Page 15 of Witchwolf

He opened his mouth and then closed it again, apparently dumbfounded by me. Or maybe by my being so confrontational. A lot of people were surprised by that, but if there was one thing my adopted father had taught me—and there probably was just the one, since he’d never been all that interested in me—it was that if someone punches you, you should always punch back. Letting someone strike out at you and doing nothing in return was just letting them know they could do it again whenever they wanted. That wasn’t the life I wanted to live, so I never let a blow go unanswered.

When he continued to hesitate, I scoffed and shook my head. “Of course. Assuming the worst, but with nothing resembling an actual reason for it. Are we done, then?”

He gave a little nod, letting himself fall into his chair, and I turned and marched out.

Only, when I got to the hallway I realized that I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to do next.

Had I just quit?

No, that wasn’t a thing. I’d signed a contract, so unless someone from Crescent told me they were breaking my contract, I was fucking staying. Because I hadn’t done a single damned thing wrong.

Well, maybe except that I’d berated the CEO of the company, but damn it, he’d had it coming. Accusing me of doing something wrong. Hell, I wasn’t the one who’d slept with someone who was technically my work inferior; he was. Not that he’d done anything wrong either, since neither of us had known, but if one of us was in a more tenuous position because of it, it was me, not him.

I turned a corner, still drifting aimlessly down the hall, and almost ran right into Maia and... and she was standing with Jax’s twin sister, the COO. Fuck me entirely.

They both looked up at me, and Maia, bless her, smiled at me. “Hey, Dakota. I was just talking to Jillian about you. She’s got an office set aside, and we’ll figure out if it’s the right spot pretty quickly. Crescent hasn’t hired someone like you before, so this is all new territory, and we’ll have to learn it together. You might end up in HR at some point, since a lot of the inter-company work with Igarashi will be done there, but you know how it is.”

Her sunny smile made the pit in my stomach quiver. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to work with them. I wanted to be here. I wanted this job.

“That makes sense,” I agreed, trying not to wince at the shake in my voice. I wasn’t sure if it was remaining anger causing it, or terror that I was about to get fired on my first day, but either way it was weakness, and I hated showing my weaknesses to people.

Jillian sighed. “Whatever Jax said, ignore him. He’s an ass.”

Maia gave a nervous giggle, like the notion of calling her boss an ass both amused and terrified her, and then lowered her voice to a bare whisper. “He tries hard, he does. And he’s great. He’s just still... I mean, we all grew up with that ‘I’m the alpha’ bullshit. It’s hard to just get past it. I’ll bet especially for him.”

The way she said it was almost like... like they had literally grown up together, the lot of them. I supposed it would explain some things, if the upper echelons of the company were made up of people who’d known each other all their lives.

Instead of demanding more information, which would be suspicious behavior, I just went along with it, nodding. “That does make sense. But he’s going to have to get over it with me. He might be my boss, but he’s not the boss of me.”

Jillian laughed aloud, a bright, brassy noise that made me fall instantly in love with her. This was a woman who had zero fear of being noticed and judged. I wanted to be just like that when I grew up. She leaned around to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leading me off in another direction. “I like you, Dakota. I think you’re going to do just fine around here. Let me show you the office we’ve set up. It’s a little pitiful since it smells like cleaning fluid and has as much personality as a gym sock, but I guess it’s your job to change that, not ours.”

The office was indeed empty and sort of lifeless, but it was also enormous. It was bigger than my bedroom in the apartment I shared with Donnie, and it had a window that overlooked the city. Awindow.

I stared at that for a moment, and Jillian just stood next to me, looking out the window as well. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” When I looked over at her, she smiled. “I know, I know, we’re not supposed to like the city. Blah blah unnatural, blah blah bad smells and too many people. Well screw that. I fucking love it. This city is my freedom. We got out of Idaho. We escaped the woods, and now we get to decide our own fates. No asshole alpha telling us who to love and how to live. Just Jax, and he’s usually good about keeping his nose out of our personal lives, even if he does tend to be a little overprotective.”

And that... well, that just might explain a whole lot. Had they been a part of one of those doomsday prepper cults, living in a rural area with some guy telling them every single thing they had to do? That sounded like a nightmare. But it made sense that she would love the city as much as I did. Not that I’d ever seen a reason to favor the woods, but there was just something magnificent about concrete and stone and glass piercing the sky like a knife pointed at everything old and backward. Human ingenuity was something to be proud of, even with all its faults and issues.

“I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” I agreed. “My parents moved out to the country when I graduated high school, but I never want to leave the city. Even if I end up broke, couch-surfing, and living on the sufferance of friends.”

She turned to grin at me. “Right? When we first got here, we shared apartments like we were the rats and encroaching on their territory. Four or five to a bedroom, everyone working or in school constantly, trading in and out of bedrooms whenever a spot was open to grab a nap. It was hell. And perfect, too.”

Wow. That was... I returned the smile and thought that maybe, just maybe, if I could convince Jax that I wasn’t a spy working for Igarashi, this was a place I could belong.

“Okay, let’s talk schedule,” she said, marching over to the desk and flipping open a laptop I hadn’t noticed before. “I made sure they connected you to my calendar and Maia’s, as well as the main Igarashi calendar, so all that is in here. You’ll want to connect it to your phone—do you need a company phone? If you don’t have unlimited data, you might want to get us to foot the bill for that. I’ll show you where tech is, and you can get anything you need from them.”

The next hour was a whirlwind of being shown around the building, introduced to people, and given so much information I was overwhelmed with just the idea of it all.

And I hadn’t even started my actual job yet.

We scarfed down some fabulous pho from a place on the corner next door, and by the time she started heading back to the conference room when we got back, I’d entirely forgotten that the first meeting with the people from Igarashi was that afternoon.

I was reminded of it with a vengeance when we walked into a silent room, and half the conference table was filled with the most uncomfortable looking Japanese people I’d ever seen in my life. They looked like something out of a Matrix movie, all dressed alike in black suits with white shirts, looking starched and perfect. Not a single back touched a chair, even as comfy as those chairs looked. No, they were all sitting at attention, like they were going to have to leave at any moment.

The people I’d met that morning populated the other side of the table, Jax at one end, and at the other... a single Japanese man who actually looked comfortable with the situation.

“—a translator,” Jax was saying as we walked in, but he only barely glanced at us, keeping eye contact with the man at the other end of the table.

The man in question gave a personable smile and waved Jax away. “Oh, you don’t need to hire a translator. We all read English well enough to follow the paperwork.”

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