Chapter 3

Wendy's POV

"He shook your hand." She pressed her fingers to her mouth. "That's the saddest sentence I've ever heard."

"You set this up," I reminded her. "Ninety-nine of ninety-nine. This one's on you."

"I set up a date, not a wedding!" she whispered furiously. "I pulled his profile like everyone else's. Cassian Vey. Handles acquisitions. Clean record, no fish photos. That's all it said. I figured he was a consultant. I did not think you'd marry him by Tuesday."

"You told me to stop giving up on marriage."

"I meant eventually!"

Cassian came out of the records office then, sliding the certificate into a folder as calmly as if signing his life away were something he did every Tuesday.

"The mating ceremony can wait," he said before I could ask.

I blinked. "You're the one who wanted to marry in a day."

"Marriage can be undone on paper. A bond can't." He met my eyes without flinching. "You should be certain when we make it. Not frightened into it."

I wanted to tell him I was a little of both, and that I'd stopped being able to tell them apart somewhere around the registry. I didn't. I let him hand me the black card instead.

I tried to give it straight back. "I can pay for my own things."

"I know." He closed my fingers over it, unbothered. "Because you're my wife. Not because you owe me anything. Use it or don't. I won't ask you to account for a single dollar."

He nodded to Nell, said he'd see me at the apartment, and left.

The second the elevator doors shut, Nell rounded on me. "Rich. Terrifyingly polite. Won't touch you until you want him to. Wendy—what's the catch? That agency vets applicants. Men like that do not fill out relationship questionnaires."

"You picked him."

"I thought I picked a consultant. That card was blacker than my future. What kind of consultant hands a woman he's known two days a card with no limit?"

"He never told me his pack," I admitted. "I didn't ask."

Nell stared at me. "You married a man and neither of us knows his pack?"

She muttered, "I'm the worst matchmaker alive. I set you up with a mystery."

Neither of us knew how right she was.

His apartment did nothing to solve it. Spare to the point of severity. No photographs. A study off the main room, files ordered like a war table, a door he closed before I could read a label.

He gave me the master bedroom and took the guest room across the hall—as if a wife sleeping behind her own locked door were the most ordinary arrangement in the world.

That night I lay in a stranger's sheets, wrapped in a stranger's silence. I had always been the kind of person who waited faithfully for my alarm to rouse me, yet that morning I woke long before it.

The house was quiet, save for the distant rush of water from the shower. A plated breakfast sat untouched on the kitchen counter. I assumed it was his, laid out before he'd stepped inside the bathroom. My throat tightened at the thought of running into him face-to-face. I grabbed my coat, pulled it on in a hurry, and did not linger. I fled the tense, unfamiliar walls of this house at once.

Somehow, despite everything, I was still expected at my desk by nine. I'd barely shed my coat and settled into my chair when Anne rolled up to my aisle, buzzing with uncontained excitement.

"Did you hear? We got bought. Overnight. The whole company, by an outside pack." She dropped her voice. "And not just anyone. They're saying the new Alpha is from the Crestwood Group. Everyone's wondering if it might actually be the mysterious Alpha who rules the largest group himself—the one the rumors call brutal, with a face too terrifying to show in public or on camera."

"Good for him," I said. "I have a sales report."

Some mysterious Alpha buying the building had as much to do with me as weather in another city.

"Vance." Talia Wade, our temporary supervisor, appeared at my shoulder with her usual look of faint disappointment. "Fix your face and find your spine. The new Alpha CEO walks in within the hour, and I won't have this department embarrassed by a scentless assistant who can't hold eye contact."

"Understood," I said.

"I mean it. Men like him can smell weakness across a room." She smiled thinly. "Well. On most people they can."

I let the insult slide off. I'd had years of practice.

I was still sorting her files when the whole floor went quiet at once. Every wolf turned toward the elevators.

And beneath the toner and the coffee, one scent reached me before I even looked up.

Black cedar. Cold smoke. Rain-soaked stone.

I went cold from the scalp down.

The elevator opened, and the lie died in my throat.

Cassian stepped out, flanked by executives scrambling to keep his pace. He did not scramble for anything. His black suit was cut as sharply as the coat he'd worn yesterday, and the entire floor bent toward him without being told.

"Alpha Vey," someone whispered.

The name passed through the office like a current.

Beside me, Talia breathed, "Oh wow. Is that our new Alpha boss? He's gorgeous."

Cassian's gaze swept across the floor with cool authority. Then it found me.

"This is my first day here," he told the room. "I expect everyone to follow the rules. No exceptions."

His eyes returned to mine.

"Miss Vance. Bring the revised acquisition file to my office."

"Yes, Alpha Vey," I managed.

I turned before my face could betray us both.

I had taken three steps when his voice reached me—low enough that only I could hear.

"Why didn't you eat the breakfast I made?"