Chapter 37: You must stay
Keith’s POV
"Given this discrepancy between your capabilities and your current position," I stated, my tone leaving no room for ambiguity, "we will be disposing you of your duties as a junior manager in Dickson’s department."
Her face fell instantly. The defiance and sharp intelligence that had been there moments before crumpled into pure, unadulterated despair.
I felt an unexpected, sharp twist of annoyance. Was she really that broken up over that spineless fool? Dickson’s pathetic boasting about her ’lingering feelings’ echoed in my mind, and it irrationally grated.
Even my brothers had seemed irritated by the man’s story. It was odd. We didn’t know this woman. Her personal entanglements were irrelevant, a drain on efficiency.
"Please," she said, her voice small. "Reconsider."
"Why should I?" The question was blunt. She was offering no benefit to staying in a role she was overqualified for.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She just stood there, looking utterly lost.
"So," I pressed, my impatience growing. "You don’t want the promotion?"
Her head snapped up, her stunning hazel eyes wide with confusion and shock. "What?"
"The reason I am ’disposing’ you of your current duties," I explained, the words feeling unnecessarily cumbersome, "is to appoint you to a new position. One that matches your qualifications. I don’t waste assets. Your skill set, from what I’ve seen, is too rare to leave languishing under Dickson."
She started stammering, a flush creeping up her neck. "I—I didn’t... I didn’t know that’s what you meant."
"What did you think I meant?"
"I thought you were firing me," she replied.
So it was a misunderstanding. A logical one, I supposed, given the phrasing. But the initial reason for her despair still lingered in the air.
She’d thought she was losing her connection to Dickson’s department, and that had devastated her. The thought was... irritating. Deeply.
A low, unfamiliar rumble of discontent from my wolf echoed the sentiment. Why was my wolf even paying attention to this?
I shoved the feeling down, locking it away.
"Why would I fire you," I said, my voice cooling back to its usual detached tone, "when you’re still paying off the damages from the grand ceremony?"
Her eyes widened further. "Oh."
I wasn’t actually going to collect a dime from her. The debt was a fiction, a line item created to appease the event planners.
But I’d just found a use for it. It was a logical, quantifiable reason for her to remain at the company. That was the only reason I’d said it. It had nothing to do with the strange, protective annoyance I felt at the thought of her pining for a man like Dickson. Nothing at all.
She looked down at her hands. "I... I don’t deserve it."
Before I could formulate a response—a blunt assessment of how her personal feelings were irrelevant to her professional worth—Kieran cut in.
"Now why would you say a thing like that?" he said, his voice a warm, charming cascade that was entirely unlike his usual performative boardroom charm. This sounded... genuine. "You absolutely deserve it. Your work speaks for itself."
I shot him a sidelong glance. This was odd. Kieran deployed charm like a weapon, for a specific purpose. This felt different.
Eleanor kept her head bent. "Thank you. I won’t disappoint you."
"I haven’t even told you the position," I pointed out, my tone dry.
Kieran laughed. "Keith, give the woman a break. She’s had a shock."
My attention, however, was snagged by Kayden. He was staring at Eleanor with an intensity I’d never seen from him. It was a deep, probing curiosity, as if he were trying to solve a complex equation written on her skin. He’d never looked at anyone like that. Ever.
The words left my mouth before I’d fully processed them, a decision made not from logic but from some unexplainable impulse to keep this particular asset close, to understand the strange effect she was having on all of us. "You’ll be working as our personal assistant."
The silence in the room was instantaneous and absolute.
Both of my brothers turned to me with identical looks of stunned disbelief. I felt a flicker of it myself. That wasn’t the position I’d intended to offer. A project lead, perhaps. A senior designer. Not this. Not a role that would place her in our inner circle, privy to our most confidential dealings.
Their shock, I realized, was twofold. They had simply assumed we would hire a man for such a trusted role. A woman—especially this one—was a variable we had not accounted for.
Eleanor’s reaction was the most surprising of all. She looked up, her shock mirroring ours. "That position... it’s beyond anything I could have imagined. But... I have to decline."
Now it was our turn to stare. All three of us. A unified front of utter confusion.
"Why?" I asked, the word sharp with genuine perplexity. This made no logical sense.
She wrung her hands, her gaze dropping again. "I... I don’t think I’m qualified enough to be working that closely with the CEOs."
The reason was so absurdly humble, so entirely different from the suck up I was used to, that I was momentarily speechless. She genuinely believed she wasn’t good enough.
It was the most inefficient, illogical, and strangely compelling thing I’d heard all day.
No one had ever rejected an offer from me, least of all a promotion. The offers I made were always full of opportunity. To refuse was... unthinkable. It was a direct blow to my authority, a slight to my judgment.
I reject people, not th eother way around. Who was this woman to turn me down?
"I believe you are... mildly qualified for the role," I said, the words coming out stiffer than intended. "If you refuse, it will be a loss for us both." I meant it as a simple statement of fact: she would lose the significant financial advancement, and I would lose a useful tool. But I see a fresh wave of panic that crossed her face.
Kieran pounced on her fear. "He’s right, you know. We can’t just let a valuable asset like you walk away. Unless... you’d prefer to go work for our rivals?"
Her eyes went wide. "No! That’s not what I meant at all!"
"Good," I stated, cutting off any further debate. The decision was made. "Then your new position begins immediately. The official opening of the Serpent’s Kiss is at the end of this week. You will use the intervening days to familiarize yourself with our schedules and prepare."
A strange look flickered across her face at the mention of the track. But I dismissed it.
"I... I’ll try my best," she stammered.
"I don’t want you to ’try’," I corrected, my voice leaving no room for half-measures. "You may go and prepare."
She bowed and practically fled the office.
The moment the door clicked shut, Kieran swiveled in his chair to face me. "Okay, what was that? Since when do you offer the PA position to a woman?"
"It’s not your concern," I deflected, my attention already shifting to the more pressing matter on my calendar. "We have more critical issues to discuss. Or have you forgotten? The full moon. We need to finalize our plans for restraint. Fortunately, it’s the day after the opening ceremony." I picked up my phone to pull up the lunar calendar, a routine double-check.
My blood ran cold.
The screen clearly showed the celestial event. It wasn’t the day after.
It was the same day.
My face must have betrayed the error because my brothers’ expressions shifted from curiosity to immediate alarm.
"What is it?" Kieran asked, his playful tone gone.
"The full moon," I said, my voice grim. "It’s on opening day."
The air in the room turned to ice. Kieran’s jaw tightened. Kayden signed a single, sharp word. [Disaster.]
"How could you miscalculate?" Kieran demanded, a rare edge of true fear in his voice.
I had no answer. It was an unforgivable error. On the full moon, our control shattered. Our curses would be on full, violent display.
And we were scheduled to be the center of attention at the biggest public event Vexxon had hosted in years. what are we going to do?