Chapter 5 Heat Rising

1:00 a.m. Rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Darcy rubbed her temples. Her phone buzzed.

Maeve.

She picked up.

"Darcy, you're literally a legend in this whole building! Chloe was in the break room crying her eyes out, telling anyone who'd listen that you're a shiftless waste with no wolf form who just sleeps her way to the top. And then, get this, they revoked her executive access pass! I almost choked on my coffee watching her face!"

Darcy leaned back in her chair, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Let her talk. It doesn't matter."

Maeve's voice softened, the glee fading into something warmer. "But seriously... how's your shoulder doing? And what about the North Barrens? Is your ex-fiancé's pack still hunting for you?"

The North Barrens. Thorne pack. Eight years ago, she'd been branded a "defective who couldn't shift." A worthless Omega with no wolf form, no value, no future. Her own father and the man she'd been promised to had stripped her of her identity and thrown her into a blizzard to die.

"They won't find me." Darcy's voice was quiet, steady. "As long as I stay hidden here, no one knows who I really am."

"Alright, my queen! I'll sneak you a fresh croissant tomorrow morning. Maybe two if I'm feeling generous. Take care of yourself, okay? I mean it."

The call ended. The small, warm presence of her best friend lingered in the silence, a tiny pocket of normalcy in the cold steel cage she'd walked into.

That peace lasted all of three seconds.

A hidden black-market trading window flickered to life in the corner of her screen. And at the top of the page, in stark, merciless lettering:

[North Barrens Hidden Omega File · Active Bounty]

Someone was selling her life.

Cold fury flickered in Darcy's eyes. Her fingers moved to sever the connection.

And then her nape suddenly burned.

A faint, almost imperceptible trace of rain-soaked cedar and agave drifted through the ventilation system.

She realized what it was.

Her heat. Three days early.

Her body was responding to something she hadn't yet allowed herself to acknowledge. Some part of her, deep and primal and beyond reason, was reaching toward that scent like a flower turning toward the sun.

She didn't panic. She couldn't afford to. Her hand moved to the drawer, fingers finding the familiar shape of a suppressant pill. She dry-swallowed it, feeling the chalky scrape of it going down her throat. Three seconds. A sliver of control returned.

BOOM.

The glass door of the risk control office shuddered and slid open with violent force.

Asher stood in the doorway. His suit jacket was torn open, his tie hanging crookedly around his neck. Dark, swollen veins bulged on the backs of his hands and along the side of his throat. And his steel-gray eyes, those cold, calculating eyes she'd seen across boardroom tables and through one-way glass, were blazing with nearly feral golden light.

The high-concentration suppressant had completely failed. Her scent had shattered it like glass against stone.

His footsteps landed on the carpet like iron weights, each one bringing the crushing pressure of an apex Alpha's presence down on her like a collapsing sky. Darcy's legs went weak. Her knees threatened to buckle. The primal instinct to submit screamed through every nerve in her body. But she didn't kneel. She gritted her teeth and held her ground.

Asher's arms slammed down on either side of her head, caging her against the cold wall and his burning chest. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling greedily, desperately, drowning himself in that lethal scent. She could feel his breath hot and ragged against her skin, his entire body trembling with the effort of restraint. His nails were lengthening into claws, his jaw grinding tight as his wolf instincts screamed at him to bite down, to mark, to claim.

Darcy's hand shot out. She grabbed the silver healing salve from her desk and unscrewed the cap. She coated her fingers in the icy gel and pressed them hard against the fresh needle wound on his neck, the puncture mark from his earlier injection.

The freezing liquid seeped into the broken skin.

Asher's whole body jolted violently. The gold in his pupils flickered, contracted, cracked open a sliver of clarity.

"Mr. Kingston." Darcy tipped her chin up, her voice trembling at the edges but refusing to break. "Please. Stay calm. Someone put a bounty on me tonight. If you lose control right now, you're handing them exactly what they want."

Asher stared down at her. His chest heaved against hers, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps. His palms pressed flat against the wall on either side of her head, his knuckles white, his fingers shaking with the strain. For five full seconds, he didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stood there, fighting a war inside his own skin.

Then, slowly, he eased back half an inch. Just enough to create a sliver of space between them. His hand fumbled for his phone, the screen lighting up in the dim room.

[AUCTION ITEM: North Barrens Hidden Omega File]

[BUYER: Kingston_A]

[FINAL BID: 150,000,000 Mana Coins]

The timestamp read two minutes ago. The exact moment she'd been on the phone with Maeve.

Darcy stared at the screen. Her eyes lingered on the words "BUYER: Kingston_A" for three long seconds.

"I bought your bounty file off the black market." His voice was wrecked, scraped raw. "Your life, right now, it's registered under my name. Tomorrow morning, your desk moves into my private lounge. First door on the left. The password is your employee ID. Go. Now."

Darcy slipped sideways out from between his chest and the wall. Her body moved before her mind caught up, legs unsteady but still carrying her forward.

As she passed him, his knuckles brushed against her arm. Featherlight. Barely a touch. But the sensation burned like a struck match, leaving a hot trail across her skin.

She paused at the lounge door. Her hand rested on the handle for just a second. Then she pushed it open and stepped inside.

Just before the door clicked shut, his voice squeezed through the gap. Low. Rough. Almost like he was talking to himself, not to her.

"...Do you have any idea? That suppressant you took. It doesn't work on an Omega in heat. It never has. It never will."

Click.

The lock engaged.

From the other side of the door came a long, ragged exhale, a breath dragged from somewhere deep in his chest. Then slow, heavy footsteps retreating.

The lounge was dark. The only light came from the city glow filtering through the curtains. The air still carried faint traces of cedar and snow pine.

Darcy sat on the edge of the bed, one hand pressed to her chest. Her heart was pounding too fast, too hard. The suppressant hadn't touched it.

Her eyes drifted across the room. And stopped.

The wall above the headboard. Scratches. Deep, chaotic gouges running from the corner all the way to the middle of the wall, a dozen overlapping lines carved into the surface with brutal force. Nail marks. Claw marks. Someone had dragged their fingers across this wall, over and over, fighting something they couldn't control.

She stared at those marks. Her fingers curled slowly into fists at her sides.

Then her gaze dropped to the nightstand. The bottom drawer wasn't closed all the way. A sliver of darkness showing where it had been left slightly ajar. Inside, she could see the edge of a black leather folder.

She reached down and pulled it open.

Inside the folder, there was nothing else. Just a single photograph, yellowed with age.

She picked it up.

The image showed a young girl struggling through a frozen wasteland. Snow everywhere, blinding white. The girl's silhouette was slender, barely visible against the storm, her clothes torn, her posture hunched against the wind. And just below her left shoulder, a stark, unmistakable old scar, visible even in the grainy image.

That was her. Eight years ago. Freshly escaped from the Thorne pack, wounded, bleeding, dragging herself through the blizzard with nothing but the will to survive.

Darcy's fingers went cold. Her breath caught in her throat. She turned the photo over, her heart pounding so hard she could barely hear her own thoughts.

On the back, written in a hand that had aged slightly with time, cold and angular and precise, was a single line:

"Found you."

The date at the bottom read seven years ago.

Darcy's breath stopped. She stared at those two words, her fingers tightening around the edges of the photograph. Seven years. He'd had this photo for seven years. He'd been looking at her, this broken, bleeding girl crawling through the snow, for seven years before she ever set foot in his building. He hadn't bought her file on the black market a few hours ago out of some sudden impulse. Seven years ago, long before she'd ever heard his name, this cold, untouchable tyrant had already been watching her.

The darkness offered no answers.

Darcy stared down at the photograph, at her own battered silhouette against the white wilderness. Every flicker of emotion that rose in her chest was ruthlessly pressed back down, flattened into something cold and unreadable. She ran her thumb along the edge of the photo, then carefully folded it back into the black leather sleeve. She slid the drawer shut.

Click.

A soft sound. The secret slipped back into the shadows where it belonged.

Outside, the night stretched on, thick and endless. The office next door was completely silent. No footsteps. No breathing. Nothing. Only the faint scent of cedar and snow pine, seeping through the gap beneath the door like a ghost.

Darcy closed her eyes. Her exhausted mind, pushed past every limit, surrendered to the darkness within seconds.

She dreamed of the North Barrens. Eight years ago. The blizzard that had nearly killed her. She was dragging her broken body through the snow, blood staining the white behind her, every step a battle against the cold that wanted to swallow her whole. And in the dream, just as she was about to collapse, just as her vision was going black, she saw them. Three pairs of eyes. In the darkness just beyond the storm. Locked onto her.

WHOOSH.

Darcy shot up in bed, gasping. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Cold sweat slicked her forehead and the back of her neck. Her hands shook as she pressed them to her face.

Outside the window, pale morning light was beginning to seep through the curtains.

She looked at her reflection in the dark glass of the window. Cool. Composed. Unreadable. She told herself it was just a nightmare. Just the residue of an exhausted mind playing tricks on her.

She didn't believe it.

But she got up anyway. She had a boardroom to face.