










“Kid,” Jack said. “You any good at not fucking up?”
Alex registered the question for what it was, not the interview he had prepared for, but the one underneath it, the one that wanted to know whether he was going to give a law school answer or an honest one. He had prepared the law school answer on the flight. He looked at Jack and set it aside.
“Depends on the definition,” Alex said. Then he looked at Jack and reconsidered. “Yes, sir.”
Jack’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Sir. I like that. Most of these Ivy League pricks walk in here calling me Jack like we’re old pals.” He held the look. “What does ‘yes’ mean to you?”
“It means you tell me what’s coming before it arrives, I keep it from becoming a problem. You call me after it’s already a problem, I make it go away.” He held Jack’s eyes. “Either way works. I’d rather the first.”
Jack regarded him for a moment. Then he set down what he was reading and leaned back.
“Marco says you’re good,” he said. “That means something, coming from him. I know your father. I know his firm. They’ve been handling my contracts for three years.” He picked up his mug and took a drink. “If you’re even half the lawyer Richard is, you’re worth the conversation.”
“I’m not my father,” Alex said. There was no edge to it. He was stating a fact. “But I can do the job.”
Jack looked at him with the full quality of attention he would come to understand was Jack’s primary mode: complete, unhurried, costing the subject of it nothing and requiring everything. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Alex said.
Jack almost smiled. He set the mug down and leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
“Alexander Mercer. Thirty. Top of your class at USC Law. You know why you’re here?”
“My father said you needed a personal attorney. Available at all hours. Fighter issues, sponsorship conflicts, anything that doesn’t go through the league office.”
“That’s the version that goes on paper.” Jack tapped the desk once with two fingers. “Off paper it’s simpler. You work for me. The league, the fighters, your old man — none of them own you. I do. I snap my fingers at three in the morning because some idiot heavyweight punched a casino bouncer, you’re already in a car. I need an NDA before breakfast because one of my champions knocked up a ring-girl, you’re already writing it. You breathe when I say breathe. You eat when I say eat. You exist for the GCL. The GCL is me. I need someone I can trust completely to have my back. Not the league’s back. Mine.” He let that land. “You want this job, Mercer?”
Alex had known, somewhere on the flight over, that he wanted it. Not only the money, though the money was real. It was the room he was sitting in. The building below, with its blood smell and its training cages. The man across the desk, who had not yet said a single thing that was anything other than exactly what he meant. Alex had spent two years in an environment that prided itself on precision and had not yet been in a room where precision was this unconcerned with its own appearance.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I want the job.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed, dark and unreadable. He let the words hang in the air for a long ten seconds, the air conditioner droning in the background. Then he smiled, slow and predatory, a smile that had closed million-dollar deals and ended careers in the same breath.
“Good,” Jack said. “Then you’re going to prove it.”
The shift in the room was immediate, like the temperature had dropped ten degrees. Alex’s mouth went dry. He’d expected a hard interview. Maybe some locker-room hazing. Not… this. Whatever this was.
Jack stood up. He came around the desk, without announcement, without the excess of motion that would have signaled awareness of being watched. He stopped three feet away and crossed his arms and looked at Alex the way he had been looking at him since Alex walked in, which was completely and without apology.
“Take off your jacket.”
Alex blinked. Once. His heart slammed against his ribs like it wanted out. Not standard. A line. A test. The kind powerful men drew in the sand to see who’d cross it and who’d run.
Jack’s voice stayed even, almost conversational, but there was steel underneath. “You heard me. Jacket. Off. Or you can stand up right now, walk out that door, tell your Daddy I’m a crazy prick, and we’ll both pretend this meeting never happened. Your call, kid. Last chance to keep your suit clean and your dignity intact.”

Calan Mercer writes dark, character-driven romance about powerful men and the things they can't control. A nine-year Army veteran with deployments to Iraq and Kosovo, he earned his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and has spent years ringside, drawn to the brutal intimacy of combat sports and the speed of the ice.

NEW RELEASE

Book Title: The Crucible
Author and Publisher: Aoibh Wood
Cover Artist: Rebecca Frank
Release Date: September 28, 2026 (InkColors) / October 5, 2026 (Amazon, Kobo, and wide)
Tense/POV: First person, present tense, single POV (Mora), with a brief closing interlude.
Genres: FF Fantasy/Romance (adult sapphic romantasy; dark academy elements)
Tropes: Enemies to lovers, forbidden love, hidden identity, slow burn, found family, morally gray love interest, sparring as flirtation, knife-gifting as a love language
Themes: identity and self-determination, loyalty vs. duty, surviving institutional cruelty, chosen family, queer joy (queernorm world — no homophobia)
Heat Rating: 4 out of 5 flames
Length: approx. 147 000 words
It is Book 1 of a planned series — the central romance arc resolves in this book (no romance cliffhanger); the wider series plot continues.
InkColors (early release, Sept 28)
Amazon (preorder, delivers Oct 5)
Additional wide retailers live on October 5

What the Empire forges, the heart unmakes.
The Crucible: the Empire’s brutal war academy, where the Aethyr-touched are forged into weapons and attachment is a crime.Aoibh Wood is the bestselling author of The Senator’s Widow — a #1 title in Amazon’s Lesbian Thriller category — and the Cait Reagan urban fantasy series. A veteran of the tech and cybersecurity world, she writes romance, intrigue, and the supernatural with queer women at the center. Her sapphic enemies-to-lovers romantasy, The Crucible, releases September 28 on InkColors and everywhere October 5. She lives with her wife and their cat, Papaya.
Website | Facebook | InstagramBluesky: @aoibhwood.com
Twitter/X: @aoibhwood
TikTok: @aoibhwood
