“Smell what?” Diego asked, lifting his nose slightly and testing the air.
“I’m not sure how to describe it.” Max sniffed again, surprised none of the other guys had picked up on the delectable scent. “It’s sweet and spicy at the same time, like…I don’t know…maybe cinnamon and flowers?”
Diego and Zane stared blankly at him while Brooks shook his head.
“I don’t smell anything,” the big man said. “There are a lot of people in here. Maybe you’re picking up a combination of their scents.”
“Maybe,” Max said softly, though he didn’t think so. This was one very specific scent, not a blend of several. It was hard to explain how he knew that, but he did. All he could say for sure was that the scent had come out of nowhere. Like someone who hadn’t been there before had just walked into the room.
Not just anyone. A woman.
“I’m going to check it out,” Max said, setting his plate on the table.
He didn’t get more than two steps before Brooks put a hand on his shoulder. “Track down this scent if you’re that curious, but your eyes are already getting a yellow glow to them, so you need to keep it under control, okay?”
“Shit,” Max muttered. “Thanks.”
He hadn’t known he was so geeked up, but now that Brooks had pointed it out to him, he realized his heart was beating a little faster than normal. He wasn’t sure why his inner wolf was suddenly restless. Then again, he rarely understood why he lost control so easily. Even though he’d been a werewolf for more than four years, he still had issues with it.
After seeing how omega werewolves behaved, he was beginning to think he might not be an alpha at all but a whacked-out omega instead. Gage Dixon, the SWAT team commander and alpha of their pack of alpha werewolves, said that was bull. He insisted Max was an alpha through and through and that Max’s control issues were most likely related to the fact that he was barely eighteen when he turned—which made him the youngest alpha in the Pack—or to the traumatic circumstances surrounding his change. Max didn’t have any experience with the first explanation and preferred not to think about the second. He’d spent a good portion of his adult life trying to put that part of his past behind him. But since everyone in the Pack had gone through a traumatic experience when they’d changed into werewolves in the first place, that didn’t make much sense, either.
Whatever the reason, Max had to expend a lot more energy than anyone else in the Pack on keeping his fangs and claws retracted, his anger in check, and his eyes from flashing yellow at the worst possible times—like now.
Resorting to the lessons Gage and Brooks had taught him, Max closed his eyes and took slow, deep, calming breaths, turning his attention inward and consciously getting a handle on his excitement, heart rate, and breathing. When he opened his eyes again, Brooks was still standing there.
“Good?” Max asked.
“You’re good,” Brooks said.
Giving Brooks a nod, he turned and slowly made his way through the crowd. There had been over thirty commendations given out this afternoon, so the place was still packed with those police officers, their families, and their coworkers. Max had to be careful as he wove in and out of them while trying to let his nose guide him.
As he moved across the room, the woman’s scent grew stronger and even more intriguing. There were some aspects of her pheromones that seemed familiar, though it took him a while to pin down exactly what he was keying in on. Then it struck him—she was a werewolf.
He stopped and took a deep breath, letting her scent wash over him as he tried to figure out if she was an alpha, a beta, or an omega. Outside of Gage, most of the Pack hadn’t learned about the complexities of the werewolf world until recently. While they’d been surprised to find out there were different breeds of werewolves, they were even more stunned to discover there were female werewolves.
Max took another sniff and frowned. If the woman was a beta, she was different than any beta he’d ever met. And with all the werewolves showing up in Dallas lately looking for protection from hunters, he’d smelled a lot of betas.
As he continued across the lobby area in search of the woman, Max couldn’t help wondering if maybe there was a fourth kind of werewolf out there that none of them knew about. It would be kind of cool running into a completely new breed. Had she come here looking specifically for him and the other members of the SWAT Pack, to ask for protection from the hunters who’d been killing werewolves all over the country? If so, this could be an epic first meeting.
Max was almost on the far side of the room and quickly running out of places to search when he walked around a group of people talking about how amazing the Cowboys were playing this season and finally found her.
After spending so much time trying to track her down, he probably should have walked right up and introduced himself, but instead, Max found himself standing there, transfixed. She was turned away from him so he couldn’t see her face, but she was wearing a seriously sexy cocktail dress, her long, honey-blond hair trailing haphazardly over her shoulders and halfway down her back. The dress was one of those short, black numbers that hugged her slender curves and showed off her long legs. There was a crisscross, strappy thing going on in the back, too, which gave him teasing glimpses of smooth, creamy skin as well as confirming she wasn’t wearing a bra under there.
He followed the curve of her butt until he locked on her legs. What could he say? He’d always been a leg man, and this woman had legs for days! Between the glimpse of toned thighs the dress afforded him and the display of shapely calves accentuated by the high heels she wore, it was all he could do not to drop to his knees and nibble his way up and down those gorgeous legs.
Though it would surely be fun, that probably wouldn’t be the best way to make a first impression.
He wasn’t sure how he knew, but something about her demeanor made Max think she’d rather be somewhere else at the moment. Since she was alone, he wondered if someone had stood her up. If so, the guy must have been stupid as well as a jerk. But then she shifted her weight back and forth from one high heel to the other. Ah, that explained it.
Max waited, expecting the female werewolf to smell him and turn around. Even though he was close enough for her to pick up his scent easily, she never looked his way. Finally, he gave up and walked over to her, moving around to stand in front of her.
He hoped he didn’t actually gasp out loud—that would have been cheesy—but he couldn’t help it. Saying she was gorgeous would have been an injustice. With smiling, blue-green eyes, the poutiest lips he’d ever seen, and a button nose that begged to be kissed, she came about as close to physical perfection as a person could get.
He gave her a grin. “You know, you’d probably be a lot more comfortable if you kicked off those heels and walked around in bare feet.”
She laughed, and the sound of it was as beautiful as she was. “Is it that obvious?”
“I’m afraid so.” He made a show of looking left and right, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear, then lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I get the same look on my face when I wear uncomfortable shoes.”
