POV: Lina
If someone had told me that one day I would walk through the front door of Noir with a Council badge, I would have thought two things: one, that I had finally been promoted; two, that something had gone very wrong.
The lobby is unrecognizable. It always smells of expensive coffee and discreet perfume; today it smells of anxiety, cameras, and people who charge a lot for meetings. There are vampires disguised as lawyers, alphas in suits, humans too well dressed to be hiding anything. And in the middle of it all, Aurora, in a black jacket, walking as if she weren't about to sit in the wrong chair.
I'm half a step behind her and Dante. The "Noir representative" thing is almost a joke. The air parts when he walks by, as if the building remembers who's in charge here.
"Is there still time to fake an anxiety attack and go back to my cubicle?" I whisper to Aurora.
"If you fake it, they'll give you unpaid leave," she murmurs. "We'd better go in now."
