Three weeks is enough time to build a new religion. Mine has one commandment: do not think about the suite.
I mop the east wing in straight lines and I do not think about Miles's mouth against my collarbone, or Blake's hands pinning my wrists with a gentleness that cracked something open in my chest, or Spencer’s assuredness when he told me that it’s safe.
I try to think of something else instead—of my mom, safely out of surgery, currently in rehabilitation. Of her smile the moment she woke up and realized that she’s feeling better.
But then, I remember again. Every nerve ending rewired itself that night, every sensation amplified to a frequency I didn't know existed. Something unlocked inside me, and I cannot seem to lock it again.
The nausea is the night shifts. The exhaustion is the double schedule. The wrongness sitting low in my stomach like a stone that won't dissolve—that's stress, and I'm not accepting appeals.
"Bailee Reed to the twelfth floor, conference room B." The intercom delivers my name with the enthusiasm of someone reading a parking citation, and my mop hits the bucket hard enough to splash.
Conference room B smells like money pretending to be furniture. When I push through the door, three men are already seated—and every molecule of carefully constructed normalcy detonates on contact.
Miles leans against the table edge, sleeves rolled. Blake occupies a chair like a particularly uncomfortable throne. Spencer stands at the window, and when he turns, those storm-blue eyes find mine with an accuracy that fuses my spine into a single rigid column.
"Have a seat, Bailee." Spencer's voice is professional, measured, boardroom-appropriate. His scent is not—woodsmoke and leather flooding the room until my lungs forget their entire job description.
"Am I being fired?" I grip the cart handle, the only object in this room without a pulse and an opinion. "Because I'd prefer email. Less atmospheric."
"We looked into your employment history." Spencer slides a folder across the table. "You applied for four positions here. All rejected at the first screening stage."
"I'm aware of my own rejection history, thanks." My jaw tightens against itself. "Very efficient process, your HR."
"The rejections were Celeste." Miles leans forward. "Every application flagged and killed before it reached a hiring manager."
"Your school performance was strong, recommendations excellent." Blake's grey eyes hold mine with that unreadable patience. "The only disqualification was your blood status."
"So we're offering you a position." Miles says it like he's been holding the sentence behind his teeth all morning. "Assistant level—real salary, real benefits, real desk."
My throat works around something I can't swallow. Their scents layer through the recycled air, and every cell is cross-referencing this moment with a hotel suite three weeks ago.
"Which department?" The question comes out steadier than anything happening inside my chest deserves.
The silence has the structural integrity of wet paper. Three men exchange a look carrying an entire unspoken negotiation, and nobody volunteers to break first. They haven’t even thought about that!
"Technology division." Miles straightens, chin lifting. "My team needs someone who can actually—"
"Legal." Blake cuts him off without raising his voice, which somehow lands harder. "Heavier workload, more transferable experience, and she'd report to—"
"She'd report to my office." Spencer doesn't move from the window, but the room's gravity shifts to accommodate him. "CEO's assistant. Highest visibility, broadest exposure."
"Broadest exposure to what—your calendar?" Miles's jaw shifts like tectonic plates rearranging. "She'd learn more in six months on my floor than a year scheduling your meetings."
"Your floor is a playground." Blake's arms cross, and his grey gaze cuts between both brothers. "She needs structure, not ping-pong tables."
The air thickens between them—not anger exactly, but something older and territorial, pheromones layering like heat off pavement. My skin prickles from collarbone to wrist, and the wrongness in my stomach tilts.
"She's sitting right here." I grip the armrest hard enough to dent expensive leather. "And she has opinions about being discussed in the third—"
"The board interface alone—" Spencer's voice drops, the bass vibrating somewhere behind my navel, and every rational thought I own evacuates the premises.
Their scents collide—cedar, woodsmoke, sunlight—and the cocktail hits my bloodstream like a match dropped into gasoline. Gold bleeds into my periphery. The air is too thick, pressure building behind my ribs—uncomfortable, unescapable.
"I need—" My voice comes out thin and wrong, a frequency from a body I don't recognise. The room tilts thirty degrees, the mahogany table sliding across my vision. "I need a minute—"
Miles's face changes. Blake's chair scrapes back. Spencer's hand reaches from an impossible distance. Then the floor swings up and everything goes quiet.
Fluorescent light. Beeping. The particular industrial disinfectant smell that means hospital, which my brain recognizes before my eyes open.
"There she is." A nurse with kind eyes adjusts something above my head. "You gave your colleagues quite a scare—ambulance brought you in about two hours ago."
"I fainted in a conference room in front of my employers." My voice scrapes like gravel against pavement. "Peak professionalism."
"Three very insistent men wearing a hole in the waiting room carpet." She checks a monitor with practised calm. "The doctor will run through some questions first."
The doctor is efficient, working through a checklist with surgical speed—blood pressure, medications, sleep patterns. Then she reaches a question that rearranges everything.
"When was your last period?" Her pen stops mid-stroke, and the silence that follows has teeth I can feel against my throat.
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. The impossible math assembles behind my eyes with the terrible precision of a bomb timer reaching zero—because the timing works, but the circumstances don’t. We used protection. It wasn’t supposed to happen. How did that happen?
"About five weeks ago." My voice doesn't belong to me—it belongs to someone standing at the edge of a cliff. "Maybe six."
"We ran bloodwork when you came in." She sets the clipboard down with the deliberation of someone restructuring a stranger's existence. "Your hCG levels are elevated. You're pregnant—approximately three weeks."
Three weeks. The number detonates inside my skull and the shrapnel hits everything—three weeks ago I stood in a hotel suite and let the door click shut behind me.
"Ms. Reed?" She tilts her head, watching my face with professional concern. "Do you need a moment?"
"Several." My hands grip the blanket until my knuckles go geological. "Possibly a calendar year."
She leaves, and the room closes around me like a fist. If this baby carries wolf blood—verified, pack-certified—then my father's will activates, and Reed Industries' controlling interest suddenly has a living heartbeat inside me.
If not… then I just made my life even more complicated.
My hand presses flat against my stomach. No swell, no movement—just the terrifying mathematics of a dead man's clause meeting something nobody planned for.
I don't know how to tell them. I don't know if they'll think I engineered this—the desperate half-blood who mopped their floors and conveniently got pregnant with a potential heir. I don't know if they'll fight, or flee, or look at me differently than they did in that suite.
The nurse reappears, her expression balanced between neutrality and something dangerously close to amusement. "The gentlemen are asking—quite persistently—if they can come in."
"Gentlemen, plural." I stare at the ceiling like it contains a manual for this exact catastrophe. "All three are still out there."
"All three." She tucks the clipboard under her arm and waits with the patience of a woman who has seen stranger things.
Three wolves who don't know yet. A hospital gown that ties in the back. And a secret growing inside me that belongs to one of them—I have absolutely no idea which.
"One more minute." My hand stays on my stomach, fingers pressing through thin cotton, and I start building the sentence I don't know how to finish.
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