THE BILLIONAIRE ALPHA'S FORBIDDEN HYBRID

EMMA'S POV The hum of the breakroom refrigerator sounded like a chainsaw inside my skull. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, counting backward from ten. Ten, nine, eight... Usually, the numbers helped; they built a wall between me and the noise. But tonight, the wall was paper-thin. I could hear the security guard in the lobby thirty floors down tapping his pen against his desk. I could hear the janitor on the floor above dragging a mop bucket across the tile. It was too much. It was always too much. "You okay, Em?" I jumped so hard my knee slammed into the underside of my desk. I pulled my hands away from my face and looked up. Sarah, one of the senior analysts, was standing at the edge of my cubicle with her coat on and her purse slung over her shoulder. She looked blurry, like a camera lens that wouldn't focus. "I'm fine," I lied. The words tasted like lemon in my mouth. "Just a migraine. The lights in here are aggressive tonight." Sarah frowned sympathetically. "You work too much. Seriously, Blackwell Global isn't going to collapse if you go home at a normal hour. It's nearly eight o'clock. Even the sharks in legal have gone home." She smells like dying flowers, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. And fear. Why is she afraid? I gritted my teeth. Shut up, Artemis, I thought, directing the command at the part of my brain Dr. Aris called my "dissociative projection." "I just need to finish this risk assessment for the merger," I told Sarah, ignoring the voice. "Mr. Blackwell wants it on his desk by morning. You know how he is about deadlines." "I know how he is about everything," Sarah said, lowering her voice and glancing around the empty office floor. "Terrifying. I rode the elevator with him yesterday. I swear the temperature dropped ten degrees. The man doesn't blink. Anyway, get some sleep, Emma. You look... well, you look like you need it." "Thanks, Sarah. See you tomorrow." I watched her walk toward the elevators. The sound of her heels clicking on the linoleum echoed like gunshots. Click. Click. Click. Hungry, Artemis hissed again. That sandwich you ate was grass. We need real food. Rare. Bloody. "It was a turkey club," I muttered out loud, opening my desk drawer. I rattled the orange prescription bottle and shook two white pills into my palm. Antipsychotics. Low dose. They were supposed to quiet the auditory hallucinations and dull the sensory overload. Dr. Aris said I had a unique presentation of schizophrenia, high-functioning, specifically focused on animalistic delusions. I dry-swallowed the pills and waited for the fog to roll in. I hated the pills. They made me feel like I was moving through underwater currents, slow and heavy. But they were better than the alternative. The alternative was letting Artemis take the wheel, and the last time that happened, I woke up in a park three miles away with dirt under my fingernails and a dead pigeon at my feet. I turned back to my computer screens. The numbers on the spreadsheet were swimming. I needed to focus. Daniel Blackwell, the CEO, was not a man who accepted "mental health episodes" as an excuse for sloppy work. He was a phantom in this building, rarely seen, but always felt. He had taken over the company five years ago after his father died, and he had turned Blackwell Global into a terrifyingly efficient machine. I had only seen him once, from a distance at the company Christmas party. He had been standing on the mezzanine, watching the crowd with a glass of whiskey in his hand. I remembered looking up at him and feeling a sudden, violent wave of nausea. Artemis had started screaming then, too. I had spent the rest of the night hiding in the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. My desk phone rang. The shrill trill went right through my ear drums and down my spine. I gasped, grabbing the receiver before it could ring again. "Blackwell Security, Emma Carter speaking." "Ms. Carter." The voice on the other end was deep, smooth, and utterly devoid of warmth. I recognized it immediately. Marcus Hale. The Chief of Operations and Daniel Blackwell's right-hand man. He was another one I tried to avoid. He always looked at me like I was a math problem he couldn't quite solve. "Mr. Hale," I said, sitting up straighter even though he couldn't see me. "How can I help you?" "The CEO is reviewing the acquisition files for the Merriweather account," Marcus said. "He noticed a discrepancy in the risk projection models you submitted last week. He wants to discuss them." My stomach dropped. "I can fix it. I can re-run the numbers right now and email it-" "No," Marcus interrupted. "He wants to discuss it in person. Now." I glanced at the digital clock on my monitor. 8:15 PM. "He's... he's here?" I asked stupidly. "He lives here, Ms. Carter. Penthouse office. Come up immediately. And bring the raw data files." The line clicked dead. I sat there for a full ten seconds, the receiver still pressed to my ear. He wants to see us, Artemis purred, her tone shifting from aggressive to curious. The High One. The Dark One. "Stop calling him that," I whispered, slamming the phone down. "He's a CEO, not a deity." I stood up, my legs feeling shaky. I grabbed the thick binder of data I had printed earlier and smoothed down my skirt. I caught my reflection in the dark window. My caramel skin looked greyish under the fluorescent lights. My hair, usually a neat twist, was starting to frizz around my temples. I looked exhausted. I looked like a girl who was barely holding it together and well, that was the truth. "Just a meeting," I told myself. "You go up. You explain the variance. You come down. You go home. You make pasta." Pasta is for rabbits, Artemis sneered. I walked to the elevators. I pressed the call button and waited. When the doors slid open, the mirrored box inside reflected me from a dozen angles. I stepped in and pressed the button for the 50th floor. The button didn't light up. I had to swipe my security badge. The elevator shot upward. The pressure built in my ears, a distinct pop that made me wince. As the numbers climbed 30, 40, 45, the air in the small metal box seemed to change. It got heavier and denser. When the doors opened on the 50th floor, the silence was absolute. This wasn't like the lower floors with their buzzing lights and humming computers. The executive floor was carpeted in plush, dark wool that swallowed the sound of my footsteps. The walls were paneled in dark wood and the lighting was low, warm, and expensive. There was no receptionist at the heavy marble desk. Just a single security guard standing by the double doors at the end of the hall. He was massive, at least six-foot-five, with a neck as thick as a tree stump. He was wearing a black suit that strained at the shoulders. As I walked toward him, he lifted his head. He didn't look at my face but intead looked at my neck and he sniffed. Actually sniffed. I stopped about five feet away from him, clutching my binder against my chest like a shield. "I'm Emma Carter. Mr. Hale called me." The guard stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. His eyes were dark, and there was a strange hostility in them. "You're the analyst?" "Yes." He grunted, stepping aside. "He's inside. Don't touch anything you don't have to." "I... okay." I reached for the handle of the double doors. My hand was trembling. I took a deep breath, trying to steady my heart rate. One, two, three. Open it! Artemis shouted, so loud I almost flinched physically. Open it now! Before I could touch the handle, the door was wrenched open from the inside. I jumped back, clutching my binder. Marcus Hale stepped out. He looked... rattled. His tie was slightly askew, and there was a tightness around his eyes that hadn't been there ever since I saw him in the company. I know it's weird to notice something like that but my mind does weird things. He almost ran into me. He stopped, his dark eyes sweeping over me. He, just like the man with the trunk neck, didn't look at my face; he looked at my neck, then sniffed the air subtly. A frown creased his forehead. I'm seriously confused because i dont know what is wrong with them sniffing me because I clearly bathed today. "You're the analyst?" he asked, his voice clipped. "Yes, Mr. Hale. I..." "He's waiting," Marcus interrupted, stepping aside to let me pass and he sounded eager to get away. "Keep it brief. He's... not having a good night." With that, Marcus walked past me toward the elevators without looking back. I was alone. I stepped into the office and the door clicked shut behind me with a sound like a prison lock engaging. The office was enormous, dimly lit by the glow of the city outside. To my right, a wall of glass overlooked the skyline. In the center, a massive desk made of black wood sat like a throne. Daniel Blackwell was standing behind it. He wasn't reading but rather was gripping the edge of the desk so hard his knuckles were white. He was wearing a charcoal suit, but the jacket was gone, and his white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing a throat that looked tight with tension. The moment I stepped onto the rug, the air in the room seemed to ignite. It wasn't a figure of speech. I felt a physical wave of heat hit me, like opening an oven door. My breath hitched in my throat. My skin started to prickle, a million tiny electrical shocks dancing across my arms and legs. Artemis didn't just speak. She howled. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated joy that echoed through my head so loudly I thought my nose might start bleeding. FOUND HIM, she screamed. MINE. I stumbled, the noise of my shoe scuffing against the floor loud in the quiet room. Daniel slowly lifted his head. His eyes met mine. They weren't brown or blue. They were grey, a swirling, stormy silver that seemed to be illuminated from the inside. He didn't blink and neither did he smile. He stared at me with an intensity that made me feel like he was peeling the skin off my bones. "Who are you?" he asked. His voice was a low rumble that vibrated in the floorboards beneath my feet. "I'm... I'm Emma," I whispered, my voice shaking so bad I could barely form the words. "The junior analyst." Daniel moved. He rounded the desk with a fluidity that was unnatural, too smooth, too fast. He stopped three feet away from me. The smell of him, rain, cedar, and something metallic like hot iron, filled my nose, drowning out everything else. He leaned down, his face inches from mine. "No," he said softly, and the word sounded like a threat. "That's not what I asked." He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. A strange look crossed his face, hunger mixed with confusion. "You smell like a science experiment, Emma. You smell like something that shouldn't exist," he murmured, his voice rough. I blinked, confusion washing over my fear. "I... I don't know what you're talking about. I just brought the files."