Chapter 1
Cleo O’Dair’s morning starts with a nosebleed in the sink of the women’s bathroom on the forty second floor.
It is not, unfortunately, her first this week.
It's also not the kind of thing that looks good under corporate lighting, so she grips the edge of the basin with one hand and pinches the bridge of her nose with the other, watching bright red drops hit white porcelain with a miserable sigh. Her reflection stares back at her from the mirror, too pale.
“Brilliant,” she mutters.
The bathroom smells of lemon disinfectant and hand soap, and the metallic heat of her own blood. Under that is the faint chemical edge of her scent blocker fighting for its life against the damage she keeps doing to herself. Cleo holds still and breathes through her mouth, counting to ten and then twenty, but she gives up at seventeen because her phone buzzes in her trouser pocket and she jumps hard enough to knock her hip against the sink.
FLETCHER: Did you take the blue one or the grey one?
Cleo blinks at the message through the sting in her eyes.
CLEO: Good morning to you too.
FLETCHER: Blue or grey, Cleopatra.
CLEO: Don't government name me from Zone 2 at 8:07 in the morning.
FLETCHER: I'll do whatever I like, thank you very much. Pill colour?
Cleo glances at the cubicle behind her, where her handbag sits on the closed toilet lid with one illegal suppressant strip, three scent patches, a compact, and a half eaten cereal bar laid out like crime scene evidence. Technically, most of it is in fact evidence of a crime, and she wipes under her nose with a paper towel to type with one thumb.
CLEO: Grey.
The typing bubble doesn't have the grace to give her a minute.
FLETCHER: Cleo.
She winces.
CLEO: It was the last one!
FLETCHER: I was going to get you more of the blue.
FLETCHER: The grey batch gave you a migraine so bad you tried to claw out your own eyes.
Cleo remembers that, actually. She tosses the bloodied paper towel into the bin and turns on the tap hard enough for water to splash over her sleeve.
CLEO: I have a board audit meeting in twenty minutes and apparently the new CEO is coming. I couldn't exactly skip breakfast and let my body make an inappropriate workplace announcement between quarterly compliance failures and a cheese Danish.
FLETCHER: Your body's a theatre kid?
CLEO: Yup. She keeps trying to ruin my life for attention.
FLETCHER: Your life is already ruined for attention.
Cleo snorts, the grey suppressant sitting bitter at the back of her throat even though she swallowed it with bad vending machine coffee nearly an hour ago. Her skin feels too tight, and her heart thrums. She supposes that's the problem with illegal suppressants, that they work until they don't, and when they don't, they make a point of failing spectacularly.
She isn't stupid, either. She knows the legal ones are safer. Monitored and approved, dispensed through clinics with locked records and appointment forms that ask whether the patient has a bonded alpha, approved guardian, or authorised medical handler. Cleo's registered beta, and betas do not need suppressants.
Betas don't get heats, either, so betas don't have to submit to medical tracking, fertility schedules, scent logging, employment restrictions, housing assessments, bonding suitability reviews, or any of the other protective chains the world likes to wrap around omega throats. Betas get to work late, sign their own tenancy agreements, and tell alphas to fuck off without much of a consequence at all. Cleo's spent eight years chasing that freedom, and despite Fletcher's concern, is quite content to poison herself to get it.
Her phone buzzes again.
FLETCHER: Come home after work. STRAIGHT home. No “I’m just checking one thing.” No “The records room whispered erotically in my ear.” Yeah?
CLEO: I don't say EROTICALLY.
FLETCHER: You're in love with spreadsheets, don't lie to me.
CLEO: It's their irresistable, reliable columns.
FLETCHER: You are pale, aren’t you?
The tap runs over her fingers and she looks at herself again. Her nose has stopped bleeding, but there is a faint smear at the edge of one nostril and her pupils are too wide. Her scent patch, fixed under her collarbone, itches where the adhesive is lifting. She presses two fingers to it with a muttered curse.
CLEO: I’m fine.
FLETCHER: That could mean anything from “minor inconvenience” to “actively dying.”
CLEO: I’m not actively dying.
FLETCHER: Passively dying?
CLEO: Aren’t we all?
FLETCHER: Cleo.
She leans both hands on the sink and drops her head for a second. The air conditioning hums overhead, and outside rain lashes against the cold glass of Vassiliev Tower, all steel and money. Even inside and forty two floors up, the bathroom's too bright and clean for fear. Fear has a scent too, and she can't afford that one either.
“I’m fine,” she says out loud, but her reflection remains unimpressed.
She cleans the last of the blood from her face and replaces the loose scent patch with one from her emergency tin, and touches a small rollerball of neutralising oil to the insides of her wrists. It smells like cut grass, boring and the olfactory equivalent of a beige cardigan, which is exactly the point.
By the time she walks back into the compliance department, Cleo looks entirely ordinary again. Usually, quarter end audit meetings create a specific kind of corporate misery, with people huddled around laptops, legal ops pretending not to hate finance, risk pretending not to hate everyone, stale pastries sweating under cling film, and someone named Hugo using the phrase “circle back” until Cleo fantasises about biting him.
Today, there's a different kind of pressure in the air, and Cleo slows near her desk.
Mel from regulatory affairs leans over the partition with her eyes wide. “You heard?”
Cleo drops into her chair and wakes her laptop. “If this is about Hugo’s mindfulness newsletter, I’ve heard and I'm ignoring it.”
“Atlas Vassiliev is taking the meeting.”
Across the office, someone laughs far too loudly to be genuine, and Cleo keeps her face blank. This is one of the first things she learned in corporate life. There's no information so bad that making a visible expression can't make worse. “The new CEO?”
Mel gives her a look. “No, the other Atlas Vassiliev. The fun one who does children’s parties.”
Cleo reaches for her coffee. “He wasn’t supposed to start until Monday.”
“He started at six this morning, fired Brenner before breakfast.”
She does blink at that.
The other woman nods. “Security walked him out. No box, no goodbye email. Just gone.”
Brenner is - or was - the head of strategic partnerships, a man with white teeth and a habit of standing too close to junior staff at company functions. Cleo has never been in a lift with him without wishing for a weapon. “What for?”
“No one knows.”
Vassiliev Group has been rotting for a while now, beneath it all. Publicly, the company's immaculate. They set up charitable clinics, heat safe housing initiatives, omega employment pathways. They make social responsibility videos with weepy piano music and alphas in rolled up sleeves pretending they've built affordable nesting centres with their own two hands.
Anyone might just believe that, too. Cleo doesn't. She's spent six months finding records of clinic contracts routed through shell entities and designation verification invoices with duplicate authorisation codes. Missing consent forms and scent profile transfers approved by directors who were, according to one obituary, dead at the time. She found the first irregularity by accident, then she kept looking, and stopped only when the first of Mikhail Vassiliev's many scandals exploded in real time across the city. Disgraced enough he'd excused himself to somewhere with blue sea and white sand, his son had been dragged in from whichever private circle of hell wealthy alpha heirs occupy, and half the department looks like it is waiting to be shot.
“Maybe he’ll cancel the meeting,” Mel says, nibbling her lip.
Cleo looks through the glass wall of Conference Room A. Legal is already there, risk too. She spots two people from clinic governance and Silas Shepherd, head of security, stands near the far window in a dark suit with his hands behind his back, his face impassive.
“I doubt that.”
Mel follows her gaze and pulls a face. “You don’t know for sure.”
She makes a noncommittal noise and picks up the folder on her desk. She's printed the minimum, which in Vassiliev terms means a slim stack of paperwork capable of ruining several lives if read by the right person, or the wrong one. In her experience, powerful men are usually both.
Her hands feel steady as she crosses the office to Conference Room A. The city sits beyond the window in a wet October haze, cranes and towers blurred by the rain, and at the centre of the table untouched pastries wait beside stainless steel coffee jugs and rows of water bottles with labels facing the same direction. She takes the seat nearest the door.
Hugo is already two chairs down, whispering to Anika from legal. He smells nervous, but most people do under the beta neutral office filtration. She sets the folder in front of her, opens her laptop, and checks the time.
8:29.
At 8:30 exactly, the door opens and Atlas Vassiliev walks in without a word. Cleo's seen photographs of him, obviously. Everyone has, severe black and white profiles in some finance magazine Fletcher used as a coaster for three months, but the photographs are inadequate, and in no way capture the way the a ripple goes through the room the moment he lifts his head, a collective flinch away from the look on his face.
Atlas is tall, and not handsome in a friendly way. Nothing like Fletcher's grinning, freckled face, or even Silas's permanently pissed off frown. There's nothing available about him, nothing soft that she can see, all high cheekbones and grey eyes, the kind of severity that makes her feel distantly sick.
Alpha, every instinct in her body says.
Dangerous, adds the more sensible part.
Absolutely fucking not, contributes the part of her brain committed to keeping her alive.
Chairs scrape as the others find their feet, and Cleo rises too, balancing her laptop in one hand.
Atlas doesn't tell them to sit, and Silas shuts the door with a soft click. It sounds to Cleo, ridiculous as it is, like a lock. He hasn't got anything with him, no laptop or speaker notes, and he simply folds his hands and eyes poor Jett from accounting until he withers in his chair.
“Brenner has been removed from the company.”
No corporate foreplay, then. He has an accent she can't quite place, European and clipped around the edges, just as harsh as his face.
“He will not be returning,” Atlas continues. “Any department currently attempting to delete correspondence, alter access logs, misplace clinic approvals, or retroactively discover a commitment to data retention compliance should stop now.”
Her pulse quickens, and she thumbs the edge of the folder just for something to do with her hands.
“I object to incompetence, and the fact you all clearly do not will be the next thing to change.”
Atlas sits at last, pausing only to scrub a hand down his face before gesturing at the whiteboard at the end of the room.
“We are conducting an internal review of clinic governance and all associated welfare contracts,” Atlas says. “The review will be unpleasant. Some of you will be replaced.”
Hugo clears his throat. “With respect, Mr Vassiliev, this department has already prepared a preliminary compliance response for the board -”
“I read it.”
Hugo brightens with the desperation of a man who does not yet know he is dead. “Great, right. Then you’ll have seen that, while there are some procedural anomalies, our position is that the majority of these issues can be attributed to legacy workflow inconsistencies and historical filing errors.”
“No.”
The other man's mouth remains open.
“Legal?”
Anika adjusts her glasses. “There is exposure.”
“How much?”
“Significant, if the consent discrepancies are substantiated.”
“They are.”
Cleo keeps her eyes on the table as Anika glances at the folder she's still toying with. “We're still confirming the source data.”
Atlas’s gaze follows, and when he looks at her properly, cold panic lances straight up her spine. “Ms O’Dair.”
She swallows. “Yes?”
“You flagged the authorisation conflicts.”
“Yeah, I flagged several.”
“How many?”
“In the sample set or total?”
“Total.”
Cleo opens the folder, willing her voice to remain steady. “One hundred and eighteen so far. thirty three are duplicate approval codes across different clinics. Twenty seven involve missing or incomplete consent documentation. Sixteen have authorisation timestamps after the recorded transfer date, which suggests retroactive approval. Nine appear to have been signed by directors who no longer held active authority.”
Atlas tilts his head, considering. “And the remainder?”
“The remainder are worse.”
Hugo shifts. “That’s not exactly -”
Atlas raises one hand without looking at him, cutting him off. “Explain worse.”
Hesitant, she glances down at the top page of her report. “These omegas were transferred out of employment placement programmes into bonded domestic contracts. The files mark the transfers as voluntary, but in several cases there's no exit interviews, no independent advocate signatures, and no cooling off periods recorded. One file has the same omega signature copied across three separate forms.”
Anika pales as Cleo turns the page.
“Two of the omegas had pending complaints against placement supervisors. One had requested reassignment three times, and one was registered as beta on intake and omega on transfer, but there’s no reclassification record in between.”
Something in the room changes, even if Atlas's expression doesn't, because everyone knows what that means. Her scent patch burns against her skin.
“And you did not escalate this directly?”
Cleo wishes she'd had the foresight to bring her water bottle with her, because she may as well be swallowing gravel. “I escalated through the appropriate channel.”
“Brenner.”
“Yes.”
“He buried it.”
“That appears to be quite common here.”
She doesn't fully realise what she's said until she catches sight of Jett gaping at her in her periphery, and for a few horrible seconds she's certain she's going to throw up right there on the conference room floor.
"I mean -"
He waves her off. "I heard you the first time."
That's apparently the end of that, and she slumps against the back of her chair, staring very hard at her feet beneath the table as they continue on without her. Atlas cuts through evasions with frightening patience. He asks for dates, names, access histories, chain of approval maps. He remembers everything. If someone gives him half an answer, he returns to them ten minutes later to slip the missing half between their ribs.
Cleo speaks when she has to, less than usual. The grey suppressant keeps pulsing under her skin, and twice a flicker of nausea rises hard enough that she has to press her heel into the floor and focus on the pressure. Once, when Silas passes behind her chair to hand Atlas a printed access report, her body latches onto the alpha's proximity and answers with a frightened bloom of scent she can feel before she can stop.
The room’s filtration hums steadily overhead, but somehow, fate's chosen to be kind today. The blocker holds, and nobody glances her way. No one except Atlas, that is, who's reading the report when it happens. His cold eyes flick to hers, and Cleo’s stomach drops so abruptly she almost misses the next question.
“Ms O’Dair.”
She forces herself to blink. “Yes?”
“Clinic Eleven. Why did you mark it priority?”
Because three hidden omegas disappeared through its records in eighteen months.
Because one of the intake nurses has the same surname as the supplier Fletcher uses.
Because the approval pattern looks less like sloppy fraud and more like a the tip of a monumental iceberg.
Because she'd seen her own false beta registration buried in an old archive file at 01:13 this morning and hasn't slept since.
“The anomalies cluster there,” is what she settles for in the end. “And their data exports don’t match their patient volume. They’re sending more scent profile packets than they should be generating.”
Anika turns toward her. “You didn’t include that in the summary.”
“I found it late.”
“How late?” Atlas asks.
Cleo shrugs. "Late."
His gaze drops briefly to her face in a clinical sweep of eyes, mouth, skin, and the place where her collar hides the edge of her scent patch. The nausea returns tenfold, and by the end of the meeting, Hugo looks like he's aged a decade. Anika has three pages of legal exposure notes, and Silas has left and returned twice without making a sound. Cleo, on the other hand, has developed a sharp pain behind her right eye she's currently trying to squint through when Atlas closes the final file at 10:06.
“Ms O’Dair,” he says, almost pleasantly.
“Yes?”
“You will remain here.”
Fletcher is going to kill her. No, Fletcher's going to make a stupid attempt to hit Atlas right in the face, get himself killed, and haunt her until the end of time.
Cleo keeps her face carefully blank. “I have a call with procurement at ten fifteen.”
“No, you do not.”
Hugo makes the mistake of looking relieved, and Atlas turns his head slightly.
“You will remain as well, Mr Flynn.”
The other man now looks as nauseous as she feels, morosely watching the others file out. Anika gives Cleo one quick glance on her way past, not quite sympathy but close enough to it that her skin prickles, and then the door shuts behind her and the flurry of voices disappear.
Atlas reads something on the tablet Silas places in front of him, and for nearly a minute no one speaks until he's clearly seen enough, pushing it away with two fingers.
“Mr Flynn,” he muses. “You signed off the preliminary compliance summary.”
Hugo perks up, sitting straighter. “I coordinated it, yes.”
“Ms O’Dair’s findings were reduced to a footnote.”
“I wouldn’t say reduced.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “I would.”
“I'm - the intention was to avoid over weighting unverified data before we had a full legal position, Sir.”
Cleo keeps her eyes on the table and tries very hard not to enjoy watching Hugo sweat. It's petty, unprofessional. It's also one of the few small joys available to her right now.
“Your caution is touching,” Atlas says. “Misplaced, but touching. You’re suspended pending review - Silas will see you out.”
All blood drains from Hugo's face. “You can’t be serious.”
“I could fire you instead?”
“This is - I’ve worked for your father for nine years!”
Atlas nods, almost encouraging. “Likely why you've learned nothing.”
Hugo rounds on Cleo now, full of blame with nowhere else to go. His scent spikes hot, alpha irritation bleeding through his pores. Her heart picks up, and the suppressant slips another inch out of her grip. Atlas moves before she's finished registering the change, and the pressure in the room snaps towards him instead.
Hugo flinches. So does Cleo, though she smothers it quick enough.
“Do not look at her.”
Silas opens the door with a smile that might almost be sweet under any other circumstance, and for a second Cleo thinks Hugo might argue. Men like him often do, right up until they meet a bigger animal. He doesn't, gathering his laptop with stiff hands to turn on his heel without waiting for Silas, who disappears after him with a roll of his eyes.
The door swings shut, and the room immediately feels much too small, but despite herself a flare of guilt lodges in her stomach. “Was that necessary?”
Atlas locks the tablet and turns to face her again. “Yes.”
“Am I suspended too?”
“No.”
“Fired?”
“No.”
“Is Silas going to escort me anywhere?”
Amused, he pushes back in his chair and raises an eyebrow. “Would you like him to?”
That startles a laugh out of her, enough that she actually considers it for a second. Silas has been here even longer than Hugo, to the point they joke he probably came with the building itself. The alpha's had his fair share of men and women, and he's got the sort of velvety charm she might enjoy if she were able to, which she can't, because there's no way in hell he wouldn't figure it out the minute her clothes came off. Nevertheless, the idea sends a pang of want through her, and she clutches at the edges of her seat.
“Why am I still here?”
“Clinic Eleven.”
She grips the chair tighter. “What about it?”
“You found more than you said.”
“No, I found more than I included,” she mutters.
“That distinction matters to you?”
“I didn’t lie.”
Atlas’s gaze pins her there, and Cleo realises much too late that her breathing has changed. The pain behind her eye has spread down into her jaw, and the scent patch under her collarbone feels damp at the edge, sweat or adhesive failure. Neither is ideal, and neither is something she can check with an alpha staring at her like that.
He shifts slightly, propping his chin up on one fist. “You are unwell.”
Cleo’s spine stiffens. “I’m fine, just tired.”
“No.”
She frowns, confused. “I wasn’t asking.”
“Defensive,” Atlas hums, glancing pointedly down at where she's clutching the chair like it owes her money.
“Employed.”
“For now.”
The chair rolls back with a soft scrape and the room spins at the edges. She catches herself before she sways, white knuckling the folder and slipping it under one arm. She smells him then, at least whatever the blocker, filtration and his own control can't keep leashed. Cold air, dark cedar, smoke, snow.
Alpha.
Her mouth goes dry, and the suppressant answers with a sick twist inside her, heat and nausea braided so tightly she cannot tell one from the other.
“Sit down,” he says quietly.
Her knees nearly obey, bodily instinct clawing through good sense, and she fights against it with everything she has. “No.”
His eyes narrow, catching on the way her knees had buckled. The scent patch is lifting in earnest now, peeling at the corner in horrifying slow motion.
No.
No, no, no.
Her hand flies up too late, and Atlas clicks his tongue.
Outside the glass, the office moves on. People pass with tablets and coffee cups, and rain patters against the windows forty two floors above the street. Inside, Cleo stands perfectly still and feels eight years of paperwork, forged tests, borrowed beta products, black market pills, and Fletcher’s terrified loyalty balance on the failing adhesive of one scent patch.
“Your file says beta.”
Cleo says nothing. There's nothing safe to say. Atlas takes one slow breath, and she can see the exact moment he catches it, the thread of omega scent now thin and chemical through suppressants and panic, buried under beta neutral oil. Fear seizes her by the throat.
Atlas reaches past Cleo to press the privacy control beside the door. The glass walls frost white, and she shakes her head, backing up as much as she possibly can without fleeing entirely.
"Concealing status is a criminal offence," he says conversationally, like he's just commenting on the weather or what he'd had for breakfast that morning. "Fraudulently presenting as another is, well. I am sure you know this."
Cleo presses her hand harder against the failing patch, her traitorous eyes stinging. “If you’re going to report me, just do it and spare me all this.”
He tsks. “I am not going to report you. Ебать, sit down before you sweat through your blocker.”
"But -"
“Your pulse has been irregular since 8:42, and I would prefer not to have your scent announce itself to the office on my first day. These filters are not strong enough for omega - you know this too, yes?”
"Yeah," she whispers, her eyes wide.
“You took something this morning.”
When Cleo only shakes her head, Atlas sighs.
“Illegal suppressant. A bad batch, I assume. Or expired.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?”
“No.”
He really does smile at her this time, like he's indulging a child. “Then you won’t mind emptying your bag.”
"I mind because that's horribly invasive, actually."
“Ah, I do not need your bag," he murmurs, "I know what you are.”
Cleo’s fingers have gone numb. “No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“You don’t!”
“Ms O’Dair.”
She wants to run, or hit him. Anything but fold herself at his feet, because he's just cocked his head at her and loosened his grip on his own pheromones with a baiting grin. They flood Conference Room A, heady and so strong Cleo feels like she's choking on it. Bastard. The cheap trick makes her cheeks flame, and it's all she can do to get the words out whole and comprehensible. “I’m beta.”
Atlas's grin only widens, pushing out another wave of pheromones that stick in her throat. Her chest hurts, and for a few seconds she can't get any air past the consuming smell of him. All those years, all those forms, all those clinic screens and borrowed samples and Fletcher’s hands shaking as he taped blockers beneath her collar before her first placement interview, undone in one morning by a man who's currently looking at her like he's enjoying every second of her discomfort.
“I will not expose you,” he says eventually, reining his scent back in just enough that she can suck in a trembling breath. "Not today."
She swallows, pleading with her body to settle down. “Comforting.”
“You are playing a very dangerous game, Ms O'Dair. Many things you do not know.”
“About Clinic Eleven?”
“Yes.”
“And about the missing omegas?”
“Yes.”
“And now about me.”
Atlas's eyes find hers. "Yes."
Cleo’s phone buzzes in her pocket, two sharp vibrations against her thigh, but she cannot answer. Cannot even look.
He looks down at the sound. “Ah, your accomplice worries. I found several files on him, would you believe.”
“Please don’t,” Cleo steps toward him before she thinks better of it, fear burning all the way through the dizziness now. “Whatever you think you know about me, fine. Do what you want, but Fletcher is beta. He has nothing to do with this.”
“He is a liability,” Atlas says, clicking the privacy screen off again. Her skin crawls at the exposure.
Cleo’s fear ignites so fast it becomes rage. “He's the only reason I'm alive.”
“I didn’t say otherwise.”
“Then don’t call him that!”
“Liability does not mean disposable.”
“It does when people like you say it.”
Cleo presses her hand back to the scent patch, and Atlas’s gaze follows the movement before returns to her face with polite discipline. “I am going to give you instructions.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
She laughs, incredulous. “You cannot be serious.”
“You will leave this room, and first you will go to your desk. You will collect your laptop, your access card, and nothing else. You will tell anyone who asks that you have been assigned to the executive review team.”
Cleo stares at him. “I have?”
“You have now. You will also not return to your flat tonight until security has cleared it.”
Her anger wavers. “What?”
Atlas continues like she hadn't spoken at all. “You will not take another pill from the batch you used this morning. You will not be alone with anyone I have not cleared, and you will answer when I call. If you feel feverish, disoriented, unusually sensitive to scent, or any other symptom you are about to dismiss as fine, you will tell me.”
"Fletcher lives with me," she says slowly, not quite understanding. "He's beta. More than capable of protecting our flat if he needs to."
"If you think that, then you know less than I thought."
Cleo inhales, tasting the next sentence with dread. It's one she has to say, a reminder, as stupid as it is. “I don’t belong to you.”
Atlas chuckles. “I have no interest in owning you, Ms O’Dair.”
Her mouth tastes like blood again. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“No,” he says. “I couldn’t. And one more thing.”
Atlas stands between her and the glass, severe and controlled and impossible to read.
“If you lie to me again, I will have your little friend dragged by the scruff into a cell and cement it shut,” his voice is so low she has to strain to hear him. "And you will never be seen again."
