Chapter 6
MORGAN
It’s Monday morning, which means I’m in the private gym attached to my office, currently doing my last set of bicep curls.
Usually, I don’t take meetings on Monday mornings. Molly Sykes, chief people officer, informs me that this sets a good example for work-life balance.
But it was Jensen Cox, my chief of sales, who finally convinced me by saying he was sick of hearing all my huffing and clanking on calls. I won’t miss my workouts for anything. I’d laughed, then had Eileen put the hold on my calendar.
Jess Sloan, chief marketing officer, knows the calendar hold doesn’t apply to her. She probably would have ignored it, even if it did. I love that about her. She’s witty, insightful, ruthless. Table stakes for my C-suite.
“How about…” She taps a pen against her precisely contoured lip. Brown hair, brown eyes, beta—but she knows how to make an impression. “‘Tomorrow, today’ and we do a crossover with virtual reality.”
“Hard pass,” I hiss, slowly lowering the weights back onto their stack, priding myself on how quiet the click is when they land. I hate shared gyms, even the expensive ones. Too many men pretend it’s impressive to grunt and slam, eager to show off their horrid form and lack of control.
“I never thought this day would come, Mor, but I think I’m out of ideas.”
“Impossible.” I switch machines to start hamstring lifts.
“I’m blocked up. I can’t get this one idea out of my head, but it’s stupid.”
“Hit me,” I say, clicking the weight one setting higher when the first rep is too easy. The next rep burns. That’s better.
“It’s stupid,” she insists, but she’s not apologizing.
“I’ll enjoy mocking you.”
“Fine. But it’s also impossible. Are there even any omegas that work here? On-site, I mean?”
Most omegas take advantage of remote work opportunities, even with suppressants.
But the beast grumbles happily. I ignore it, then huff, “There’s at least one.”
Jess perks. “Well, okay. Then listen to what I couldn’t stop thinking about when I should have been enjoying my massage.
‘From beginning to end, together.’” She waves her hands as if she can see the words spilling out over a marquee.
She can. Jess’s creative vision is second to none.
“That’s the idea, right? Alpha and Omega side by side?
That should generate a lot of hype for the deal with the state. ”
My big win five years ago was getting our suppressant products deemed medically necessary for any alpha or omega that requested them.
All private insurers cover the drugs now.
But not everyone has private insurance. This deal with the state will unlock millions more in revenue, offering the drugs at a heavy discount to people who never would have paid full price, anyway. Investors are loving it.
But the deal isn’t final yet. Jess is planning a global PR campaign to drum up support and get donations for our lobbying arm.
My father says what I know the other male alphas say: a whole lot of trouble for a little state deal. But male alphas—and execs generally—have trouble stringing more than two logical steps together in a row.
This deal would set the standard for medical access programs nationally. I know of at least six other states carefully watching our bill. If I can win this, it’ll have a domino effect.
So, this PR campaign matters. It really fucking matters.
I settle the weight back down and sigh. “You’re a mad genius, Jess.” She’s right. Nothing would prove how well our suppressants work, how life-changing they can be, better than an unbonded alpha and omega sitting next to each other casually on a stage.
But getting an omega to agree to such a thing… getting that omega to agree…
It has to be him. I got distracted, yes. But I reined myself in. Even screaming and growling, the beast is distant enough to resist. It’s the perfect case in point.
He’s young, attractive, and has a quiet charm. A quintessential omega. Someone for whom our products unlock a normal life.
The investors will eat him up.
“So who’s the omega?” Jess asks. “Are they out?”
“I’m not sure. I scented him on Friday.”
“Oh, okay,” Jess says, nodding along. She’s a beta, so she doesn’t really get it. Doesn’t stop her from being a damn good marketer.
“He’s in the latest new hire class,” I say, pushing upright and toweling off my face and arms. “Pull up the wiki?”
Jess does, then twists around her laptop, showing me the cluster of headshots.
“That’s him,” I say, pointing at those bright green eyes. “Jamie Brennan.”
“Fireside chat with Morgan and Jamie,” Jess says, eyes faraway. “Alpha and omega, from the beginning to the future.”
“Oh, I like that. That’s better than what you said before.”
“That is what I said before,” Jess says, eyes twinkling with a shared knowing.
I let out a deep laugh. “And that’s why I pay you the big bucks.”
“You could pay me more.”
“You need a second yacht?” I tease.
“You have three,” she says, almost whining. “But I kid. My son’s got his heart set on Yale.”
I scoff. “Get him to switch to MIT, and I’ll give you that raise.”
“I’ll work on him,” she says with a wink. She flips her laptop back around and examines Jamie’s photo. “They really are going to be perfect for this… but you said you’re not sure if they’re out?”
“Right. When do you need confirmation by?”
“A month ago. In case you forgot, the PR tour starts Friday. Of this week. But somebody decided last minute that the campaign I’d slaved over for six months was, how did you phrase it? ‘Bland, basic, and utterly unserviceable’?”
I huff a laugh. “What’s my super-special CEO deadline?”
“Hmmm. I can do end of day. Today. But that means I’ll be pulling all-nighters, so you’re adding a hundred K to my RSUs next cycle, got it?”
“Fifty, and you give me until start of business tomorrow.”
“Seventy five and I accept your terms. Final offer.”
“Sixty five,” I insist. Jess locks eyes with me. If I couldn’t be certain from her scent, I might have guessed there was at least some alpha in the woman.
But a smile cracks across her lips. She was expecting sixty.
“Deal,” she says.
“I’ll have him signed by start of business tomorrow,” I repeat, walking over to the fridge and pulling out the fresh protein smoothie Eileen deposited there an hour earlier. I chug down my liquid lunch and head for the showers.
#
Once clean, I step next door to my private office, which dominates the corner of the top floor with the best view.
From the lush emerald trees lining the river to the sparkling azure of the harbor, the city unfurls at my feet—my preferred territory.
Even though I travel the world, there’s a reason I keep coming back to this town.
I hardly notice the stunning azure sky today—there’s something more enticing on my mind. I slide into my leather chair behind the broad, wooden desk, waking my computer and getting to work.
I’m a female CEO and a female alpha, which means I do my fucking research.
The omega’s ClickedIn is fully populated. Good boy, I think, reflecting on how the site has brought me even more value than millions in returns on my angel investment.
I don’t get it, Father had said. Social media has no place in the workplace.
I always run these things by Father. His instincts are predictably wrong. People divulge such valuable information on ClickedIn, especially cocky exec types. I’ve spotted deals months in advance, clocked affairs, poached great talent. But that’s not my current goal.
Jamie Brennan is basically a fresh PhD grad with a year working in QA. That’s suspicious. But then I see an endorsement from an Iris Brennan, clearly his mother, glowing about how he took a gap year to take care of her when she broke her foot. Cute.
As a CEO and alpha, I’m also adept at working backwards from the conclusion that I want. It drives the ops department crazy. I get lectures on data ethics, but since I have no intention of changing my ways, I just stay out of the way when there’s regulatory approval involved.
I need a reason that this employee, very specifically, out of my three thousand local employees, is top pick for this role.
There’s a list of papers on his profile.
I follow them. Promising—he’s got experience working on something quite similar to our main technology.
And he’s new, which means he hasn’t been placed on a project, and it won’t disrupt anything if I borrow him for a month.
He checked “open to some travel” on his application.
That’s every piece I need except for the lynch pin—how to not get sued for singling him out as an omega.
I google Jamie Brennan omega. The top result is a university newspaper article from four years ago, where Jamie gave an interview about being an omega on campus, talking about what he hoped to do when he graduated.
Bingo.
I would say I can’t believe my luck, but I can. I’m just that good—I have a nose for these things.
That’s why I pay me the big bucks.