Page 72 of Rejected By the Shifter King

Rejected by the Leopard King

by Marian Tee

Three Days Ago

“WE HAVE A PROBLEM.”

Four simple words from his wife, and Nicolo texted his assistant with an even shorter message.

Cancel everything.

Maryah was fiercely stubborn when it came to maintaining her independence, and more so at work. And so for her to barge into his office without warning like this, and with those four words alone...

Nicolo had a feeling Maryah was actually downplaying it, and that what she was about to tell him was akin to dropping a supernatural bomb on their perfectly ordered life.

“Go on.”

The tightness in Maryah’s chest immediately loosened at the calmness of her husband’s tone. In the past, she would have rather be caught dead than ask for Nicolo’s help. But love had changed everything, and anyway, their current dilemma wasnother fault. Things just...happened. But when she lifted her gaze to Nicolo and opened her mouth to speak—

Tap, tap, tap.

Maryah was immediately distracted by the way her husband looked so deliciously hot when he was in CEO mode, seated as he was behind his massive desk and dressed in a suit that did a wonderful job at emphasizing the impressive breadth of his shoulders.

Although they had already been married for a year, seeing him immediately put things aside to focus on her had her stomach making ridiculous little flips. How in the world did she ended up married to this man again?

She had this craziest urge to throw herself into his arms, but then she saw him arch his brow at her in question, and...ugh.Seeing this reminded her of the fact that Nicolo also happened to be herboss, and remembering this made her feel just a little...defensive.

“Before anything else—I want you to know that I ran this through the system multiple times.” Maryah hated how just saying the words had her squirming even though she was telling him the absolute truth. “I even had it rebooted. But nothing changed. The results were the same.”

Nicolo’s gaze bored through her, but she caught the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. The one that meant he was fighting not to smile.

Don’t be defensive, don’t be defensive.

But she still ended up sounding exactly that as she asked, “What?”

“You still haven’t told me what the problem is.” He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled in that CEO pose that used to intimidate her, once upon a time. Now it just made her want to mess up his perfectly styled hair.

“I’m getting there.”

“And there would be what exactly?”

His voice was solemn, she’d give him that. But his choice of words made it seem like she was hedging. Which she wasn’t.Really!

“I just wanted to make sure you really understand first.”

“What am I to understand when I still don’t know what the trouble is?”

Maryah’s mouth opened and closed.“Um.”She tried to speak one more time, but when she only ended up opening and closing her mouth several times without a single word coming out—

I give up.

Maryah handed the result scores to her husband and found herself squirming on her feet once more as she watched him read in impassive silence.

“So...I know the math might not be mathing—”

Nicolo’s lips pressed together in a straight line. He now knew for sure that his wife was more stressed than she was willing to admit, to parrot words that could only have come from her assistant Ada. The girl was nice and funny, but she was also a scatterbrain that tended to cause Concord Agency more harm than help.

“But our system—” The rest of Maryah’s words died a quick death when Nicolo raised his head.