Chapter 16 Ray
Ray
Ismell him before the elevator doors open.
That's new. I'm standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator and I catch it — warm, sweet, layered — and I know Miles is on the other side of those doors before they slide apart. He steps out, coffee in hand, suit immaculate, and his eyes flick to mine for half a second before looking away.
"Garcia." He doesn't break stride. "The Crane financials need updating before Thursday's session. I want the revisions by noon."
"Morning to you too," I say to his back as he passes.
He doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. The faint trace of his scent lingers in the air after he's gone and I lean toward it, which is embarrassing and also not something I'm doing on purpose.
I take the elevator up and go to my desk and start working on the financials and I track him.
That's the only word for it. I know where he is — in his office, thirty feet down the hall, behind a closed door — the same way you can feel where the sun is on a cloudy day.
Not seeing it, just knowing. When he gets up and walks to the break room, the distance shifts. When he comes back, my chest settles.
I don't know what's happening to me. I've been attracted to Miles since the day I started this job.
That's not new. What's new is this — this constant, low-grade pull that has nothing to do with wanting to fuck him and everything to do with needing him NEAR.
When he's close, I'm calm. When he's not, there's a buzzing under my skin that won't stop.
At nine-fifteen, I'm at the copy machine when Marcus Thorne turns the corner and heads toward Miles's office.
Thorne is sixty, silver-haired, one of the founding partners.
He's walking down the hall to talk to Miles about a filing and my body moves before my brain engages.
I step into the hallway. Not blocking it — I'm not that far gone — but positioning myself between Thorne and Miles's door.
My shoulders square. My chin lifts. My scent spikes — that peppery sharpness that happens when I'm agitated.
Thorne gives me a mild, confused look as he passes. "Garcia."
"Mr. Thorne." My voice is normal. The rest of me is not normal. I just tried to block a sixty-year-old founding partner from walking down a hallway because he was heading toward my omega.
My omega. There it is again.
I go back to the copy machine and I stand there with my hands on the tray and I think: I am really, really losing it.
The morning goes normal on the surface. I finish the financials, draft a memo on the phasing structure, answer three emails from Whitaker's paralegal who has opinions about everything.
The case is close to done — maybe another week of revisions and we file.
The work is good. I'm good at the work, which still surprises me sometimes.
At ten, Miles calls a working session in the conference room. Me, him, and two junior associates who are handling the document review. Glass walls. The whole floor can see us.
We spread the deal documents across the table and start working through the outstanding issues.
Miles is sharp — sharper than usual, running on coffee and the focused energy that means he's stressed but channeling it.
He talks through the regulatory timeline and I follow his logic and catch a gap he missed in the filing sequence.
"The state filing has to precede the federal submission," I say. "If we flip the order, Whitaker's going to flag it and we lose a week."
Miles looks at the documents. Looks at me. "You're right. Fix it."
He says it without hesitation. No bristle, no correction, no "I'll look into it." Just acceptance. Six weeks ago he would have made me justify the catch, then taken credit for it. Now he just nods and moves on, and the ease of that — the trust it implies — is visible to anyone watching.
Park is watching. The junior associate has been stealing glances for the last twenty minutes, his eyes tracking between me and Miles with the careful attention of someone who senses a story.
When Miles accepts my correction without pushback, Park's eyebrows lift and he exchanges a look with the other associate — just a flicker, just a second — before they both stare at their laptops.
I'm hyperaware of it. The proximity. Miles's knee is six inches from mine under the table and the heat of him radiates across the gap and his scent is filling the glass room and it's happening again — the settling, the calm of being near him.
My breathing slows. My shoulders drop. The restless buzz dies.
This room has glass walls. The entire floor can see us. And I am sitting here visibly relaxed and comfortable next to my boss in a way that no legal assistant in the history of this firm has ever been with a senior associate.
He reaches for a document at the same time I do.
Our fingers brush. It's nothing — a fraction of a second of skin contact — and my whole arm lights up.
Not sexually. Something deeper. Something that wants to grab his hand and hold it in front of these associates and the glass walls and the entire firm.
I pull my hand back. Miles doesn't look at me. But his jaw is tight and the hand that touched mine curls into a fist on the table before he forces it flat.
He feels it too. Whatever this is, he feels it too.
Park definitely saw that. I catch his eyes one more time as we're packing up and his expression holds a knowing that's not malicious, just... aware. The kind of look that becomes a comment in the break room, that becomes a joke between associates, that becomes a rumor that reaches the wrong person.
After the session, I'm at my desk when I see Miles through his office window.
He's on the phone and his expression is doing what it does when he's pretending to be calm while his blood pressure spikes — flat, rigid posture, one hand pressed flat on the desk.
He says something I can't hear and hangs up.
He stares at his computer. Then he opens an email and reads it and his face goes white.
Not angry white. Scared white. The color drains from his jaw first, then his cheeks, and his hand on the mouse goes completely still. He reads it again, slower, and I watch his throat move as he swallows.
I know what it's about without seeing it.
Jennifer Albright has been circling closer for days — walking past our floor, stopping by the receptionist's desk, sending Miles a "quick question" email last week about conference travel receipts that Miles described as "routine" in a voice that meant the opposite.
Miles closes the email. He sits there for a second and his shoulders are rigid and his breathing is controlled in the way that means he's forcing it to be controlled.
Then he catches me watching through the glass and his expression locks down — the ice, the armor, the wall snapping back into place with an almost audible click.
He gives me a look that says stop staring and turns his monitor so I can't see the screen.
I stop staring. I go back to my desk and I sit there and every instinct is screaming at me to go to him, to stand between him and whatever's in that email, to put myself in front of the threat the way I did with the bellhop at the resort.
The urge is so strong my legs actually tense, ready to stand, and I have to grip the armrests of my chair to stay seated.
This isn't normal. I've never felt like this about anyone. I've had hookups and flings and casual things and none of them made me do this — this constant, low-frequency broadcast of mine, protect, fix that I can't turn off.
I pick up my phone during lunch and call Devon.
"Hey." Devon sounds tired. Gabriel babbles in the background. "What's up?"
"Can I ask you something weird?"
"Weirder than the time you asked me if it was normal to—"
"Different kind of weird." I lean against the wall of the stairwell where no one can hear me. "Something's happening to me. Physically. And I don't know what it is."
Devon's quiet for a second. "You sick?"
"No, it's — okay, this is going to sound crazy.
" I rub my face. "I can smell Miles from like three rooms away now.
Like, through walls. And when he's not near me I get this — restless feeling, like something's wrong, and it goes away when he comes back.
And this morning I almost physically blocked Marcus Thorne from walking into his office and the guy was just saying hello. "
Devon is quiet for longer this time. Long enough that I check if the call dropped.
"Dev?"
"Ray." His voice is different. Careful. "When Alex and I were — before the bite. Before we were bonded. My body started doing something similar. I could track him by scent. I'd get anxious when he wasn't around. I growled at our landlord once for knocking on the door too loud."
"Okay..."
"It's pre-bonding." He says it simply, like he's telling me the weather. "Your body is starting the bonding process. Before the bite, before either of you decides anything. Your alpha has chosen a mate."
I stare at the concrete wall of the stairwell.
"That's — that can't be right. We haven't — there's no bite. We're not—"
"You don't need a bite for the process to start. The bite completes it. Makes it permanent and mutual. But the alpha body can start on its own if the attachment is strong enough." Devon pauses. "How long have you been sleeping together?"
"Dev—"
"How long?"
"Since the conference. So... a few weeks."
"And the symptoms started when?"
"I don't know. A week ago? Maybe longer. I wasn't paying attention."