Chapter 2 #2
Hawthorne & Vale did not hire omegas because omegas were not worth the trouble. Not morality. Mathematics.
Meridian did not invite outsiders. Not typically.
But here was this beta, stealing from us.
Or trying to give information to my enemies.
Whatever the reason, it would not protect her from my wrath.
She had already committed the most egregious offense.
She lied her way into Meridian Tower. She spied on me, on my pack, on this family. My family. The question was why.
Most liars did it to survive. The truth cost too much. Others lied to steal, and they did it with a smile because stealing was easier when you acted like you belonged. The worst kind lied to do both. They survived by taking, and they took because survival was never enough.
“Pull live footage,” I said.
Elijah obliged immediately, and the wall display shifted from logs to eyes. Floor Seventeen resolved into sharp detail, the camera angle high enough to make the space feel clinical.
Glass-walled offices. Neutral carpet. Rows of desks arranged for productivity, not comfort. The kind of layout that kept people efficient while quietly reminding them they were replaceable.
Containment was not on her suite door. We were not amateurs. We let her stand. Let her shoulder her bag. Let her believe the movement was still hers.
Containment lived where exits lived. At the elevator bank, Meridian’s permissions tightened until her badge became a dead language. The call buttons still lit and performed for the cameras, but the cars did not arrive. The stairwell doors stayed locked.
The lobby outside the elevators became a small mirrored cage that offered her own reflection while it took away her options. Containment always looked polite from the outside. Up close, it was pressure, the kind that made a person aware of their own breathing and how little space they truly had.
I watched her shoulders tighten, then reset, and I respected her for it. I also hated how calm competence made my instincts lean forward.
Meridian called it containment.
Nyx’s monitor had already glowed with the terminal lock notice, white text on a corporate interface that pretended it was only a warning. It was not. It was a boundary being enforced.
Then her phone lit in her hand a MeridianSecure alert.
That app didn’t belong to contractors. It didn’t belong to Hawthorne and Vale at all. It was something Elijah made in his down time and we thrived off it. He had backdoors to catch people who would try to gain company secrets. Once the tripwire engaged, the system treated her like a breach.
“She stayed,” Elijah said. “Two minutes after the lock hit. She didn’t call anyone. She didn’t panic too much. She’s almost methodical as she looks around. Suspicious and trying to find all the exits. Then she started packing.”
I watched her closely. The camera caught the way her shoulders tightened, then reset, the way her eyes moved across the room in clean sweeps, not frantic darts.
The feed was clinical, high-angle, bad lighting. It should have made her ordinary. It did not.
The camera gave me angles it had no right to give. Her coat hung open just enough that I caught the line of her waist and the sway of her hips when she shifted her weight. Not exaggerated, not trying, simply there.
It should not have mattered. It should have stayed clinical.
But something in my body registered her anyway, a quiet, unwanted pull that did not ask permission.
I kept my face still because I shouldn't show interest first. Pack Meridian decided what it would take, and when.
She pulled her hair back, but the texture still told on itself at the edges and nape.
Tight curls patterned there, with baby hairs smoothed with intention.
Her hands moved with certainty, and I saw it again, that combination that made men act stupid. Beauty and backbone in the same body. My chest tightened because my mind did not read her as a neutral woman in a neutral office.
Mine.
The feeling hit, firm and possessive, and I hated how immediate it was. It wasn't a desire I could dismiss as appetite, and it wasn’t romance. Recognition locked me in place. My alpha went still though my mind had not signed off on it.
The distance between us felt wrong so I could not explain without sounding weak, and weakness was a luxury I did not allow. I didn’t know her scent yet, but my body reacted anyway.
My chest tightened into something sharper than hunger, and the word that landed in my bones was not tender.
Claim.
Alpha instinct clicked into place. Mine did not surge loudly. Mine went quiet, and quiet meant permanent. Quiet meant I was already thinking in ownership. Quiet meant I was already deciding what parts of her life I would take first.
The cameras caught her pivoting back to her cubicle with a calm that did not match the situation. Satchel from under the desk. External hard drive shoved inside. Coat on in one smooth motion. Then her hand disappeared into the inside of that coat, fingers working fast and precise.
No wasted movement. No frantic energy. Just a woman sealing evidence to her body and putting a serene expression on her face. Nothing to see here.
Then she walked, not ran, toward the elevator bank, toward the bright mirrored lobby where a woman could look at herself and pretend she was still normal.
She slowed there catching her breath.
She scanned her keycard, pressed the call button, and waited, posture controlled even as she rushed. She checked her phone once, then again, as if timing mattered, then paused long enough to listen, not for footsteps, but for the silence that meant she still had a few seconds to spare.
A knock sounded at my office door. The door opened without waiting.
Jabari Knox stepped inside with the quiet weight of a man who expected violence to be part of his day. He pulled his dreadlocks back. A pale scar cut across his cheekbone. His presence changed the oxygen in the room the way a storm changed the air.
He looked once at the wall display and understood immediately that this was not a corporate inconvenience.
“That her?”
“That is the disruption,” I corrected.
Jabari’s jaw flexed. “She in our building.”
“Floor Seventeen,” I said. “The system already locked her station.”
“If she reached that point,” Jabari said, voice flattening, “She’s either stupid or dangerous.”
“Dangerous,” Elijah replied, without hesitation.
Jabari’s gaze cut to the designation on the file. “Who is she?”
“I’m not sure, not yet,” I said.
The silence between us held its own meaning. If she was an omega, unclaimed, masked, and inside Meridian Tower, she was not merely an HR mistake. She was a containment problem.
An omega could pull instincts out of disciplined men. She could create scent chaos and heat chaos. But Nyx Brooks was a beta on paper. An unassuming woman working beneath my nose. I shouldn’t give a damn about her at all. Yet, I couldn’t draw my eyes away from her either.
So why did this beta call to me?
“Then we end it,” Jabari said, simple as breathing. “Fast.”
It was not cruelty. It was a certainty.
I kept my gaze on the feed as Nyx stood in the elevator lobby, framed by those bright mirrored walls. The satchel strap cut across her shoulder. Her coat was already on. Her posture read controlled, but her eyes kept sweeping, checking the corners, counting the angles.
Then her hand slid into the inside of her coat. Not for comfort. For concealment. Her fingers pressed something deeper into the seam.
That motion told me more than any file ever could. Women did not secure evidence against their skin unless they expected to be searched.
“Retrieve her,” I said.
Not because I enjoyed problems. Because she had already proven she was not a mistake. She was a choice.
Somebody had sent her into my building, or she had sent herself. Either way, she had walked into the teeth of Meridian Tower with a masked scent and a mind sharp enough to find the tripwire on purpose. That meant she had a target, an aim, a reason.
And if she was a snitch, she was not just a breach. She could be leverage. Bait that would bring out the rats among us. I’d use her to send a message.
Still…
I wanted her.
Not in fantasy. In proximity. In my hands. In my space, where I could read the pulse in her throat, the set of her jaw, the way I could imagine her scent fighting its way out when she got scared.
I wanted to know what she looked like when she realized she was not walking out of my tower without leaving something behind.
And I wanted her to realize it too.
Jabari looked at me. “Alive?”
“Alive,” I confirmed. “Unmarked. No blood. No witnesses. No spectacle.”
Alive, because dead women did not answer questions.
Alive, because whoever she was moving for would come looking when she stopped reporting.
Alive, because an omega willing to flatten her scent and walk into an alpha-saturated tower was desperate or disciplined, and I wanted to see which one she was.
I also wanted her alive because I had no interest in losing what I had not even touched yet. Unmarked, because the world did not need a public claim. But inside these walls, in the quiet where only Meridian mattered, my decision had already formed.
Nyx Brooks was going to belong to me.
She just didn’t know it yet.
And neither did the man who thought he sent her.
His mouth tightened. “Women like her don’t go quietly. Not when you try to take ’em.”
“Figure it out,” I said.
Jabari held my stare for a beat, then dipped his head.
Loyalty in Meridian was not an emotion. It was our law.
He turned.
“And Jabari.”
He paused at the door.
“If she is a snitch,” I said evenly, “you don’t indulge your instincts. Not for a second.”
Something old flickered behind his eyes, hunger, violence, control.
“Understood.”
The door shut.
I watched the feed again.
Nyx’s phone lit once more.
The system pushed another message, an escalation layered over the lock notice. Not a polite request. A directive designed to force a decision.
Her posture tightened immediately. She went still, not with fear, but with sharp recognition. Her gaze snapped to the door. Her breathing changed. Her hand tightened around her bag.
Good.
Let her understand. Let her realize she wasn’t dealing with a normal company. Let her feel the shape of the cage before she tried to sprint through it.
If she ran, it would be even better.
In Meridian Tower, running was just another corridor leading deeper into the cage.