Chapter 26 The Boardroom
The boardroom was all glass and steel, sunlight spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows and scattering across polished oak like molten gold. Ironclad’s empire was on display here—every inch designed to impress, to intimidate. Normally, it worked. Normally, I sat at the head of this table with the confidence of a wolf who had already won before the game began.
But today wasn’t normal.
Today, Sable walked into my boardroom.
Five years. Five years of empty space between us, and still the air shifted the second she crossed the threshold. She moved like a blade drawn from a sheath—controlled, gleaming, dangerous.
She had changed. Not softened—never softened—but sharpened. Her chestnut hair framed her face in loose waves, catching the sunlight as if it had been spun for her alone. Her brown eyes—gods, those eyes—still held the same fire that had once made her fearless in the training ring, but now something else lived behind them: distance. Experience. Walls I had not built and did not know how to scale.
Her lips, once quick to curve into a grin, pressed into a line that dared me to try.
She wore a fitted charcoal blazer over a white blouse that dipped just enough to tease, paired with a pencil skirt that hugged her hips and legs in a way that made my throat dry. Human clothes, professional and polished, but my wolf saw through every seam—saw the strength in her curves, the grace in her stride, the power she carried in her body no matter how she dressed it.
I had imagined her a thousand times over the years, in every possible setting. Nothing compared to the reality.
The moment she stepped into the room, the mate bond snapped taut, humming in my chest, hot and insistent, pulling me toward her. My wolf clawed and paced, desperate to close the distance, to claim. Every breath of her scent—earth after rain, cedar smoke under wind—was agony.
She slid into a chair across the table, calm and composed, a picture of professionalism. But I saw it. The subtle tremor in her hand as she uncapped her pen. The quick leap of her pulse at the hollow of her throat. She felt it too.
Liora slid into the chair beside me, too close. The scent of her arousal curled sharp in the air, cloying and unwelcome. Her knee brushed mine under the table, her shoulder grazing like she had a right to it. Normally I would have corrected her—would have reminded her of boundaries, of appearances.
But today I couldn’t even look at her.
Because Sable was across from me, and every piece of me was breaking to keep from staring openly.
Donovan from Everbright began the pitch, his voice slick and eager. Slides flashed across the screen: loyalty, empire, unbreakable. All words I had chosen for myself long before this meeting.
But I barely heard him.
I watched her.
The way she leaned forward when her colleague spoke, nodding sharply at points. The way her lips parted just slightly when she was ready to interject. The way her gaze brushed over me once—quick, sharp, full of fire—and then slid away as if I wasn’t worth the attention.
It gutted me.
At one point, Donovan ceded the floor to her.
And when Sable stood to present her segment, the air shifted.
Her voice was steady, confident, carrying through the glass room like it belonged here, like she belonged here. Every gesture was precise, every word sharpened with conviction. She had always been a fighter; now she was a strategist too. She wasn’t just surviving in the human world—she was thriving.
And damn me, I’d never wanted her more.
Liora leaned in as Sable spoke, whispering in my ear, her scent invading the moment. I didn’t hear the words. My focus was locked on Sable—her voice, her fire, the way she commanded the room without realizing it.
My wolf growled, the mate bond pulsing harder. Mate. Ours.
I clenched my jaw, forcing my hands to stay folded on the table. If I reached for her now, if I let myself move, I’d cross the distance and ruin everything. The elders, the board, the entire power structure I’d spent years building—they’d all watch me lose control.
So I sat still, silent, and let the bond burn me alive while I pretended to listen to strategy.
She clicked to the next slide, explaining Ironclad’s future as if she had been born to shape it. She spoke of fortresses and followers and strength through loyalty. Every word was a mirror of my own, reflected back at me through her voice.
I imagined, for a reckless heartbeat, what it would be like to stand up and cross to her. To lift her chin until she met my eyes. To tell the entire room that she was mine and always had been.
But instead I stayed seated, nails biting into my palms beneath the table.
Because this was her arena now, not mine. She had built this life for herself. She had fought for her freedom. To reach for her now, to drag her back, would be to prove her worst fear—that the bond was a chain.
When she finished, the room went quiet for a heartbeat before polite applause filled the space. Donovan beamed. Liora shifted beside me, clearly irritated at being ignored.
And me?
I sat perfectly still, letting my gaze settle on Sable as she returned to her seat, her face smooth and unreadable. Inside, my wolf howled. Inside, the bond thrummed like a drumbeat against my ribs.
Ironclad might have been my empire.
But Sable?
She was my world.
And she was sitting across from me, acting like I was nothing at all.