ADRIAN'S POV
My wolf is howling inside my head, totally losing control, and all I can think is: I just told my mate I'm going to kill her.
Ella stares at me with those beautiful violet eyes—eyes that have haunted me for three years—and her face drains of all color. My ears are still visible, moving nervously on top of my head. My tail thrashes behind me, knocking over another lamp. I can't turn back. The mate bond is too new, too strong, and my wolf refuses to hide anymore.
"You're going to kill me?" Her voice shakes. "Because I accidentally kissed you?"
"No!" The word comes out as a growl. I force my voice calmer, even though every emotion screams at me to grab her, hold her, never let her go. "I'm not going to kill you. I would never—" I stop, pulling a hand through my hair and accidentally bumping my new ears. "This is exactly what I've been trying to prevent for three years."
"Three years?" She takes a step back. "What are you talking about?"
And there it is. The moment I've feared since the day she walked into my office for her interview.
I should lie. Send her away. Wipe her mind somehow. But my animal won't let me. The bond is complete now, snapped into place the second our lips touched. She's mine, and I'm hers, and there's no going back.
So I tell her the truth I've been hiding since the beginning.
"I knew what you were the moment I met you," I say quietly. My tail finally stops thrashing, falling behind me. "Three years ago. Your interview."
THREE YEARS AGO
I'd been in back-to-back talks all morning, running on two hours of sleep and pure caffeine. David, my Beta and best friend, had scheduled six interviews for a junior marketing job. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be home, sleeping, anywhere but listening to nervous people stutter through rehearsed answers.
The first four names blurred together. Boring. Predictable. Forgettable.
Then Ella Chen walked through my door.
She wore a simple black suit and carried a folder that shook slightly in her hands. Nervous, but trying to hide it. Smart, based on her background. Pretty, though she'd tried to downplay it with minimum makeup and her hair pulled back severely.
None of that mattered the second she sat down.
Her smell hit me like a freight train—vanilla and something wild, something ancient that made my wolf surge forward with one word that changed everything: MATE.
My entire body locked up. Every cell in my body screamed at me to claim her, to mark her, to never let her leave this room. My wolf clawed at my control, demanding I shift, demanding I make her understand she was OURS.
I dug my claws into the arms of my chair so hard the wood cracked.
"Mr. Wolfe?" She tilted her head, confused by my quiet. "Are you alright?"
No. No, I wasn't okay. I'd just found my fated mate, and she was human. Completely, fully, dangerously human.
The Council's law was absolute: humans who found shifter existence were executed. No exceptions. No mercy. It didn't matter if they were mates. It especially didn't matter if they were mates to an Alpha.
My parents had died for breaking that law.
I was fifteen when the Council dragged my father out of our home for "unauthorized contact with human allies." My mother fought them. They killed her in front of me. Then they executed my father in the public square as a message to any other shifters who thought humans could be trusted.
I still have dreams about my mother's screams.
And now fate had given me a human mate. The world had a cruel sense of humor.
I asked Ella three questions during that conversation. I don't remember any of them. I hired her on the spot because my wolf wouldn't let me send her away, and I quickly started planning how to make her quit.
If she quit, she'd be safe. Away from me. Away from the Council's attention. Away from the danger I posed.
I'd spent three years being the worst boss in existence, and I'd hated every second of it.
"You knew?" Ella's voice snaps me back to the present. She looks angry now, not scared. Somehow that's worse. "You've been torturing me for three years because of some magical wolf thing?"
"To protect you!" My voice rises. "The Council kills humans who know about us. I had to keep you at a distance. If you got too close, if you learned what I was—"
"So you made my life miserable instead?" She laughs, but there's no fun in it. "You stole my work. Made me stay late every night. Criticized everything I did. All to protect me?"
"Yes." I sound weak even to myself.
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
"I know."
"You could have just... I don't know... not hired me!"
"My wolf wouldn't let me." And that's the core of the problem, isn't it? From the moment I met her, I've been fighting a losing war against my own instincts. "Shifters can't fight the mate bond. I tried. For three years, I tried to push you away, make you hate me enough to quit. But you never left."
"Because I need this job!" She throws her hands up. "Because I have rent and school loans and a life that requires money! I couldn't just quit because my boss was mean!"
"I'm sorry." The words feel lacking. "I'm so sorry, Ella."
She looks at me for a long moment. My ears fall. My tail tucks between my legs. I probably look ridiculous—a grown Alpha shifter, one of the most powerful beings in the city, brought low by a human woman half his size.
Then Ella does something I don't expect.
She pulls out her phone and takes a picture.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Insurance." She takes three more shots from different angles, capturing my ears, my tail, my glowing eyes. "You said people who know about you die, right? Well, these pictures are my life insurance. I've already moved them to cloud storage. If anything happens to me, they go straight to every news outlet in Seattle."
My wolf perks up with something like pride. Clever mate.
"You're blackmailing me?"
"I'm surviving." She puts her phone away, and despite everything, I see the marketing skill that made me notice her beyond the mate bond. "Here's what's going to happen, Mr. Wolfe. You're going to stop making my life hell. Normal working hours. Proper credit for my work. And maybe—maybe—I won't tell everyone that the CEO of Wolfe Industries is literally a wolf."
I should be angry. Threatened. Instead, my wolf nearly purrs at her dominance display.
"Deal," I say quietly.
"Good." She picks up her laptop from the floor, stepping over spilled files. "And fix whatever's happening to your face. Your teeth are way too sharp."
She walks to the door, hand on the handle, then pauses.
"One more thing," she says without turning around. "What did you mean by 'mate'?"
My heart stops. This is the question I can't answer. The fact that will either save us or destroy us both.
Before I can reply, my office door slams open.
Vivian Steele, my VP of Operations and a fox shifter, stands in the doorway. Her eyes sweep the scene—the scattering files, my visible ears and tail, Ella standing frozen by the door.
"Alpha," Vivian says slowly, her voice dripping with false worry. "Is everything alright? I heard a crash and—"
She stops. Her nostrils flare as she scents the air.
Then her eyes widen with understanding and something far more dangerous: chance.
"Oh my," Vivian smiles, sharp and aggressive. "How very interesting."