[NIKITA]

As they walked towards the entrance, Qiao and Carrie were ambushed by the team of reporters, but there was something about the new security guard that screamed danger. The reporters didn\'t even have to hear him talk because they instinctively kept their distance.

Maybe it was something about how angry or bored he looked, or perhaps it was about the two lieutenant commanders who walked into the building, ignoring the reporters like they didn\'t even exist.

It was a beautiful sight for their first day because it was a power move, and this showed that they were here for business and not to pose for the reporters. It was just a matter of time before the reporters got the memo and left them alone, but would they leave them alone, really?

The interior of the Pavlenko building was not new to Carrie and Qiao, and they had been to the Pavlenko offices more than once with Nikita, Yuri, and Ren.

They knew it like the back of their hands, but they had never thought that a day would come when they would have to walk into the building, not as Nikita\'s best friends, but as two people who were tagging over the company, the voices of power in the room.

They had never thought that they would ever have offices in this building or that everything they did would be magnified tenfold. Qiao Xi held his head high when he walked through the hallways and to his new office with Carrie walking alongside him.

They had requested that they share the same office because Qiao apparently had separation anxiety. However, the setup was just until they got their actual offices set up. For the moment, they would be sharing Nikita\'s office while they aired.

Walking towards their office with their driver behind them, the two commanders knew they commanded respect. It wasn\'t because of their military wear, but it was because of who they were personally.

"This place looks lonely without Niki, Yuri, and Ren being here," Qiao commented when they made it to the office. Their driver didn\'t walk in with them, and instead, he just stood at the door, guarding it like his life would always depend on the safety of the two commanders.

The driver looked around the premises before Qiao and Carrie\'s glass office from where he was standing. He was like a statue but a vigilant one, and it was something he had been trained to do.

He knew his job description by heart, and it didn\'t matter where he was stationed. He would always be the same man, with the same responsibilities that he loved and cherished. It was almost like they gave him a reason.

With his bosses in the office, the driver waited for them to finish their work so he could drive them to their next location.

"Excuse me, I need to deliver these papers to the new heads," a woman said politely to the driver who just looked at her. He was openly staring at the five-foot-six woman who was in front of him as if ȧssessing whether she was a threat or not.

It seemed like he had concluded that she was a threat because he didn\'t allow her to walk in. Instead, he told her to stay put before aligning the papers off her hands and walking in with them to his new bosses.

The woman on the other end of the glass still stood, scared of the bulky man who looked like he would squash her faster than the alarms would ring.

"Let her in, Andrew," Qiao said, and Andr looked between Qiao, Carrie, and the woman outside the door.

"Are you sure, sir?" Andrew asked. He took his job seriously, and he was going to protect his boss for everyone, including women who were ogling Qiao like he was a snack. What Andrew hadn\'t realized was that the woman wasn\'t interested in Qiao Xi.

The woman is interested in him, the bulky man who bȧrėly spoke a word to her. What was it with women anyway? Then again, she couldn\'t be blamed, and Andrew was a handsome man and fit the standard of the magazine cover type of men in the human world.

He was absolutely unaware of that through, which was also expected. His naivety would save him a lot of drama, and the only problem was that his crush was also a naive man who wouldn\'t know who liked him or not.

It was like a war of hearts in a sea of thorns.

"Yes, she\'s a secretary. We need to know whatever the fuċk this means so we can get this over and done with," Carrie said, making Andrew relax. However, he was still going to keep an eye on the woman and make sure she wasn\'t a threat to his bosses.

Walking outside, he ushered the secretary inside the office before resuming his position.

Andrew didn\'t care about what they were talking about in the office because one thing was sure, they would never speak about Nikita or Arya, though it was pretty obvious they didn\'t want to talk about Arya.

Maybe they would talk about his alpha with time, but he just had to wait and stick to the mission.

Andrew was curious about how the humans worked and how they functioned. He wanted to know everything, but he knew he would be overwhelmed, so instead, he decided to focus on his crush and their conversation.

None of them knew he was a werewolf or even that he had super-hearing; he would sue that to kill a bird with one stone. He would find out more about what had happened and why Nikita had decided to leave everything in the hands of his friend.

Sure, he knew the doctor had lost his family, but the way the man was leaving everything to pursue the truth was proof that he suspected foul play. Andrew could also tell that something was keeping the doctor afloat or someone he cared about.

He had watched his comrades whose mates died take their lives because the life of a wolf was technically not worth living when their mates died. Because their mates were their links to humanity, and leaving that aspect would leave them as feral beasts.

Beasts who would do anything to numb their pain, and most of the time, they always aimed at lashing out other fellow mated wolves or the younglings.

Andrew hadn\'t seen Nikita or known him that much, but he knew that Arya was not so careless as to call her people to cross realms for something that wasn\'t worth it. There had to be more to the man, and he would find out.

He would look for everything on the Pavlenko child, and from the whispers, he already heard at the office, it wouldn\'t be long before he knew what had gone so wrong that had broken the doctor people seemed to love and that they wanted to state clearly.

A man who had lost so much still had something to live for, and if Andrew knew what that was, he would be a step closer to decoding all of this.