Page 123 of Rejected By My Shifter Billionaire

I smoothed down my skirt and walked to the conference room, my heart performing some kind of tribal war dance in my chest.

Nicolo was standing by the windows when I entered, his back to me, hands clasped behind him in a pose that screamed authority and control.

“You wanted to see me?”

He turned slowly, and I finally understood what Ada meant.

Indeed, he was harder now.

His eyes and the way he stared at me.

Everything about his gaze was so unforgivingly hard and cold that it made my stomach clench with dread.

“N-Nicolo?”

He studied my face for a moment, and I forced myself to meet his gaze without flinching. Whatever this was about, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me crumble.

“I’ve completed my evaluation of your agency,” he said finally.

That...was what he wanted to talk about?

Seriously?

“The testing protocols are sound. The compatibility algorithms show promise. The client satisfaction rates are acceptable.”

That was wonderful news, really.

But I was too busy feeling scared and nauseous to say it.

Why did he feel so...hard?

“I’m prepared to give my full approval for the Concord Agency to operate independently.”

I should have felt relieved. Excited. This was what I’d been working toward since the beginning.

Instead, I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for him to push me off.

“With one condition,” he added, confirming my worst fears.

Of course there was a condition. There was always a condition with Nicolo.

“What is it?” I asked, my voice turning raspy and strained.

“You need to get married.”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard him. The words made no sense, like he’d suddenly started speaking in tongues.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The Blood Oval has concerns about an unmated human having access to shifter genetic data and mate-matching protocols. They feel it represents a potential security risk.”

“That’s—that’s ridiculous. The data is all anonymized.”

“And yet your system produced a 98.7% compatibility match between a human and an alpha. That has their attention.”

“So I need to get married to...what? Prove I’m not a security risk?”

“To demonstrate stability and commitment to the supernatural community.” His voice was so clinical, so detached, it made my heart fracture into jagged little pieces. “With your marriage to a shifter, you’d be considered part of the community rather than an outside influence.”