Finally, he leaned forward, elbows on the glass, and pinned me with a look that made the air in the room go thin.
“You are mine,” he said. Like he was just stating a geological fact.
“Excuse me?”
His gaze didn’t flicker. “Mate,” he said.
The word landed like a punch to the solar plexus.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know what kind of—” but he raised a hand and I shut up.
“It is what it is,” he said. “You know it. I know it.” He tilted his head, studying me like I was a blueprint for something complicated. “It doesn’t require your consent, but it does require your presence.”
I stared at him, every inch of me trying to process the fact that I’d just been claimed like a set of house keys.
The wolf pup looked up at me and gave a single, decisive bark.
I closed my eyes, took a breath, and tried to find something to say that wasn’tfuck you.
When I opened my eyes, he was still there. Still watching. Still absolutely sure. So I did what I always did. I met challenge with challenge. “You picked the wrong guy,” I said.
He smiled again, and this time I could see the wolf underneath the man. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
For a second, I thought I might laugh, or punch him, or both. Instead, I sat back, folded my arms, and stared out at the city like it had something to offer me.
The wolf pup settled in Braham’s lap, her eyes drifting shut.
I watched the man behind the desk, jaw set, heart in my throat, and thought: This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a boardroom.
And, God help me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to stop.
The city lights flickered, and the silence between us was the most honest thing I’d heard all day.
Chapter Two
~ Braham ~
I owned the city at forty-one stories. The desk was glass and sharp as a guillotine; the chairs, two feet in front, squared off like old adversaries. Smell of cigar smoke still clung to the upholstery, no matter how many times the cleaning service promised it was gone.
Outside the windows, the Willamette River bled gold under the evening cloud cover, and Mt. Hood, that ice-crowned relic, hovered at the horizon like a dare.
It was always cold up here, even with the geothermal piped under the floor. I liked it cold. Kept the mind awake and the body on edge.
Tonight, the air was heavy with the promise of a problem. I’d spent the better part of a decade watching my betas fall into the mate bond like it was a shark trap—one second, all business; the next, kneecapped by biology.
I’d spent the same decade calculating risk: the political arithmetic of succession, the risks of diluting lineage, the probability of a true mate ever actually materializing outside a myth. There were so many more pressing things than desire.
So I did what any reasonable Prime Alpha does: I arranged partnerships, checked boxes, consolidated fractured packs, all the while keeping my distance from the biology that made lesser men combust in elevators and rental cars and, once, the middle of a city council meeting.
It’s possible I’d gotten cocky.
I’d stopped expecting anything but the maintenance of order and the flavorless routines of dominance. I didn’t want the bond. Didn’t need it.
Then Ashe Wilson, who never called without cause, buzzed my cell with: “Sir. Problem inbound. Unknown male, human. Wolf pup. Armed pursuit.”
He set a file in front of me.
I’d composed the rest before he’d even given me the floor number.
