Year one of Z Design began in a studio apartment and ended in a corner office.
Zaia hired her first employee—a human graphic designer named Priya who didn't ask why her boss sometimes had to leave meetings to vomit in the bathroom. She rented a small space above a bakery where the smell of cinnamon masked the scent of morning sickness. She incorporated, trademarked, built a client list that grew by word of mouth and relentless quality.
Northern Ridge Technologies renewed their retainer. Then doubled it.
Zaia never met Celeste Vane in person. She never needed to. The work spoke for itself—clean lines, bold typography, brands that felt alive. *Ms. Z* became a whisper in corporate circles. The designer who didn't do meetings. Who delivered perfection. Who charged premium rates and was worth every penny.
The twins grew.
Zaia felt them move at fourteen weeks—two distinct rhythms, a drumbeat beneath her ribs. She talked to them while she worked. She sang off-key lullabies while Priya took client calls in the next room. She bought two cribs before she bought a bed frame for herself.
At twenty weeks, she learned they were boys.
She cried in the ultrasound clinic bathroom—not from sadness, but from the overwhelming weight of responsibility. Two sons. Two heartbeats. Two lives that would never know their father's pack, their father's name, their father's lie.
Unless she told them.
She wouldn't. Not yet. Not until she was strong enough to carry the truth without breaking.
The rival pack client came in autumn.
**Silverfang Logistics**—a mid-tier pack with territory disputes against Blackwood for decades—requested a pitch. The CEO was a woman named Elena Torres, a Beta-turned-business-leader who'd built her company on efficiency and spite.
"I know who you are," Elena said at their first meeting. She didn't blink. "I don't care. Your work for Northern Ridge was brilliant. I want that brilliance pointed at Blackwood's competitors."
Zaia kept her face neutral. "I'm a designer, Ms. Torres. Not a weapon."
"Every designer is a weapon." Elena slid a folder across the table. "Silverfang is bidding on the port expansion contract Blackwood lost last quarter. We need a brand that screams *we're the future*. You give us that, I'll pay you double your standard rate."
The port expansion. Sebastian's white whale—the project he'd spent two years lobbying for, the contract that would have cemented Blackwood dominance on the eastern seaboard. Silverfang had undercut him by twelve million.
Zaia opened the folder. Maps. Projections. A logo that looked like it had been designed in 1997.
"I'll need creative freedom," she said.
"You have it."
She took the contract.
That night, she worked until two a.m. on a brand system that was sharp, modern, unmistakably predatory—silver and steel, a wolf silhouette that suggested movement without copying any existing pack crest. She poured everything into it: the rage of rejection, the fire of the bond, the determination to build something Sebastian couldn't take from her.
Priya found her asleep at her desk at dawn.
"Boss, you need to rest. The doctor said—"
"The doctor said I'm healthy." Zaia sat up, her back aching, her ankles swollen. "The babies are healthy. I can rest when they're born."
She delivered the Silverfang pitch three days later.
Elena called within an hour. "Blackwood's team just requested an emergency board meeting. Whatever you made, it scared them."
Good.
Zaia didn't smile. She went to her prenatal appointment instead, where the technician showed her two profiles on the screen—noses, chins, the ghost of features that might one day look like their father.
"Strong heartbeats," the doctor said. "Both of them. You're doing remarkably well for a high-stress pregnancy."
High-stress. If only he knew.
On the drive home, Zaia's phone buzzed. An email from an address she didn't recognize.
**Subject: Regarding Z Design**
*Ms. Z,*
*We represent parties interested in your firm's recent work. We would like to schedule a confidential meeting to discuss potential collaboration with Blackwood Shipping.*
Zaia stared at the screen. Her hands trembled.
They'd found her. Or they'd found the work. Or Sebastian had connected the dots between Silverfang's new brand and the designer who'd done Northern Ridge and smelled his ex-wife's talent beneath the alias.
She deleted the email.
She blocked the domain.
She drove home and felt the mate bond pulse—angry, insistent, alive—as if Sebastian had reached for her across four hundred miles and found only empty air.
He was looking for her.
And Zaia Ashford, CEO of Z Design, pregnant with his twins, had no intention of being found.
Silverfang's pitch meeting happened on a day Zaia's ankles were so swollen she hid them under a long skirt.
Elena Torres had eyes like a hawk and a handshake that tested strength. "Northern Ridge speaks highly of your work," she'd said. "We want the same edge. No politics. Just results."
Zaia had almost laughed. Everything was politics when packs were involved.
She built Silverfang's identity in stolen hours—early mornings before the bakery opened, late nights after the twins' first kicks had quieted. The wolf silhouette she'd designed wasn't Blackwood's wolf. It wasn't Northern Ridge's crest. It was something new: movement, hunger, a company that looked like it could outrun an empire.
When Elena called to say Blackwood's board was in emergency session, Zaia had felt a grim satisfaction that scared her. She wasn't Luna anymore. She was a woman with a laptop and a grudge and two sons growing inside her who would need college funds and safety and a mother who didn't break.
The Blackwood collaboration email had come from a law firm address, not Sebastian personally. That mattered. If he'd written himself, she might have crumbled. Instead she saw corporate machinery—the same machine that had processed her divorce—and refused to be processed again.
She blocked the domain and ordered nursery furniture with Silverfang's first payment.
Let him look. Let him wonder. Let him feel the bond and know she was building something he couldn't buy or break.
Priya joined Z Design six months after incorporation—sharp, fast, loyal before Zaia had earned it. Together they'd turned a corner office above a bakery into a studio that smelled like cinnamon and ambition. Zaia had told Priya only what was necessary: no pack talk, no questions about the father, flexibility when *morning appointments* ran long.
When Silverfang's payment cleared, Zaia had bought a proper desk chair and a blood pressure monitor on the healer's advice. Stress was a luxury she couldn't afford, yet she collected it anyway with every headline that mentioned Blackwood and Celeste in the same breath.
She'd started a college fund for the twins the same week she blocked Sebastian's email domain. If he wanted to find her, he'd have to work harder than sending corporate collaboration offers through lawyers.