Chapter 27

Aria

The CEO strode over to us with quick steps, his gaze stern. Good, I thought, letting out a tiny breath of relief. The cavalry had arrived.

“I… uh… Alph—I mean, Mr. Avarise! I didn’t see you there,” Arthur stammered as he shot to his feet.

Stopping in front of Arthur’s desk, Darren crossed his arms over his chest and glanced back and forth between the two of us. “Is something the matter here?” he asked. “I heard shouting.”

Arthur let out a weak laugh and patted me on the shoulder. It took every ounce of my willpower not to slap his hand, although I did move away before his touch could linger. “Oh, we were just having a laugh, weren’t we?” he chuckled.

Dark eyebrows raised, Darren turned to me. “Is that true? Because Aria here doesn’t seem to be laughing.”

Arthur opened his mouth to say something else, but I spoke up before he could.

“No, we weren’t just ‘having a laugh’,” I snarled, shooting the supervisor a death glare. I held up my ruined flyer. “He crumpled my flyer up and threw it in the garbage with no explanation as to why.”

“N-No! I wasn’t—” Arthur began, but quickly fell silent as Darren raised a hand to stop him.

“I saw the whole exchange, Arthur. I thought I told you to stop bullying our new intern.”

Arthur’s face paled. “I—I wasn’t bullying her. I must have misread the flyer, that’s all,” he said, snatching the crumpled paper out of my hands again.

He studied it for all of two seconds before he smiled thinly and said, “On second thought, it’s actually quite lovely. Nice work, Aria. There is no need for revisions. You can go ahead and print it.”

Darren quirked an eyebrow, as did I. “No revisions?” I blurted out. “But it’s my first draft, and I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Sure, I hadn’t had much experience in a corporate setting, but that didn’t mean that I was dumb enough to think that my first draft would be good enough to print hundreds of copies and post them all over the city.

“Let me see it.” Darren pursed his lips and held out a hand.

Arthur blanched a little more, but handed Darren the flyer with trembling fingers. Darren scanned it for a few moments, humming thoughtfully to himself, before he looked back up at Arthur. His gaze seemed to shoot daggers.

“Now you’re just kissing our asses,” Darren said as he handed the flyer back to me. “This does need work, Aria. A lot of it.”

Surprisingly, my shoulders slumped with relief. All I wanted was to be treated normally—not with severe disdain and not with undeserved reverence. At least Darren seemed to be giving me what I wanted.

“Thank you for your honesty,” I said to Darren, making sure to throw a withering glare in Arthur’s direction. “Do you have any suggestions?”

The CEO sighed and placed his hands on his hips, looking around the office. He spotted Lily, who immediately popped her head up from within her cubicle even though he didn’t call her name out loud.

I had come to find out recently that werewolves could indeed speak telepathically within the same pack, so it didn’t surprise me.

“Yes, boss?” Lily asked, bounding over to us with a cock of her head. She was wearing a yellow cardigan over an orange dress, like a ray of sunshine.

“Lily, I need you to work with Aria on her flyer for the Puppy Playground,” Darren instructed, glancing at his watch as he did so. He turned to me. “Lily is the best when it comes to making graphics. She’ll help you clean it up.”

Lily beamed at me, gesturing for me to follow her to the conference room. I was relieved, not to mention a little satisfied to see Arthur being put in his place.

And as we walked away, Darren didn’t make an attempt to lower his voice as he thoroughly scolded the supervisor. Even Brandon and Melissa cocked their heads to listen to the exchange.

“Dammit, Arthur, I’m not here to do your job for you… Remove three points from your tally immediately!”

…

A little while later, Lily and I were settled in the conference room, two steaming cups of coffee between us. Lily had her digital drawing pad on the table, and was showing me how to make eye-catching graphics.

“Did you know that red and yellow tend to make humans hungry?” she remarked as she worked, her face quickly turning pink at her choice of words. “Er—I mean—people.”

Pretending I didn’t notice her blunder, I nodded and jotted that down in my notebook. “And blue and green tend to facilitate trust, right?”

Lily beamed. “Yes! That’s why government websites and charity organizations tend to use those colors. They want to make hum—people feel at ease.”

“So maybe we should go for a green theme for the flyer,” I said. “It’ll also enhance the outdoorsy feel of the event, especially if we incorporate some trees into the graphic…”

“That’s a great idea! You really have a knack for this, Aria.”

I blushed a little. “Thank you, Lily. That makes me happy to hear.”

As Lily and I worked, I couldn’t help but feel at ease. I never thought I’d find myself saying that I was becoming friends with a werewolf, that was for sure, but Lily was sweet and interesting to talk to.

I wondered if Bella might like her. Surely she’d find Lily’s ‘human’ shtick a little odd, but I had a feeling they’d get along anyway. Maybe I’d invite Lily out for drinks one of these nights.

By lunchtime, we had the next draft of the flyers completed, and they looked much better. We made our way to the breakroom for our lunch break, chatting about details that needed improvement, as well as weekend plans and other things.

“Hey,” Lily suddenly said, her bologna sandwich—which she’d apparently used a cookie cutter to cut into the shape of a bunny—halfway to her mouth. “What’s the deal between you and Mr. Avarise?”

My eyebrows shot up at that. “What do you mean?” I asked, although I couldn’t deny the fact that my heart was beginning to pound a little in response to her implication.

Lily shrugged and took a bite of her sandwich. “It’s just,” she said, her mouth full, “he stepped in with Arthur earlier. Plus he seemed to stand up for you when that Sarah lady was trying to get in the way of your presentation last week. He seems to really care about you.”

I paled a little. “I’m the newbie,” I replied with a nervous laugh. “Maybe he just doesn’t want me to quit right away.”

Lily chewed slowly, thinking deeply. I ate a spoonful of my soup, trying to appear nonchalant despite the butterflies churning in my stomach. Did she know about us being mates, I wondered?

Finally, she shrugged. “I don’t know… he just seems to give you special treatment a lot. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course.”

I swallowed hard and waved my hand in the direction of the whiteboard, where everyone’s point tallies were growing by the day. Even Arthur had been using it, and seemed to be saving up for a vacation.

“Maybe he’s just happy about my points system idea, that’s all.”

“Hm, maybe.” Lily tapped her chin with a purple nail. “But if I didn’t know better, I’d say he has a soft spot for you!”