The last note was a mistake.

Quinten knew it the moment his head hit his pillow last night and stayed there for hours—eyes fixed on the ceiling, jaw tense, arms folded over his chest like a coffin lid. He had undone weeks of careful effort with one careless, possessive line. One moment of weakness. That was all it had taken.

And it wasn't even the words themselves that damned him—it was the scent. He hadn't noticed until later that his glands had flared while folding the damn thing. Barely. Just enough to leave the faintest trace of Alpha beneath the page's edge. But he knew it was there. Anyone even remotely tuned in to dominant pheromones would've caught it.

It had been the Omega's fault. That preening, camera-ready Omega from Events, the one with the smooth voice and too many rings. He'd just happened to be leaning against the cubicle yesterday afternoon, grinning like a heat-drunk idiot while laughter echoed. A noise had clawed the inside of Quinten's throat at the sight.

He hadn't gone to the breakroom for coffee. He hadn't even needed to be on that floor. But instinct had pulled him there anyway—territory wiring, or something equally humiliating. He remembered how the head had tipped back just slightly as laughter spilled out, the way the tie had sat slightly crooked off the collarbone. Like it hadn't been noticed. Like the Omega had.

Quinten left the office that day without speaking another word to anyone. Went straight home. Didn't eat. Didn't pour the usual evening bourbon. Just wrote.

And the note that came out wasn't careful. It wasn't clean or polite or veiled behind professionalism.

It was—

"Tell me you don't see the way he looks at you. Tell me you don't let him. Or I'll make sure he never looks at anything again. Stop pretending you don't know what this is. Touch him again and I'll ruin you for anyone else. You're Mine."

God, he had even underlined the last sentence. Underlined.

He'd folded the page tight, hot-handed and short-breathed, and slipped it under the keyboard after everyone else had left the floor. Now, Quinten sat back in his chair, spine ramrod straight and fingers steepled in front of his mouth, browned black coffee going cold by his elbow.

His office, like always, was sterile in steel and silence. High ceilings. One wall of glass showing the bone-colored skyline. His desk was devoid of paper—he'd shredded anything that connected back to what he wrote the night before. The scent scrubbing vents hummed low along the trimwork, but he could still feel the burn along his jawline.

He should've let it stop at anonymous praise. One or two lines about diligence. Precision. The way the Q4 audit was handled. But no. He'd let it spill.

The knot in the pit of his stomach—tight. Sharpened. It had all gotten too close. "I need to pull back. Tighten control. Reassert distance."

And then, a knock. Or not even. A polite sort of rustle in the doorway. Shadow crossing glass.

"Shit."

Quinten looked up just in time to see the figure step inside. No PA alert. No calendar alert. No scent warning.

Just presence. And they looked... casual. Purposeful. Like maybe nothing at all was wrong, which somehow made it worse.

Quinten sat up straighter, twisting the Montblanc pen in his fingers just for the excuse of movement. His jaw didn't twitch. His eyes didn't drop. And his scent—thankfully—didn't spike.

He narrowed his gaze, voice smooth and dismissive. Cold silk over cracked ice.

"What do you want?"

The words fell too quickly. Short. Clipped. They carried absolutely zero grace—just a sliver too much grit. Too late to take the edge off. He was already off-balance.

And they were standing far too close to centerline.