by Alisa Woods
“Hey, Jeeter.” He smirked at her roommate, then gave Mia a softer look. “Hey, Mia. Didn’t expect you until later.” His tone, plus a smile he was working to restrain, made it clear he was happy to see her.
Truth was, if she had a type before tonight, Cade would have been exactly it. Commanding presence, killer grin, and gorgeous blue eyes that didn’t hurt to look at but sliced right into her heart… and that was exactly the problem. She couldn’t afford the distraction of boys. And her previous attempts at boyfriends had been near disasters. Whenever they got too close, too intimate, her control slipped. That’s when her wolf came out to play, and that had never ended well. Which pretty well explained why she had only slept with two guys before, both of whom had been so freaked by their first time that it was also their last.
Sex was problematic for her, to say the least.
Only with human boys, her wolf whined.
Don’t even go there, she thought in return.
As much as any human could be, Cade was definitely her type.
He smiled and handed her a cup. “It’s tremendously sweet,” he warned. There was a small lift on one side of his smile.
“Thanks for the heads up.” She inhaled a small whiff of the vapors coming off the cup. Vodka, one of the cheap brands, plus whiskey sour mix and a leftover dash from a cherry that must still be swimming in the tub. She held the cup close, warding off the stench of the room with her own personal alcohol vaporizer—which she appreciated much more than the drink.
She pretended to take a sip, just to be polite. “So are you guys ready for your show?” She didn’t keep track of Jupiter’s stage plays, but the spring quarter was coming to a close, so they must have something going.
His smile brightened. “Yeah. You should come. It’s called Silent Death, and it’s a period piece set around Paris in World War II. We’ll be in the Penthouse Theatre tomorrow night.”
“Sounds like a barrel of laughs.”
He frowned. “It’s really not that bad.”
She bit her lip. Damn, she was tired. Losing her manners, as well as her patience. “I’m sure it is. I’m sorry, I’m just…” She waved her drink. “It’s the vapors talking.” She inhaled another whiff and shrunk away from some passing partiers swinging their cups as they talked. Another glance at her room must have given away her desire to be anywhere else.
Cade leaned forward, then he edged even closer, dipping his head to bring his lips near her ear. “You want to get out of here?” His hand touched her hair, brushing it back. He was so close that his cologne and whiskey-sour breath suddenly overpowered the rest of the dorm scents. “My roommate’s gone for the weekend.” His voice was low, husky. He probably thought it was sexy, but Mia thought he was mostly just drunk.
Her wolf growled. The last thing she needed was to be propositioned by a half-drunk college boy. Suddenly, it was all too much, too close, and she needed out. In fact, she needed everyone out. Now.
She nudged Cade back, hand flat on his chest. “Look, I’m done for the night.”
Disappointment shadowed his face, but she had no time for that.
She turned to her room, pushing past Jupiter and Jackson. “Okay, everyone, party’s over. Time to go! Find your own beds.”
A round of grumbles, a pause as all eyes turned to see if she was serious, then another set of mumbling and complaints as they slowly rose from the bed, the floor, even her desk. As the crowd filed out, a couple spilled out of the closet, still tangled in each other, and bringing half of Jupiter’s crazy wardrobe with them, including a long, green scarf that wound around their feet and made them go down.
Mia just shook her head. Jupiter waved goodbye from the door and disappeared with the partiers, Jackson’s arm around her waist. Mia was just as glad to see them go, too, and as soon as the last of them was gone, she locked the door.
First thing, she tore off the top cover of the twin bed that belonged to her, vowing to run it through the laundry before she used it again. Even with that bunched up and stuffed under her bed, only ten percent of her dorm room felt like it belonged to her. The other ninety percent was taken up by her frenetic roommate’s endless leggings, half-used doodle pads, and extensive shoe collection. Mia had a picture of her mom on the shelf, about a backpack’s worth of clothes in the closet, a stack of books, and her laptop on the desk… and that was it.
It was almost like she had never really moved in. The room belonged to the partiers as much as her—they were all temporary occupants until they moved on to the next thing. Mia eased down into the bed, lying on top of the sheets, not bothering to remove her clothes. A complete and utter weariness sunk her into the mattress, and she looped her arm over her eyes, blocking out the overhead lights.
Her room was a cage—a tiny concrete and glass cage, with a bed too short for her long legs, and nothing of value to lose in a fire. She didn’t belong here, not in any real way. It was a way station on the path to the things she actually needed, that was all. The emptiness made itself known again, a deep hollow in her chest, and her wolf whined, curling its tail down in defeat.
The lights still blared overhead, but Mia turned on her side and dropped off to sleep like she was falling off a cliff.
It had been two days, and Lucas couldn’t get her out of his mind.
His fingers drummed the edge of his tablet, and he tried again to pore over the numbers for the latest internet startup his brother, Lev, had found for SparkTech to consider for investment. After another five minutes of circling back over the same data again and again, he shoved the tablet away and rose from his desk. He just was too distracted. He flattened his palms against the floor-to-ceiling corner office window and hung his head between his arms. Back when he was a managing partner in his father’s tech-focused investment firm, Lucas’s status had commanded this office. Now he was just a principal, but his father had still allowed him to keep his luxurious view of the Olympic Mountains. The rain had swept through earlier, leaving a shine on the Emerald City in the early morning sun. He squinted against it and let his gaze roam over the high rises, flicking occasionally to the mountains beyond.
His wolf surged a bit each time he did.
He’d tried going for a hunt over the weekend, but it didn’t help. He kept thinking about the girl, the one he’d stopped the Reds from playing with, like the other field mice they liked to torment. Lucas should have asked her name. He should have gone back to the club to make sure she quit on the spot. He should have moved her to a different dorm. Something. There were a hundred things he could have done, but instead he rushed her home, thinking if he simply got her safely out of his arms reach that would solve everything, including the strange pull she had on him.
That part he understood least of all.
He paced the length of his office, but his gaze kept wandering back to the forest of glittering steel-and-glass high rises of downtown Seattle and to the distant trees beyond. A year ago, when he lost his mate, he lost a part of himself as well. He hadn't been fit to be alpha for anyone anymore, so he’d left his pack and gone rogue. He even left SparkTech and lived in the wild until he’d almost forgotten what it was to be human. He’d thought he had forgotten, until Lev came looking for him and pulled him out of the dark hole of despair he’d fallen into. There was no fixing what had broken inside him, but Lev convinced him he could still contribute to the family business, even if he wasn’t part of any pack. It was just enough to keep him human, and after a while, he’d begun to believe he could keep the longings at bay with a shit-ton of work, his brothers nearby, and a steady supply of female companionship to ease the pain. Slowly, his wolf quieted. The mournful howling every night, crying his need for a pack of his own, eventually stopped. Lucas thought he’d finally found a way to carry on.
And then… this girl.
Human girls were a distraction, a temporary pleasure to sate his longings. They lasted a night, maybe two. Never more. And he’d found plenty who enjoyed what he had to give. They responded
to his inner alpha even if they couldn’t see how broken he really was. Which suited him just fine, until… this strange girl who needed his help. He didn’t understand what pulled him to track her. Or why he went into that alleyway to stop the Reds. She was nothing to his pack, just another human in the half million or so in the Bay area.
His wolf growled at that thought, and it came out as a throaty sound that echoed around his office. The door was closed, so he didn’t even try to rein it in. He knew a lie when he heard one, even when he told it to himself. He might be broken, but no alpha could have stood by and let those sick bastards in the Red pack toy with someone the way they did. Much less a human girl, unprotected, unwary… although it turned out she knew more than he thought. She’d seen shifters before. And yet kept her silence about them.
That was intriguing, but it wasn’t what haunted him. What kept him pacing through the weekend were two simple things: first, her scent had pulled him in, and he’d been tempted to claim her right there in the alley, something that didn’t even make sense. Humans were for pleasure, not mating. But second, and more important, he had inflamed the tensions between his father’s pack and the Reds… and he’d brought the girl deep into the heart of it. The Reds would go after her, track her, hunt her down, now that they knew she was important to him.
And after a weekend of pacing and hunting and shredding the sheets in tumultuous dreams where he fulfilled that wish to claim her in the alleyway, he had finally admitted to himself and his wolf that she was, indeed, important to him.
Thing was, he had no idea why.
A knock at the door dredged his attention out of the depths.
Lev poked his head in the door. “Hey, man, just giving you a heads up.”
Lucas sighed. “Let me guess. My extracurricular activities this weekend found their way to our father’s attention.”
He held his hands up. “Wasn’t me, bro. Dad found out on his own. I just heard the howling.” Lev was his youngest brother and part of his pack, back when he was a true alpha. But even when Lucas went rogue, Lev never really stopped being his beta. Officially, his brother had rejoined their father’s pack. Unofficially, he still had Lucas’s back, in family matters as well as business. There was a reason Lev had been the one to pull him out of the forest again. And why Lucas carried on, staying at SparkTech, making it work for Lev’s sake, even if every day it shoved a hot poker into old wounds.
“I’ll take care of it, Lev,” he said, taking one last glance at the mountains. “Thanks for the warning.”
Lev gave a short nod and disappeared back out the door.
Lucas took a breath, glanced at his neglected work on the tablet, and decided it was better to clear the air with his father than to wait for him to come Lucas’s way. He locked the screen on his tablet, tucked it in his desk, and headed for his father’s office.
SparkTech took up a good fraction of the 32nd floor of the Russell Investments Center in downtown Seattle. His father grew it from a pack-only business, just him and his brothers, to one of the most successful business development companies for technology startups in the Bay area. He liked to say Seattle was on its way to competing with Silicon Valley as a premier ecosystem for tech startups. And the investment opportunities were getting better, with startups these days being spearheaded by people from Google or Amazon as often as not. The industry was maturing, and his father had the vision to take it to the next level. He was the kind of alpha who could see the possibilities and seize them—the kind Lucas had wanted to be—but success breeds competition, and Red Wolf had been nipping at SparkTech’s heels more and more in the last year. The competition was fierce to scoop up the next billion-dollar tech startup. For Lucas to have waded into that mess and possibly mucked it up even further with this business with the girl…
He took a deep breath and steeled himself as he pushed open the door to his father’s office.
As befit the alpha of a company, his father had the finest office, a corner with a view of Mount Rainier, luxurious wood furniture, and glass-and-chrome bookshelves to hold the many trophies and accolades their investments had won. His father waited until Lucas had fully entered his expansive office, and the door had swung shut behind him. Even then, he fussed with something on his tablet.
He was making Lucas wait. Not a good sign.
When his father finally put down the tablet, his expression was cool. “Have you had a chance to look at the numbers for LoopSource?”
“I… um…” Lucas was thrown. He had expected to account for the girl, not the project Lev had tossed to him last week. “Still assessing. Their new platform is interesting, and it seems to be gaining traction, but I’m still checking out the CEO and their execution team. And I’m not sure the market is ready for them.”
His father’s dark eyes drilled into him. “Red Wolf seems to think they’re ready.”
Shit. “They’re making a move to offer?”
His father let out a sigh, then came around his giant glass-and-chrome desk. Framed logos of their previous acquisitions, the ones that made his father millions and put him on Seattle’s 50 Most Influential People list, covered the surface like a small forest of Plexiglas-encased-money. And power. His father stopped in front of the desk, leaning back against it and folding his arms.
He stared at Lucas for a moment longer, then said, “Tell me about the girl.” It was a command, and that tone would have made all of Lucas’s fur stand on end if he was in wolf form. But he wasn’t. And he wouldn’t submit to his father ever again—not to be in his pack, or in any pack, for that matter. He had too much alpha left in him to allow it.
Still, Lucas dropped his head and winced, searching for an explanation that made any sense at all. When he looked up, his father was still waiting. “You know how the Reds are. They would have torn her apart.”
His father’s eyes narrowed. “You know her.”
“No.” Lucas swallowed. “Not really.”
His father’s face was stony, but Lucas could see the confusion flicker across it. His father had mated with his mother early on, before they were even out of college. His mother was a strong wolf from an allied pack, but more than that—they were in love even before they mated for life. Lucas knew his casual sex habits completely baffled his father.
“You’re not in my pack, Lucas.” His father lifted an eyebrow. “That offer still stands, any time you change your mind, son.” Then all tolerance fled his face. “If you were in my pack, we’d be having an entirely different conversation. As it stands, I really don’t care what you do outside this office. Unless it affects the company, and then I care a tremendous amount.”
Lucas flinched. He couldn’t bring himself to say it was a mistake to interfere, but his father was right. He had to fix this. “What is Red Wolf saying?”
“I had a very interesting phone conversation this morning with Crittenden,” he said, his voice rough with an unspoken growl.
Crittenden was the alpha of the Red pack and CEO of Red Wolf. Alpha to alpha. Shit. That had escalated fast. Lucas’s gaze dropped to the floor, trying to get ahead of this.
His father continued, “He says he’s willing to leave your girlfriend alone in exchange for us dropping pursuit of LoopSource.”
“What?” Lucas’s gaze snapped back up to his father’s. “That’s absurd. They can’t possibly expect—”
His father’s steely look silenced the words as they came out of his mouth. “I told them I had no intention of dropping LoopSource. And if they hurt the girl, Crittenden would personally be held responsible by my pack.”
Lucas’s mouth dropped open. Pack protection. For a girl whose name he didn’t even know. His father had gone way, way out on a limb for him, his wayward would-be alpha son. And if the Reds decided to push it, they could have a pack war on their hands.
Lucas shut his gaping mouth and stood straighter. “What can I do to help?”
His father cocked his head in approval of Lucas’s understanding of the situation
. “I would find a way to keep your girlfriend safe. I don’t want her tempting some young pup in the Red pack into doing something stupid to make a name for himself.”
“Understood.” Lucas turned away, a calm filling him along with a peculiar shame. Protecting the girl is what he should have done from the start. It’s what his father, a true alpha, would have done, if fate had tossed him into the same circumstance. Before he reached the door of his father’s office, Lucas turned back to face him. “Just so you know, she’s not my girlfriend. She’s just a girl who needed someone’s help.”
His father’s face betrayed no surprise, if he had any. “That doesn’t matter now.”
“I know.” Lucas stared at the carpet by the door. “Just wanted to set the record straight.”
As he headed toward his own office, the heat in his face grew stronger with each step. He’d put a lot in jeopardy to save a girl he didn’t even know. However, he knew the failure wasn’t in that act, but in the ones that followed. When he failed to find permanent protection for her. A way to keep her safe from the wolves hidden just under the skin of Seattle’s most ruthless businessmen, now that she’d crossed onto their radar.
That was a mistake he was going to fix.
Mia was dressed and ready to leave for the first day of her internship, but first she had to pass the Supreme Gatekeeper of Fashion, otherwise known as her roommate, Jupiter.
“Absolutely not.” Jupiter tsk tsked her plain black slacks and white collared shirt. It was perfectly respectable business attire—Mia had looked it up online—plus it had the benefit of pulling double duty on the black pants she would no longer be wearing for The Deviation.
“Jupiter, please.” Mia was already jittery enough, she didn’t need this. “I’m going to miss the bus.” The ride was only 23 minutes—she’d looked that up too—but if she didn’t leave in the next five minutes she would miss it and be late for sure.
