Chapter 8 The Compliance Hold

Eira had barely stepped out of Hale Tower when Alpha Sebastian’s private car slid up to the curb.

Four years of marriage. This was the first time he’d ever sent a car for her.

The Bentley stopped outside Sterling Tower.

"We’re here, Luna Eira." The driver came around and opened her door.

"Thank you. You can head back now." She tucked the resignation letter under her arm.

"Alpha Sebastian asked to be told where you went."

"He’ll find out soon enough."

She walked to the entrance and let the scanner read her face.

Vanessa Cole. HR.

Vanessa spotted her before she reached the desk, coffee frozen halfway to her mouth. Surprise flashed across her face, then smoothed into the bright, syrupy warmth she saved for anyone tied to someone important. "Eira! I didn’t expect to see you here today."

"Do you have a minute?"

"Of course. Come in."

Halfway across the lobby, the back of Eira’s neck prickled.

Someone was watching her.

She turned.

She caught only the edge of it — a shoulder, a dark jacket, the clean line of an expensive sleeve rounding the corner toward the executive elevator. Gone in a second.

But something in the set of those shoulders snagged on a memory she couldn’t quite reach. Like a name on the tip of her tongue that refused to arrive.

"Everything okay?" Vanessa asked.

"Someone was watching us just now."

Vanessa followed her gaze to the empty corridor and laughed lightly. "You’re imagining things. Long day?"

"That elevator." Eira nodded at it. "Someone stepped off and went that way."

Vanessa’s smile froze at the corners. "...Which elevator?"

"That one."

"You must’ve seen wrong." She swallowed. The sound was audible. "That’s the boss’s private elevator. He never comes down to HR. He wouldn’t just be standing around a lobby."

Eira let it go.

It wasn’t her problem anymore. In ten minutes, nothing in this building would be.

The plaque on Vanessa’s door read Vice President of Human Resources. New, since the last time.

"Congratulations on the promotion."

"Thank you." But Vanessa kept glancing back at that corridor, like she expected it to open its mouth and swallow her whole.

Eira sat, laid the letter on the desk, and didn’t waste words. "I’m here to resign."

"Oh. Right." Vanessa pulled up the forms on autopilot. "How fast do you need it processed?"

"Standard timing is fine."

"Standard is thirty days. Though for your position, honestly, we can close it in two or three. There’s not much to unwind."

Eira signed where she was told, set down the pen, and felt something in her chest go quiet.

That was it. The last thread. Cut.

--

Five minutes after Eira left, a knock landed on Vanessa’s door.

"Come in—" She was already on her feet before the word finished. "Miles."

"Alpha Killian wants to see you."

Vanessa’s stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Killian had summoned her exactly once since her promotion. That meeting had ended with two directors walked out of the building by security.

Sterling Group had been bleeding out its rot for months — ever since the embezzlement scandal. The one where a name too senior to touch had quietly walked off with north of eight million before the Council pried it loose.

The purge that followed was how a mid-level HR manager had become a Vice President in six weeks.

Her mind raced through every new hire. Every flag. Every file that could’ve caught the wrong eye.

Only one name made her palms go cold.

Eira Crawford.

But no. Eira was clean. She’d come in through the Sterling family itself, approved from somewhere above Vanessa’s clearance. A favor for a favor. A nothing role. A salary that lived mostly on paper.

There was nothing there to find.

...Right?

--

Alpha Killian’s monitor was still open to the same email. He’d read it twice. Hated it both times.

FROM: Council Registrar’s Office

RE: Formal Notice — Luna Candidacy Review, Q3

Nine names. Nine daughters from nine allied Packs. Nine headshots posed and polished like a dating profile no one had asked to see.

He had zero interest in any of them.

The door opened, cutting the thought off cold.

Vanessa stepped in. He didn’t look up.

"The woman you just met with. Who is she?"

"Uh — Eira Crawford."

Crawford.

His pen stopped moving.

The same surname he’d been chasing for three days. Same height. Same careful way of holding herself.

He opened her file himself.

It loaded fast. Because there was almost nothing to load.

One photo. She looked younger. Her eyes were sharper, less worn down.

So the barefoot ghost from three nights ago in Room 1806 had a first name now.

Eira.

"Explain."

Sweat surfaced along Vanessa’s hairline. "Your aunt — Marnie — brought her in, Alpha Killian. The file’s low-access. Office support, nothing sensitive. She never touched anything confidential."

"My aunt."

Marnie hadn’t touched company business in a decade. She wouldn’t forward a résumé.

"Check her. Dig deeper. Find everything."

"Right away." Miles slipped out.

"She actually came in today to quit," Vanessa added. She hoped that would help.

It did not help. If anything, it made the whole thing worse.

Something in Alpha Killian’s chest tightened before his brain caught up with it — the same feeling as watching a door start to close from across the room, too far away to reach it in time.

A check like this usually took thirty minutes. This one took ten.

Ten minutes meant there was almost nothing to find.

Miles came back with one thin paper. Sweat was near his temple. "This is everything, Alpha Killian."

An orphan. An Omega. A brilliant degree — and no record of the years that should have surrounded it. No hometown. No family. After graduation, a flat, echoing blank: no jobs, no leases, no accounts any system would admit to.

"A file this clean is not by chance," Miles said. "Someone made it look this way."

In other words, she was not just "nobody."

Whoever she was, someone had worked very hard to make sure no one could find out.

Alpha Killian’s face grew dark. This was more than just being curious now. A woman whose past was erased on purpose.

She was secretly put into his company.