Hers By Moonlight (Femalpha Fatales #1)

Chapter 1

MORGAN

I didn’t ask to become the billionaire CEO of a global pharmaceutical corporation.

I demanded it.

I wouldn’t accept a molecule less than what I deserved, what was mine by birthright, earned through skill.

I don’t give two shits who calls me a bitch, a cunt, a psycho.

People like to say all sorts of things about female alphas.

But they only flaunt their own bruised egos when they try to come after me. So, I let them bark—as long as it’s out of my face, out of my way. They can’t argue with what I’ve built or the command with which I hold it.

I’ve spent fifteen years shaping raw clay into something that will stand the test of time: Artemis Pharmaceuticals.

A global biotech superpower. Our buildings go up in gleaming glass and silver, state-of-the-art labs set into avant-garde architectural art, plastered across the headlines every time we expand.

Journalists like to imply I’ve had it easy, calling me an ‘heir’ to my father’s success in the industry. But I haven’t touched a penny of that bastard’s money since the day I turned eighteen, unlike my ‘self-made’ peers and their ‘small family loans’ worth millions of dollars.

Those journalists didn’t smell the piss outside the front door of our first lab, trudge up to the fourth floor past the broken elevator, spend their weekends scraping the old chemical residue off the floor. Biotech startups were always founding and failing in this town.

They didn’t spend countless hours at the fume hood weighing and stirring and sonicating, sleep on a cot by the kitchenette, or wake up to the spill of dawn light through the dirty windows and start it all over again.

But I did.

And I didn’t need anyone to tell me I’d worked a goddamn miracle.

Still, it’s nice to celebrate. Nice to take a moment to appreciate what I’ve created.

Nice to hear the thunderous roar of applause when the emcee for the evening announces my name.

I walk onto that stage like I own it. Like it was made for me.

I do. It was.

“Thank you, Claire,” I say, taking the microphone from the plump blonde woman. Nobody can warm up a crowd like Claire, with her effusive charm and infectious enthusiasm. Nobody can plan an event like her either, every detail plotted to perfection. I’ll never let that woman quit.

“How are we doing this evening?” I say, letting my eyes flow across the audience as they clap in response.

My people. My company. My pack, adds the beast, quieted though it is by my suppressants. I allow it. I do like thinking of them that way. I would do anything to protect what I’ve created.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that…”

Cheers and whoops break out over another round of applause. It’s the oldest crowd-work trick in the book, but it works.

“That’s better.” Contented smiles alight across the crowd.

You don’t have to be an omega to want to please an alpha, to live for it.

“I’ve got a whole speech prepared, but… Just standing backstage, I was thinking about how this company started.

” My tone’s so natural, nobody will have any idea that this is the speech I prepared.

Rehearsed a dozen times. “A dusty little lab on the fourth floor. Art, when you signed on as employee number two,” I say, addressing Arthur Wilson, a professorial man five years my senior, “did you think you’d be standing here as Chief Science Officer fifteen years later?

I wasn’t even sure we’d make it six months without tearing each other’s throats out. ”

Art is standing right at the front, and he nods as the venue camera pivots to him, capturing his misty-eyed expression.

I continue, “There have been so many times over the years when taking the next step felt… impossible, but we just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I… Oh, sorry, I didn’t think I was going to get emotional.

” I did think. I planned on it. But the tears welling in my eyes and the tightness in my throat are real.

I’d rehearsed this part in my head, knew that as soon as I said the words aloud, the wave of emotion would come.

Sure, there are a million reasons that showing emotion in this precise way works in my favor.

This advantage satisfies the manager in my brain, the one that’s gotten me this far.

But two things can be true. I wanted to save the shake of my breath, the mist in my eyes, for the people who’d earned it.

I made this company, yes. But I didn’t do it alone.

I take a deep breath.

“I knew when I started this company that I had found something critically important. I knew the science was there, and I knew that my discovery had the potential to change millions of lives. But I could not even dream…” My voice wavers.

I let it. “…of finding ten thousand like-minded individuals with the same passion to bring it to life—nearly three thousand of whom work in this very office. It means so much to do this work in the city I call home. You made this dream possible. You put in the hours and the energy. You gave your minds and your hearts when you could have worked anywhere—you are the most talented people I have ever had the pleasure of working alongside. Give yourselves a round of applause.”

The most gratifying thunder yet ripples through the event hall. I lean back. Take a breath. Soak it in. Dab my eyes on the back of my hand, careful not to smear my mascara.

I let the applause naturally soften before I continue. “I think I was supposed to talk about record sales numbers and two new product lines this year, but you all know all about that. You made those things happen. So let me just say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

It was just supposed to be a dramatic pause.

But then the unthinkable happens.

Something distracts me.

The scent is like jasmine, sandalwood, vanilla—sweet and complex. It can only be one thing. An omega.

HR couldn’t have known, couldn’t have warned me—it’s illegal to ask employees their status. And only an alpha or another omega could scent it, and HR has neither.

The beast’s possessive snarl is distant, thanks to the very suppressants that I synthesized in that lab fifteen years ago. The suppressants that still aren’t perfect. There’s so much work left to do.

My eyes find him so easily, primal brain reading the shift of the scent and the air currents of the room. Maybe it’s not even just smell, but the closest thing we have to describe this very specific experience.

He’s in shadow, towards the back, but it doesn’t matter. I find him anyway. Coppery waves flow down around his sweater-wrapped shoulders, bright green eyes clear and wide, spray of freckles across his clean-shaven face.

My pause is too long. Claire determines I must be waiting for more applause, and all it takes is one clap from her hands to send the audience roaring again.

Bless her.

The omega doesn’t move. His hands stay wrapped around his elbows, his eyes wide.

He’s locked in my gaze, frozen.

Like prey.