He Signed My Resignation Without Reading It, Now His Wolf Hunts Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Signature
Alasdair signs Odette's resignation without reading it, Imogen brings her tea and says not to take it personally, and Odette walks out of the glass office; a text arrives from Alasdair's number while his phone sits in his car.
Alasdair signed my resignation this morning, and the whole floor watched me find out.
I sat in my glass office with the paper flat on the desk.
Through the wall, twenty wolves at their screens pretended not to look at me.
The HR director was on my laptop, calling from our second office across town.
"He signed it at nine," she said. "He never read it, Odette."
"How do you know?"
"He signed the whole folder without looking up. Imogen held the pages flat for him."
I looked at his signature at the bottom of the page.
I had put the letter in his signing folder on Wednesday, because I couldn't say it to his face.
I had thought he would at least notice my name.
"He depends on you more than anyone," the HR director said. "You're not just an assistant to him. You're his Gamma. He'll be lost without you."
A Gamma keeps the Alpha's calendar, his ledgers and his temper in order.
I had done it for nine years, since I was nineteen.
On my first morning Alasdair had looked at me over a stack of files and said, "Don't get attached to anything here. It's a job."
I had been attached to him ever since.
"Do you want me to tell him what he signed?" the HR director asked.
I bit the inside of my cheek until it stung.
He was down the hall in the gold meeting.
If it mattered to him, he would have come down the hall.
"No," I said. "File it."
"Odette."
"Please file it."
She sighed and looked at me through the screen for a long moment.
Then she nodded, and the call ended.
The door opened, and Imogen came in with a cup in both hands.
Imogen was Alasdair's girlfriend. She had been at his side for fourteen months, and the pack had started calling her the Luna-to-be before anyone asked him.
She was also the only person in the building who brought me anything.
"Drink," she said, and set the cup by my elbow. "It's your blend. I had them steep it extra."
The tea came from a small tin with a label in her neat handwriting.
She had brought me a cup from that tin every morning for fourteen months.
I picked it up and drank half, without looking at it.
"You're pale," Imogen said. "Don't take it personally, okay? Alasdair signs things by the stack. It means nothing."
I put the cup down.
I had not told her what the paper was.
I decided that she must have heard it from the HR director. People talked in this building.
"It means he didn't look," I said.
"It means he's tired." She squeezed my shoulder. "Let me talk to him tonight. He'll be begging you to take it back by Monday."
"Please don't."
"You need to rest. The tea will settle your wolf."
"My wolf hasn't made a sound in twenty-eight years," I said. "She's the calmest wolf in Colorado."
Imogen laughed, warm and quick, and squeezed my shoulder again.
Her eyes went to the signature, then to me.
"I'll get out of your way," she said. "Finish the tea."
She left, and her perfume stayed in the room.
I finished the tea.
Then I took the cardboard box from under my desk and put in a coffee mug, a framed photo of my grandmother and a spare pair of flats.
Nine years fit in one box.
Padraig stopped in my doorway.
He was Ironwood's Beta, a big man with sandy hair, and he stood there with his hands in his pockets.
"Odette. What is that?"
"A box."
"You're not seriously..."
"I turned in my notice. He signed it."
Padraig looked through the glass toward the conference room, where Alasdair's dark head was bent over a table.
His face went pink with guilt, and he said nothing.
My phone buzzed on the desk.
I turned it over.
The message was from Alasdair.
Take the weekend. Back Monday. Don't be late.
No please. No Odette.
I almost laughed.
"That's him," I said, and showed Padraig the screen. "He can't read a resignation, but he can order me back to work."
Padraig frowned.
"That can't be right," he said slowly. "He left his phone charging in his car at lunch. I walked past it."
We both looked at the screen.
The message had come from Alasdair's number.
I picked up the box.
"So I'm leaving," I said.
I walked out past all twenty of them with my chin up, and I did not look back at the conference room.
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