No one answers Silas.
No one can.
They're all choking under his presence.
The CFO hangs in his grip, heels kicking uselessly against the polished floor, face mottled red with terror. Around the room, executives flatten themselves against walls, tables, instinct, whatever might keep them alive for one more second.
My posture doesn't even shift.
I stand in the middle of the disaster with one practical thought cutting through the chaos:
If he slaughters the executive board, my quarter-end bonus is gone.
I should leave.
Walk to the service elevator. Survive to be a boring data analyst another day.
But Noah's pale face flashes through my mind. The hospital bills. The treatment. The simple fact that if Thorne Group goes under, so do I.
And without Silas Thorne, the trail to my family's killers goes cold.
So I set my tablet down.
Smooth my cheap gray skirt.
Step into the kill zone.
No one notices me.
I'm still furniture.
The closer I get, the worse the heat becomes. It isn't feverish. It's volcanic. The pheromone cloud is frying his nervous system in real time. He's one second away from snapping a neck just to make the pain stop.
I stop beside him.
I don't hesitate.
I reach out and wrap my hand around the wrist choking the CFO.
His skin is scorching.
Mine is cold.
For one suspended beat, the whole room stops.
Silas flinches hard, like I've burned him with ice. His grip loosens. The CFO drops to the carpet, coughing and scrambling backward.
Silas turns on me.
Up close, he is terrifying. Sharp jaw. Hard muscle. Violence stripped of restraint. His crimson gaze drags over my ugly glasses, my tight bun, my dull clothes, then locks onto my face.
I don't let go of his wrist.
A low growl rolls through his chest.
His free hand snaps up and closes around my forearm. He could break bone without trying.
Then he leans down and buries his face against the curve of my neck.
Every conscious wolf in the room goes still.
He takes one deep, ragged breath.
He breathes me in.
And gets nothing.
No fear. No submission. No prey. No predator. Just clean, absolute emptiness in the middle of a sensory storm.
I feel the exact second it registers.
The brutal grip on my arm eases by a fraction. His shoulders lower. His next inhale is deeper. Greedier. He presses closer to my pulse point, drinking in my absence like a man dying of thirst.
"What," he rasps against my collarbone, "are you?"
"I'm payroll-adjacent," I say flatly.
A strangled sound escapes someone on the floor.
Silas goes rigid.
He lifts his head, crimson eyes narrowing as they pin me in place.
Before I can blink, he moves.
My back slams against the frosted glass wall. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, and before I recover, his body cages mine. One arm braces beside my head. The other grips my waist and locks me there.
Heat pours off him, burning through my cheap suit.
He lowers his head to my neck again, inhaling hard, shamelessly, like he can't stop.
The room falls silent except for the rain on the glass and the intimate, terrifying sound of the Alpha King dragging in my absence like air.
Through the fraying edge of his control, a single thought cuts into my mind.
Mine.
My breath catches.
That wasn't spoken.
That was instinct.
Silas pulls back just enough to look at me. The murderous haze in his eyes has sharpened into something colder. More dangerous. He's thinking now, and somehow that is worse.
His thumb presses once against my hip.
"You," he growls, each word vibrating through the space between us, "are staying right here."
Over his shoulder, the surviving board members stare at me like I'm a ghost.
I look up into Silas Thorne's gaze and understand two things at once.
First, my quarter-end bonus is probably safe.
Second, my quiet life is over.