Chapter 6

Victor is elated. He is glad that wolves have evolved out of their ears and tails, a hallmark of the past millennia. The Alpha is sure if he had a tail, it’d be wagging really hard right now.

“-I want to upgrade. Earn my keep. I can be like a roommate. I’m actually not the worst person to live with,” Ariadne continues. “I can make you a richer man if you pull me off chauffeur duty.”

Victor would let Ariadne stay even if she ate all the ice cream and walked around in fuzzy slippers every day. In fact, that would be the ideal situation. If Ariadne wanted to work for him, really work for him, that was another beast.

“What exactly can you do?” Victor asks.

Ariadne seems surprised at Victor’s response, like the chance given to her is actually precious. “I know what I am and what everyone sees me as. An albino Omega female is a trophy, a fucking w*ore for the highest buyer. I’m not just a hole to f*ck-”

Whatever this Omega has been through has colored her thinking. Victor is already contemplating a thousand ways to uncolor it.

“I can be useful in other ways,” Ariadne continues. “I’m good with numbers. I have a photographic memory. I can speak English, Mandarin, Jap-”

The Omega is a genius. Victor already knew.

“I can’t put you on the top,” the Alpha clarifies. “If you want to work, you have to start at the bottom. There are old ledgers from the past five years. You can look at those first. What do you think?”

Ariadne nods and flashes Victor a wide, gummy smile. She looks stunning like that. It makes the Alpha lightheaded.

“That’s great,” Ariadne says enthusiastically, “thank you.”

Victor imagines kissing her, how her lips would taste, how her hair would feel in between his fingers. But he doesn’t move. The Alpha is adamant against making Ariadne an object of pleasure, to be used for a few moments and thrown away when it’s convenient. That’s despicable. The wolf in him sees Ariadne as something more. It brews in his belly and fills him up with dangerous thoughts.

What if Ariadne is the one? What if Ariadne is supposed to be his bonded mate?

That’s ridiculous though. Nathan’s situation is rare, one in ten thousand.

“Alright, let’s head over to the Head Quatres then,” Victor signals. “Let me just get dressed first.”

“You look kinda cute like that,” Ariadne comments, eyes on her own bagel. “Much less like a pretentious douchebag and more like a lived-in house husband.”

Victor doesn’t hear that as an insult. He only hears the words, “cute” and “husband”. The Alpha quivers a little before he turns around to groom himself. Living with Ariadne is not going to be a picnic. It is probably going to require a lot of cold showers.

But Victor is delighted all the same.

When the two arrive at the Head Quarters, Calvin and Waylon are already gone. The Betas are expectedly trying to manage Arlo's fallout. Dustin has been more than happy to play courtship, which only serves to red-flag him more. Alpha Dustin is dangerous. Victor has no delusions about that fact.

Victor leads Ariadne up from the basement to the main floor. It’s an off-white room filled with a series of desks. There’s one desk with about sixty binders on it, huge three-ringed tomes. They’d been sitting there for Calvin to look at for the past two months.

“This is the last five years of ledgers. Go through it, find me any discrepancies,” Victor asks.

Ariadne sits down immediately, looking buried by the amount of work. “Got it.”

Victor settles down on the opposite desk, opens his laptop, and starts the day’s events.

But it’s hard to focus. Ariadne is there, scratching away happily, filling the room with her sweet mint vanilla scent. Victor has to open a window just to let it pump in some clean air.

Ariadne looks up from her desk at the action. “Warm?”

Victor isn’t warm. It’s already a bit on the chilly side of the room. He just wants to wash out the smell and focus.

“Are you cold?” Victor grits his teeth.

“A little,” Ariadne murmurs.

Victor sighs and closes the window.

“It’s me isn’t it?” Ariadne says after a while. “You can smell me. I’m sorry.”

The Omega’s scent is so strong, more so than usual. It’s like Victor is in a forest filled with only mint and vanilla foliage.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Victor mutters, filling in conversation points.

Ariadne twists her head to the side, showcasing her scent glands. For a second, Victor thinks that Ariadne is presenting, which does things to his body, violent things.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Ariadne frowns. “But the gland is going into overdrive. Just look.”

The Omega presses her fingers against the gland and they come away shiny and wet. She is producing enough hormone to actually coat her fingers.

“That can’t be normal right,” Ariadne continues. “Maybe I need to see a doctor.”

It is normal. Just probably not normal for the Omega. There’s a process that wolves usually go through after moving into a new house. It happens after a few days when the wolf's comfortable in their surroundings. The wolf’s scent gland would start to go into overdrive so that it can scent the place, and mark off its territory.

Ariadne has probably never felt safe enough to do such a thing. It’s terrible.

“It’s called Denning,” Victor explains. “You’re denning.”

Ariadne’s eyes widen with realization, and she flushes bright pink, “O-Oh.”

Victor watches with fascination, amusement, and a little bit of empathic embarrassment. Ariadne is, again, struggling with her wolf. Denning means that she is happy and comfortable with Victor's place, and wants to mark it off with her scent. Ariadne would never say such words, but the actions speak so loud.

“It’s normal,” Victor says after a few minutes of watching Ariadne's inner turmoil. “Some people even start Denning if they really like a hotel room.”

“Oh,” Ariadne mutters. “That’s good I guess.”

Victor watches Ariadne dab her gland with napkins every hour or so, as she works on the ledgers. Those books on that side of the room must be completely soaked through. Victor wonders how he’s going to be able to walk over there at the end of the day. Even from his desk, the smell is overwhelming. He has to put on a face mask.

From the corner of his eye, he can see Ariadne's neck actually slick with scent. It’s a lost cause.

“Let’s go home,” Victor hums.

Ariadne checks the clock. “It’s only three. I’m halfway done, I can work a bit faster.”

Victor can’t believe it. He thought it would take weeks to look through all the ledgers. The Omega is already half done.

“Let me see,” Victor makes the mistake of saying.

Ariadne picks up the finished binders, as many as she can carry. Then she walks over. The Alpha in him keens, and he makes the slightest of noises, which has Ariadne pausing in mid-step. “Do I really smell that bad?”

Just the opposite. Ariadne smells like heaven.

“No,” Victor says through his mask. “Just bring them over. It’s fine.”

Ariadne places the binders on Victor’s desk. The Alpha’s head is swirling. His eyes start to burn. He must be glowing. He can’t even control it. The Omega catches his stare and actually steps back three paces.

“Are you okay?” Ariadne asks. “Your eyes are-”

“I’m fine,” Victor growls. He can only imagine what he looks like to Ariadne, with luminous demon red eyes.

Victor opens the books, each one has a number on the margin. Ten, twenty, fifteen, ten again.

“What’s this?” Victor cocks his head.

“The discrepancies,” Ariadne clarifies, “This is how much is missing every week. Hundred thousand won, a hundred and fifteen the next week. It’s so little that I think that your betas missed it. But over two and half years, that’s about eighty-five thousand dollars in USD.

To Victor, that’s not a lot of money, barely a decent car. It’s the principle of the matter.

“So, what I’m saying is-” Ariadne begins.

“Someone is stealing from me,” Victor snarls.