Page 119 of A Wolfe in the Woods

Erik didn’t look at the screen. He watched me. “I do admire initiative,” he said lightly. “It’s such a rare quality in Graymore these days.”

The air felt thin. My pulse hammered so loud I thought he might hear it.

“But initiative without permission,” he went on, “is simply theft.”

His gaze finally drifted back to the monitor, then to the mirrored progress icon still quietly blinking in the corner of the interface.

“And theft,” he added softly, “is terminable.”

The wordterminabledidn’t land like corporate policy. It landed like a diagnosis. A death sentence. My heart beat felt like I was running a marathon.

Behind him, Fang still didn’t move.

“You can’t fire me for doing my job,” I shot back, feigning confidence I didn’t feel.

Erik smirked. “Oh, little Blanchette,” he said. “There are some forests you should never wander into. And this one happens to be mine.”

He leaned in, his face near my hair, my temple. A slow inhale.

He murmured, low, “Did you really believe you could move through my den without leaving tracks?”

The resounding silence felt suffocating.

“I never miss a scent.” The tone of his voice dropped into mild distaste. “And you’ve been reeking of a particular one these last couple weeks.”

The words settled over me like a predator’s shadow, suffocating, inescapable. For a split second, fear tried to take me under with it.

But something else rose instead.

My grandmother’s calm voice rose in my mind:Strength doesn’t have to be loud to be strong.She’d tell me that all the time growing up.

Then I thought of Jonathan’s face at the fountain. The hurt in his eyes, the way he’d stepped back like I was poison.If I don’t do this, then he will have been right about me.

My fear never quite went away, but I felt courage war with it.

I lifted my chin. “What do you want, Erik?”

He straightened slightly, pleased. “What I’ve always wanted…and you’re going to help me get it.”

The word felt like fingers tightening around my throat. There was a particular look in his eyes, ones that signaled possession, like I was territory to claim, and something inside me snapped clean in two.

I pushed back from the terminal and stood. “So what?” I demanded. “You get rid of me? Like you got rid of Bernie? I don’t care anymore. Do it.”

Erik’s expression didn’t flicker. “Make no mistake, Bernard did that tohimself. He simply didn’t know it.”

My chest seized, but I didn’t let it show. I took a step toward him. I didn’t shrink or flinch. I was done doing that. Instead, I met the predator with my own teeth bared. “You underestimated me,” I said.

Erik’s brows lifted. “Have I?”

“Yes,” I hissed. “Because you think I’m still afraid of you.”

His smile sharpened. “Oh, you’re not?”

I looked him dead in the eyes. “No.”

Before I talked myself out of it, I acted. My hand closed around the ceramic mug beside the keyboard—someone’s tea gone cold—and I hurled it at the terminal as hard as I could muster.

It struck the screen with a sharp crack. Liquid sprayed across the keys. The monitor shrieked with static, the image glitching violently. The blinking transfer icon vanished into white noise.