rachel is a 27 yo data scientist. she is tall, blonde, beautiful, but not flashy or flaunting. she's perfectly content being alone, enjoying her hobbies, her peace. She no longer cares about the judgement of others or feels the need to impress them. she is simply herself, and that is wonderful. She's witty, intelligent, and works at a small company in a small town. Several of the men have crushes on her, but her past relationships have led her to want to be alone for awhile, she's always ended up worse off when she brings a man in her life, and she enjoys her own company more than most people. she feels and thinks deeply. One day, a board of directors from a wealthy comapny comes to visit the ceo of her company, she doesn't see them come in, but she hears whispers about them and their intimidating attractive appearance. no one knows, but the board is secretly a group of shifters. The lead of the board is a 35 yo tall, tan, strong, guy named Avon. He's confident, not cocky, commanding, respected. He has no idea where the scent is coming from but he's sure, it's his mate. One he sees rachel for the frist time, he can't act, he can't let her know. She's human, and he's here on business, no matter how badly he needs to claim her.

Chapter 4: Giggles and Glances

Rachel’s desk was a sanctuary of ordered logic. Three monitors displayed tidy lines of code, a scatter plot of bandwidth usage, and a muted dashboard of system health metrics.Her fingers settled on the keyboard, seeking the familiar topography of the keys. But the tremor in her hands had migrated inward, a low-frequency vibration in her bones.Cyprus.

She hadn’t meant to say it. It was a stereotype, a lazy shorthand for offshore money she’d picked up from a true-crime podcast. But the moment the word had left her lips, the air in that server room hallway had crystallized. His eyes—God, his eyes—had shifted, the brown darkening, flecks of something molten catching the fluorescent light.It wasn’t anger. It was more like she’d flipped a breaker on a dormant reactor.

“And then he just leaned in, like, this close,” a voice chirped from the cluster of desks near the water cooler.Sarah from Accounting.“He smelled incredible. Like, expensive cedar and… danger.”

A lighter, giggling voice followed.“Did you get his name?”

“Avon. That’s all the badge said.Just Avon. Like he’s a prince or something.”

Rachel stared at her screen, the code blurring into a grey stream of gibberish. Avon.The name suited him.Ancient, a little brutal. It didn’t match the modern-cut suit, but it matched the man underneath.She took a deliberate sip of her coffee. It was lukewarm now, bitter.Her phone buzzed.A text from her friend Maya.

> You alive?Did the corporate raiders leave yet?

Rachel typed back, her thumbs hitting the keys with more force than necessary.> One of them just almost ate me in the server hallway.

> …like, metaphorically?> Unclear.She set the phone down, face-up. A lifeline to the normal world.

The work in front of her was mind-numbingly routine: optimizing a data-pull algorithm for marketing. It usually calmed her, this process of making an inefficient system lean and elegant.Today, it felt like trying to knit with barbed wire. Her mind kept looping back to the threshold of the server room, to the sheer physicality of him blocking the light, the intensity of his focus. He hadn’t looked at her like a colleague, or even like a man looking at a woman. He’d looked at her like she was a locked door he needed to break down.And the worst part? A treacherous, long-dormant part of her had wondered, just for a fractured second, what it would be like if he did.

“Ugh, get a grip,” she muttered to herself, pressing the heels of her hands against her closed eyes until she saw starbursts.This was exactly why she avoided… whatever this was. This corrosive, distracting drama.It clouded judgment.It introduced volatile variables.

Across the building, in the pristine silence of the main conference room, Avon was a statue of simmering tension.

The forensic data from Marcus was up on the large screen, a map of financial deceit. The name they’d traced was expected: David Chen, the CFO.It was almost disappointing. Greed was such a pedestrian motive.It should have occupied his entire mind. Instead, it was background noise.

The door clicked open, and a wave of cloying perfume preceded its source: a woman in a pale pink blouse and a smile that was all bright, practiced warmth. Janice from Executive Admin.She’d been flitting around them all morning.“Mr. Avon, I just wanted to check if your team needed anything?” she said, her voice a syrup-sweet chirp. “Lunch arrangements? More coffee?” She moved into the room, her gaze fixed on him with a predatory sort of hospitality.“I could give you a proper tour of the facility. There are some features I’m sure the regular audits miss.”

She was close now, too close. The perfume was a nauseating blanket of gardenias and synthetic musk, smothering the last, fading traces of vanilla and rain that clung to the inside of his senses. His wolf recoiled, a snarl building low in his throat. This human female’s presumption, her attempt to intrude on the space still echoing with his mate’s presence, was an affront.

She reached out, her manicured fingers brushing the sleeve of his suit jacket.It was a lightning strike.

He moved back so fast his chair legs screeched against the floor.The action was violently abrupt, purely instinctive. “Don’t.” The word wasn’t loud. It was a low, guttural command that dropped the temperature in the room by ten degrees.

Janice froze, her hand suspended in the air, her smile cracking at the edges.The cheerful mask slid away, revealing a flicker of genuine fear. She’d seen something in his eyes—a flash of gold, a primal warning—that bypassed all civilized coding.

“My apologies,” he said, forcing the words through a jaw clenched tight enough to ache.He smoothed his sleeve where she’d touched it, a gesture of pure distaste. “We require no assistance. Please close the door on your way out.”

She fled, the door sighing shut behind her with a soft click.Silence rushed back in, heavier now. Leo, lounging at the far end of the table, let out a soft whistle. “Smooth, boss. Very diplomatic.”

“She reeked,” Avon growled, the animal still too close to the surface.He stalked to the window, staring down at the parking lot below. His reflection in the glass was a stark outline of a man holding himself together by sheer will. The human part of him understood the mission: confirm the theft, secure the assets, deliver judgment.It was clean. It was what he was here to do.

But the bond, the newly awakened tether stretching through the halls of this bland office building, was a deafening roar. Every instinct demanded he find her, see her, stand in her space and breathe her in until his lungs burned. It was an ache in his teeth, a pull in his gut.

He thought of her eyes, wide and intelligent and wary.The quick wit she used as a shield.The absolute lack of pretense. She wasn’t seeking his approval; she’d been annoyed by his intrusion. The novelty of that, the sheer refreshing honesty of it, was as compelling as her scent.

He couldn’t claim her.Not here.Not now. The human world had rules, and she was firmly of that world.But the mission parameters had just irrevocably shifted. Protecting the pack’s interests now meant protecting her.She knew a term she shouldn’t.She’d seen his reaction. That made her a loose end in a dangerous game—a game David Chen was losing.

“We’re done here,” Avon said, turning from the window. His voice was final, the alpha’s decision made.“Marcus, package the evidence for the lawyers. Leo, ensure our friend David doesn’t decide to take an abrupt vacation.”

Leo nodded, his usual smirk absent. “And you?”

Avon’s gaze drifted toward the door, toward the quadrant of the building where her cubicle was nestled.The pull was magnetic, a physical law he could no longer resist. “I’m going to have a word with the data scientist.”