level threat. A variable she couldn't predict. A danger she hadn't accounted for.

As for the reason, she'd worry about that after she survived nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

Darcy wiped the blood from her hand with the back of her sleeve. The cold rain brought her back to razor-sharp clarity, washing away the lingering shock.

She looked down at the stack of doctored accounts in her arms, her fingers tightening around them. The edges of the paper bit into her palms.

They wanted her to take the fall?

Tomorrow at nine, the director wanted her to bury herself with these false accounts.

She'd make sure he was the one lying in the grave.