Chapter 29

Cora

The office smelled like coffee, paper, and tension.

I sat at my desk, hands steady even though everything inside me felt like it had been hollowed out. I tried to lose myself in the work before me, but it was hard when so many people around me were openly staring.

Emails pinged, meetings buzzed in and out of the floor around me, and every now and then, I caught someone looking—quick, sharp flicks of the eyes that slid off me like raindrops off glass.

Let them glance.

Let them whisper.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

The flash drive sat heavy in my pocket. I’d found it shoved into my desk drawer that morning with a short note from Ethan.

You might want to see this, it ominously said in his fine script.

I knew what it contained even before I plugged it into my laptop, the screen’s pale glow stark against the early gray morning.

Fabrications. Lies.

And Amy's smiling fingerprints were all over it.

There were photoshopped screenshots of me "leaking" classified summit documents. Messages I never sent, edited to sound treacherous and conniving. And the final nail in the coffin: a doctored security feed clip showing me standing too close to Kingston’s champagne glass the night he collapsed.

All of it wrapped up neatly into a dossier labeled:

Subject: Cora – Risk Assessment.

It looked like the Silverfang pack was investigating me now and the results were less than flattering. I skimmed the horrible words flashing before my eyes, condemning me with each new syllable.

Risk.

Threat.

Human.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard, useless. My mouth was dry. My stomach twisted into knots so tight I thought I might pass out right there at my desk.

It didn’t matter that it was fake.

It mattered that it looked real.

It mattered that Amy and her lapdogs in the executive wing had spent the last two days weaving this careful, devastating narrative: The human secretary who had charmed the Alpha King and wormed her way into power before betraying him.

Bile burned the back of my throat.

I swallowed it down. I closed the file carefully, ejected the drive, and tucked it back into my pocket.

No one saw the tremble in my hands. No one saw the way my heart broke a little more with each breath I took.

I got up and made my way to the conference room for the nine o’clock strategy meeting, just like I did every Monday. I took notes, distributed schedules, and fielded questions with cool efficiency while half the room barely hid their disdain. The weight of suspicion clung to me like a second skin.

Still, I smiled when I needed to.

Still, I met their eyes head-on.

Still, I endured.

When the meeting ended, I gathered my things calmly, ignoring the whispered remarks that followed me out the door like smoke.

“Should’ve seen it coming.”

“Humans don't belong near leadership.”

“She had a lot fooled for a while. Too long.”

By the time I returned to my desk, a fresh memo had already hit the internal chat: a polite but unmistakable reminder that all staff were expected to comply with new "security transparency initiatives," including random phone checks and workstation audits.

Of course they were. Because I was still here and I was still a threat. A risk. A human.

They were going to bleed me dry under the guise of procedure.

I kept my hands moving—typing, filing, answering calls—because if I stopped for even a second, the ache in my chest might swallow me whole.

Only Rock and Ethan spoke to me, and even still, they were fleeting discussions. When I thanked Ethan for the thumb drive, in fact, he had flippantly dismissed it, like he didn’t want to talk about or acknowledge it.

At noon, I heard the elevator chime.

A hush fell over the floor like a held breath.

I didn’t need to look up to know it was Kingston.

The air shifted when he walked into a room. But now, that shift came with something colder. Tighter.

I stood automatically when he approached, file in hand, ready to brief him on the updates from the fallout. I wasn’t going to waste any time. I couldn’t.

My heart thudded painfully against my ribs as he came to a stop a few feet away.

He looked... thinner. Sharper. His normally immaculate appearance had a brittle edge to it, like even his suit was armor barely holding him together. Shadows bruised the skin under his eyes.

I wanted to say something. I wanted to ask if he was okay. If he had even slept since his hospitalization.

If he still believed in me.

Instead, I held out the file with both hands, my fingers steady.

"Your noon reports, sir," I said quietly.

He took it without meeting my eyes. His hand brushed mine for a fraction of a second—warm, real—and it was like being stabbed with the awareness of him. He flipped the file open, scanned the top page, and gave a small, tight nod.

"Thank you, Cora," he said.

His voice was polite. Distant.

Not cruel. Not accusatory. Just... guarded.

He didn’t ask how I was. He didn’t invite me to sit in on the leadership meetings like he used to. My heart stuttered as I considered that he might truly blame me for the poisoning.

He moved past me as if carrying a hundred invisible burdens and didn’t look back.

The rest of the office was electric with curiosity, but I kept my head down, returning to my desk, pretending the absence of Kingston’s trust didn’t feel like losing the very air I breathed.

I understood. I did. Even if he didn’t believe the lies, he couldn’t afford to be seen protecting me again—not when the council was already sharpening their knives, waiting for any sign of favoritism toward the “dangerous human.”

The wolves needed someone to blame. Better me than him.

Still, when I sat back down and picked up my pen, my hand shook just once before I forced it to stillness. Hopefully, Kingston would review the documents shortly and see the truth that Ethan had uncovered.

I wouldn’t crumble.

I wouldn’t break.

Not for them.Especially not for Amy.

As if summoned by my thoughts, Amy sauntered up to my desk a few minutes later, her heels clicking sharply against the polished marble floors. She wore a blood-red pencil dress and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

"Poor Cora," she said sweetly, leaning casually against the partition of my cubicle. "Must be exhausting, pretending everything's fine when everyone knows exactly what you are now."

I didn't respond. I just kept writing, my face calm, my body a study in stillness.

Amy clicked her tongue, amused by my silence.

"You know," she said, her voice low, private, "you could make this a lot easier on yourself. Resign. Disappear. Before you lose everything."

I finally looked up at her. Her smile widened, delighted.

"I'm not leaving," I said softly. “I won’t lose, Amy.”

Amy’s brows lifted, faux innocence painting her features.

"Oh, but you already have," she said. "You just haven’t realized it yet."

She pushed away from my desk with a smirk and strode off, her perfume cloying in the air behind her.

I watched her go, my heart burning—but not with defeat.

With resolve.

I turned back to my work. I took another call. I answered another email. I kept breathing.

Because they wanted me broken.

They wanted me to fall apart so they could point and say, See? She was never strong enough to stand beside us.

But I would show them.

Even if Kingston never looked me in the eye again.

Even if no one believed me.

Even if the world decided that my humanity made me unworthy of standing in their halls.

I would find out who really leaked the documents.

I would find out who really poisoned Kingston.

And I would make damn sure that when the truth came out, they would choke on the lies they’d so carefully spun.

Rain started up outside the windows, a steady gray mist swallowing the city.

I tucked the flash drive deeper into my pocket and smiled to myself—small, secret, defiant.

They hadn't beaten me yet.

And I wasn't done fighting.