Johanna POV:
His question hung in the air, sharp and dangerous.
Panic seized me, cold and suffocating. He couldn't know. He couldn't even suspect. The thought of him connecting my sickness to that night was a nightmare I couldn't afford to entertain.
I had to end this. Now.
I took a shaky breath, forcing myself to hold his piercing blue gaze. "No, I'm just... a little tired. I didn't sleep well."
A flicker of disbelief crossed his face. His Alpha intuition, or maybe just his CEO's bullshit detector, was screaming. He knew I was lying.
"Tired enough to avoid your boss for a month?" he pressed, his tone laced with a cold mockery that made my skin crawl.
Vague excuses weren't going to work. I needed a firewall. Something absolute. A reason so final he would have no choice but to back off and leave me alone.
I steeled myself, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I looked him straight in the eye and delivered the lie I had been rehearsing in my head for weeks.
"Mr. Montgomery, I've been avoiding you because I have a boyfriend."
The words came out stronger than I felt, echoing in the tomb-like silence of the office.
The effect was instantaneous.
The predatory intensity in his eyes froze, replaced by a glacial stillness. It was as if a mask had dropped over his features, making him unreadable, but the sudden, oppressive cold radiating from him was more terrifying than his anger.
I saw the muscles in his jaw bunch, a tiny, violent twitch.
I had to press the advantage. I had to make it final.
"That night..." I forced the words out, my voice raspy. "It was a mistake. A drunken mistake. It meant nothing to me, and I don't want my boyfriend to misunderstand."
Each word was a betrayal of a memory that was burned into my skin, but I had to say them. I had to sever this.
To make it absolutely clear, I added the final, clinical detail. "I took the morning-after pill. There's no possibility of any... consequences. You don't have to worry."
I was saying it for him, but I was also saying it for myself. A desperate mantra against the sickness churning in my gut.
The temperature in the room seemed to plummet. The air grew thin, hard to breathe. He was staring at me, but his eyes were looking through me, and what was behind them was chilling. It was a raw, primal fury barely held in check.
He slowly, deliberately, straightened up. He removed his hands from the door, taking a single step back.
For a wild, hopeful second, I thought it had worked. I thought he was letting me go.
But then he spoke, and his words were shards of ice.
"I see," he said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "So your 'professionalism' was just a ploy to get into my bed?"
The accusation hit me like a physical blow. I gasped, stumbling back against the door. "What? No! That's not what I meant!"
He had twisted my desperate self-preservation into a sordid, calculated scheme. He was painting me as a cheap, ambitious woman who used her body to get ahead.
A cruel, humorless smile twisted his lips. "It doesn't matter what you meant."
His eyes, once filled with a dangerous fire, were now just cold, empty pits of contempt.
"Get out of my office."
The dismissal was brutal. The disgust in his voice was absolute.
Tears sprang to my eyes, hot and shameful. Humiliation washed over me, a burning tide. I wanted to scream, to defend myself, to tell him the truth-that I was terrified, not scheming. But one look at his frozen, contemptuous face and I knew it was useless. He had already judged and convicted me.
I fumbled with the lock, my fingers clumsy and slick with sweat. I wrenched the door open and fled. I didn't just walk out; I ran, escaping the suffocating atmosphere of his office, of his presence.
I didn't look back. I couldn't.
I heard the heavy door slam shut behind me, the sound echoing down the silent corridor like a gunshot. A final, resounding rejection.
Inside the office, Julian stood motionless, his gaze fixed on the door she had disappeared through. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, the knuckles white.
He hadn't fired her.
His wolf wouldn't let him.
He stalked back to his desk, picking up the report she had brought. The paper felt foreign in his hands. He stared at the words, but they were just black marks on a page. All he could see was the shimmer of unshed tears in her eyes, and the echo of her words in his mind.
I have a boyfriend.
