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I look back at the frat boy, at his hand on my arm, at his smug, stupid face.

Oh no.

You’re dead.

Chapter Nineteen

NIK

“…and if the Tokyo numbers come in under projection again, I want the whole team on a plane by Monday.”

My CFO is still talking. I’m not listening. I’m standing at the one-way mirror in my office with the phone pressed to my ear, watching my mate dance.

She’s right in the middle of the floor with her girls, her head thrown back, laughing. The black velvet dress I picked out for her moves every time she does. Her hair is falling out of its bun. Her skin is shining. She’s having the time of her life in my club, in my dress, with my mark on her throat, and I can’t take my fucking eyes off her. I can feel her through the bond, warm, bright, and happy. I’ve never felt anything like it.

“…Nik? Are you still there?”

“Keep talking,” I say, and I keep watching.

That’s when I see him. He’s blond, big, and wearing a popped collar. He’s an alpha, and he’s cutting through the crowd straight toward her. He slides in right behind her and leans down to say something in her ear.

She steps away, shakes her head, turns her back on him. I hear every word through the bond: every no, every I’m taken, every don’t touch me. I hear the way her heart picks up when his hand lands on her hip. I hear her knock it off.

The phone creaks in my hand.

“Nik?”

She tells him no again. He doesn’t listen. I watch him lean in closer. I watch his eyes drop to my mark on her neck, and I watch him decide it doesn’t fucking matter.

Then he grabs her arm.

The phone shatters in my fist.

The thing inside me that’s been calm for three weeks, that’s been sleeping in a nest of my own clothes with my mate curled on its chest, wakes up all at once. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t wait. It doesn’t care about the CFO, the club, the secret I’ve kept for three hundred years, or the four hundred humans on that dance floor.

Someone put his fucking hands on her.

My shadows hit the lights first. Every bulb in Pandemonium goes out at once: the chandeliers, the cages, the bars, the DJ booth. The music dies. The whole club drops into pitch black, and a beat later, four hundred people start screaming.

The mirror explodes outward in a rain of black glass, and I go through it.

I drop three stories and land on the dance floor in my true form. The marble cracks under my feet. My shadows pour out of me in every direction and swallow the room. I’m taller than I’ve let myself be in a hundred years, my claws out, my fangs out, my eyes burning so hot I can see every single thing in the dark.

The humans can’t see a thing. They think it’s a blackout. Some of them are laughing, like it’s part of the show.

He’s still holding her arm.

I hear her heart, steady now, not even scared. I hear her girls pressed around her. I hear him, breathing fast and confused in the dark, his hand still wrapped around her arm like he has any fucking right to it.

I wrap my claws around his wrist, and he stops breathing.

I let my eyes open all the way, right in front of his face, close enough that the glow lights him up. I let him see me, and only him: my teeth inches from his nose, my shadows coiling around his throat. He sees exactly what the woman he put his hands on belongs to.

“Let go of my mate,” I order.

My voice comes out of the dark in three layers at once, deep enough to rattle the broken glass on the floor. He lets go.

Then I squeeze his wrist until it snaps.