Chapter 0005

Aria & Darren

Aria

“M-My apologies, Sir.” The interviewer’s previous haughtiness suddenly seemed gone, replaced by an intense eagerness to leave. “I didn’t know it was you who accepted her application. I would never question the Alpha’s decision.”

That word—Alpha—stuck with me. This was certainly shaping up to be the strangest interview I’d ever attended. What was this place, some kind of weird cult?

“See yourself out,” Darren said dismissively. The interview dipped his head and slipped out without another word.

Darren and I stared at each other in silence for a few moments before I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“You’re the boss around here?”

“Indeed.” Darren circled the desk and took Adam’s seat.

“So you did want to hire me,” I said, standing. Lucas yipped and nuzzled my leg, his large body almost blocking me from the exit.

Darren simply shrugged and gestured to the dog. “As you can see, Lucas is quite… taken with you.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He’s been quite restless since he met you. So just name your price, and I’ll hire you as my full-time nanny.”

“Nanny?” I almost spit the word out—why use such a word in reference to a dog? “The position I applied for was ‘marketing assistant’, not full-time dogsitter.”

The raven-haired CEO’s mismatched eyes seemed to darken a bit at that, but he quickly composed himself.

“You’re not interested?” he asked. “Not even if you could name your own salary?”

“$200,000?” I asked with a smirk, not really expecting him to accept.

Darren merely raised an eyebrow. “That’s all?”

My eyes widened. “You’d pay more than that?” I glanced down at Lucas. “For a dog?”

“My… dog is important to me,” Darren replied simply.

I placed my hands on my hips. “What about upward mobility?” I asked. “I don’t want to be a dogsitter forever.”

“I never said anything about a job in the company. I’m only interested in hiring you as my nanny.”

I paused for a moment, considering as I stared down at the dog. He was still leaning against my leg, wagging his tail as those big mismatched eyes stared up at me. Normally, I would have found it sort of cute and funny that a man like Darren had picked a dog who shared the same eyes as him, but right now I had other things on my mind.

The offer was tempting, to say the least; if Darren didn’t even think that $200,000 was a lot, I could name a salary of a million dollars a year if I wanted, and all just to watch a dog all day. I loved dogs, and it would basically be like taking a vacation year-round.

But money wasn’t everything. I had dreams; I didn’t intend to be a dogsitter for the rest of my life, no matter how much I earned.

Still looking down at the dog, I was suddenly struck with an idea. This dog clearly held a lot of importance in the CEO’s life; perhaps I could use it to my advantage.

“No.” I turned, grabbing my purse off the back of my chair.

Darren raised an eyebrow. “No? You do realize this is the opportunity of a lifetime for a—” His words cut off, as if stopping himself, before he continued, “a person like you.”

I scoffed. “That’s precisely why I’m not interested.” I stuck my chin out at him as I slung my bag over my shoulder. “I may not have a degree, ‘Alpha’, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have dreams. Sure, I couldn’t afford college, but those factors were outside of my control, and it doesn’t make me any less deserving of a bright future. And even if I had gone to college…”

I gestured around at the office, at him, at the dog that he insisted on treating like a human.

“This is all a little weird, and I’m not entirely convinced that you’re not some kind of low-key cult leader who would expect me to treat you like an Alpha male. So unless this is a real job with benefits and a chance for advancement, I’m not interested.”

Before Darren could respond, I turned on my heel and made for the door.

But I couldn’t leave.

Because the dog suddenly leapt into the doorway and howled, blocking my way.

Darren

“Cult leader,” she had said.

I almost scoffed. If only the human knew the truth…

“Please, Dad,” Lucas whined through our Mindlink. “Please don’t let Mommy go…”

“She’s a human, Lucas; not your Mommy. How many times do I have to tell you?”

I was growing frustrated at this point. Ever since my son had seen Aria in the park, he had insisted that she was his mother. I chalked it up to wishful thinking, of course, but it was getting a bit ridiculous.

Lucas whined again in protest, his furry body blocking the door.

Aria whirled to face me, green eyes flashing. They were tilted up ever so slightly at the outer corners, giving her an almost fox-like appearance—temptingly pretty, if she weren’t just a human.

“Your dog is blocking my way,” she growled, planting her hands on her hips. “Have you trained him to keep women against their will?”

“Tell her I’m not a dog! I’m a boy!”

“No, Lucas. She can’t know.”

As far as the human knew, my son really was just a dog—a big one, perhaps, but just a regular dog. Little did she know what he really was. What we all were here at Lunar Labs.

Werewolves.

“Lucas,” I said out loud, “come. Let the lady go.”

“No!” he protested, which came out as another howl. It took all of my effort not to howl back at him.

When my son didn’t move, Aria scoffed and tried to edge around him, grumbling something about cults and weirdos. Lucas, of course, blocked her way.

Truthfully, I wanted to let the human go; I didn’t appreciate the way she’d kissed me last night, no matter how tempting her lips were against mine. Likely that was exactly why my son was so obsessed with her—she still smelled faintly of me, and it confused him.

And I knew what she was doing; she wanted a real position here, not just a job as my nanny. And despite being uneducated, she was no dummy. She could tell that Lucas held a lot of bargaining power, although she didn’t know exactly why, and was essentially calling me on my bluff.

“Alpha, if I may.” My Beta, Liam’s, voice suddenly came through our Mindlink. “Perhaps you should acquiesce; you could use the help with Lucas, and you know how hard it is to find a nanny that he doesn’t scare off.”

I resisted the urge to sigh out loud. “But she’s manipulating me. She doesn’t know her place.”

“Think about all the business trips.”

My Beta’s words gave me pause. He was right; I was a workaholic, and was often away on business. No one—not my assistants, not Liam, not any of the nannies who I hired over the years—could handle my son.

But this… this human, for whatever reason, could.

“He’s going to shift into his human form for the first time soon,” I thought to Liam then. “She’ll find out what we really are. You know as well as I do how important it is to hide our existence from the humans.”

I felt a slight shudder go down the pack bond at that. It was true; over the centuries, my people had suffered at the hands of humans who had discovered our true nature. Ultimately, we had decided to pass ourselves off as humans ourselves, letting the humans believe that werewolves were simply myths meant to scare children.

That was precisely why my company, along with every other werewolf company in the world, refused to hire humans. And it was why our pack lands were kept hidden with magical wards and spells to keep humans away and oblivious.

Finally, Liam replied, “We can always… ‘take care’ of her. Just as we have done with other humans who found out about us.”

“No.” The very thought made my stomach twist. “No. Just… Ensure that no one in the company discloses any werewolf-related matters to her. I’ll figure out some sort of explanation for when he shifts, if she even lasts that long—let her believe that the dog died and that he’s my long-lost son. But no one is getting killed.”

“Very well, Alpha.”

“Ahem.”

The sound of Aria clearing her throat snapped me out of the Mindlink. I blinked, almost having forgotten she was there. Lucas still stood behind her, whimpering miserably.

“Fine,” I said, standing. “You can have an internship in the company to start; if you work hard, maybe you’ll get a full-time job. But in the meantime, I’m hiring you only as my nanny.”

To my surprise, the human girl’s face lit up. I glanced away, cursing inwardly at my body’s reaction to her beauty. She certainly was ambitious, wasn’t she?

I just hoped that our little secret would remain just that—a secret.