And Daphne knew the strain wasn’t only on her. The same tabloids that were reporting on her “dubious past” and her lack of prospects, her secret relationship with Alex, were also digging up all kinds of information on the man she loved. Alex was accused of being a hypocrite for supporting animal rights while owning several large pieces of land. He was accused in the press of using charities to find his next “kept woman,” of withdrawing funds from ARC because they’d already served his purpose and he no longer had a reason, namely, a beautiful woman, to keep contributing.
Alex denied them, refused to justify any of the accusations with a response, but Daphne could tell that he was under strain. Oberon Industrial was suffering, albeit not much, financially, and within the past few days, the rumors surrounding him had gotten worse. The press kept hinting that he had a dark secret, something that would shock the entire world and that the only reason he was with Daphne was because she had stumbled upon it. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who had fed them that line of speculation.
In spite of the fact that she knew Alex loved her, Daphne couldn’t help but entertain the thought that if she hadn’t discovered the secret of his being a shifter, she might have ended up just a fling. Alex might have just had some fun with her for a few months, gotten tired of her, and then they would have gone their separate ways, hopefully without Amelia any the wiser that the relationship had even happened. Daphne might still have had her job. She’d be hurt, rejection always hurt, but she wouldn’t have to bear the strain of knowing something so damning, of not feeling as if she could quite make the decision to leave Alex any time she wanted, but not knowing whether she could actually continue being with him, being his lover, at the same time.
Daphne looked up as she heard Alex come into the room, his footfalls on the hardwood floor were easy to distinguish from anyone else’s. Somehow he was heavier than he should be, his tread was not as light as you would think it would be, looking at him in his human form. It occurred to her that there were several different ways, different signals, she could have used to discover that Alex was not just another human being.
“I hate him,” she told Alex, shaking her head as her eye stung and burned with tears. “I hate that asshole so much.”
“I don’t blame you.” Alex moved to the couch and sat down next to her, wrapping his arms around her tightly and pulling her in closer to him. Daphne breathed in the smell of his body, the soap and faint cologne, the underlying sharp musk of his skin and sweat, through his clothes. Her sense of smell was nowhere near his, but she still loved the way that he smelled.
The problem, she knew, wasn’t the question of whether or not she loved Alex, she couldn’t question that, the problem was whether or not love was enough, whether her love of him was stronger than the difficulties of their relationship. His life would be so much easier if she were a shifter like he was. They would have the same secret and Eric wouldn’t have had to reveal Alex’s other nature to her. Alex could have been up front about it.
“We need to talk about something.”
“Oh God,” Daphne said, pressing her face against his chest. The radiating heat of Alex’s body, the steady, firm thrumming of his heart were comforting, but she wasn’t sure that she could take any more difficult news. “What is it? I might as well just accept that it’s going to be bad news again.” She was whining and she knew it but she couldn’t quite force herself to stop.
“It’s… not bad news exactly. Well, I don’t think it’s bad news, you may think differently.” Daphne pulled back from Alex’s chest and looked up into his bright blue eyes.
“I think you’d better just let me have it, whatever it is.” She sat up and took a deep breath.
“There are two things. The first, is that I may know a way to get Eric out of our lives for good… but it’s going to have to get a little bit worse for me, technically for both of us, before I can do it.” Daphne pressed her lips together. Worse. Her immediate prospects for getting a job were ruined, any potential employer who didn’t already know about the scandal her life had become would find out about it in ten minutes simply by searching her name. Alex was already embroiled in scandal, his company struggling to rise above it. How was it possible for the situation to get worse? Was Alex going to lose Oberon Industrial?
“Worse?”
Alex’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Basically we have to give Eric enough rope to hang himself.”
“Okay. But you said there was a way to get him out of our lives for good…”
Daphne met Alex’s level gaze. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “We haven’t talked much about my kind,” he said. “I know that it’s a lot for you to take in, that you’re still struggling to deal with the fact that I’m not just another human.”
Daphne shrugged. “It could be worse, I guess,” she said, trying a smile. “You could be an alien from another planet.”
Alex chuckled. “Thankfully it’s not as bad as that.” He took another breath. “In order for us to do something about the situation with Eric, something more permanent, we will both have to go before a council of elders.”
“Elders?” Daphne felt as though she’d been swept out to sea by the riptide, abruptly out of her depths.
“All of the different types of shifters have a hierarchy of some kind. Among the bears like me, we have elders, not all of them old, but most of them pretty experienced, appointed to be like judges, governors for our kind.”
“That makes sense.” It was like a fraternal order and Daphne suppressed a whimsical idea about the fraternal order of elks. It would be the best possible way to hide a supernatural nature, right out in the open.
“If Eric makes a bigger move to expose me as more than human—and he’s getting close to that—we can both go before the elders. You’ve already been his victim.”
“Why can’t we go before them now, if I’ve been a victim?”
Alex pressed his lips together and Daphne could see in his face that he was uncertain. “In order for you to go before the elders, you have to go as my mate.” He looked at her intently. “That’s the other part of this. I was hoping…I wanted to tell you. I didn’t do it on purpose but I marked you.”
Daphne stared at him blankly. “You…marked me?” She looked down at her arms and legs, trailing her hands over her neck self-consciously. She couldn’t remember Alex doing anything that would have left a mark other than maybe a hickey or two.
Alex smiled weakly. “A scent-mark. It was an instinctive thing. Somewhere along the line, while we were making love, I began marking you with my scent.”
“Wait, so, I smell like you?” Alex lifted a hand and turned it side to side in the air.
“You still smell like yourself, but any shifter that comes near you would smell my mark on you.”
“Is…I’m not really sure how I feel about that, actually.” Daphne broke Alex’s gaze and looked down at her hands in her lap. She was marked. She had been around Alex’s mother, around his friend Regina, around a few other people, particularly since the press had discovered her relationship, that she knew were shifters like Alex was. They had all known something that she hadn’t. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Suddenly she felt a surge of anger. There had to be other shifters in the world, not just those she had been introduced to as friends of Alex. They had all known something just from being around her that she had had no clue about. “What does it mean that you marked me?” Daphne stared at Alex.
“It’s normally a thing that a shifter does when he or she finds a mate.” He swallowed. “If you were another shifter, you would have known at once what I was doing, you would have, if you agreed with it, marked me in return.”
“But I can’t mark you, I’m not a bear, or a wolf, or anything like that. How many kinds of shifters are there?” Daphne’s heart was beating faster and faster. She shook her head as it spun with a myriad of thoughts and feelings. She wasn’t sure how to feel. She wasn’t sure what to think. It was another difference
between her and Alex. Alex was capable of scent-marking her, of declaring her his mate before she could even know what he had done but she couldn’t have prevented it, couldn’t have returned the gesture, couldn’t have told him not to do it.
“There are lots of kinds… I’m sorry, Daphne, I didn’t do it intentionally. It was completely by instinct.”
Daphne’s hands were shaking. She was marked with his scent. “Is there, can I reverse it? Do I just… wash it off?”
Alex reached out to take her hands and Daphne snatched them back towards herself, inching away from him on the couch. “It happens every time we make love,” Alex said quietly. “Every time we have sex together, I mark you. It’s not something I can control. It’s completely instinctive. I wanted to tell you about it before but I wanted you to make up your mind about how serious we are first.”
“You wanted me to make up my mind?” Daphne felt a cold sweat breaking out at the back of her neck, the small of her back, her palms. Her heart was beating faster. “You didn’t exactly give me a chance to make up my mind before you marked me!”
Alex reached for her again and Daphne jerked away, standing up on unsteady legs and stepping away from the couch. “I told you, Daphne, I didn’t do it on purpose. If I could have asked your permission before I did it, I would have. It all happened so quickly.”
“You hid it from me! That’s… that’s how Eric found out about us, isn’t it? He, he smelled you on me, smelled your scent mark.”
“Yes, that’s how he knew.” Alex closed his eyes for a moment. “I wasn’t even aware I’d done it until he mentioned it to me.”
“So…for months now you’ve been telling all of the shifters in the world that I—that I’m yours, that I belong to you? And you didn’t think that you should tell me about it?” Alex stood, moving towards her slowly, cautiously.
“It’s not irreversible,” Alex said, keeping his voice low and calm. Daphne trembled, adrenaline rushing in her veins, her heart pounding, and her breaths coming faster. “If you didn’t want to be my mate, all you would have to do is stop seeing me, and the effect would wear off after one or two days.”
“That’s good to know.” Daphne laughed without knowing why, she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to throw herself at Alex and punch him. She was angry, confused, hurt, all of her emotions jumbled up together. Part of her brain suggested that it was a good thing that Alex had marked her, that it showed how serious he was, that he was so serious that his unconscious, animal brain had made a move to show the world he was committed. But it was too much for her to take in. “I…I have to go, Alex. I can’t stay here right now. I need some time to think.” Daphne lurched towards the door, not even certain she knew where her car was.
CHAPTER 10
Alex sighed, glancing at his phone. It had been three days since he had told Daphne about the fact that he had marked her, three days since she had walked out of his home, bewildered and upset. He understood why she was upset, he understood that she needed time to wrap her mind around the importance of what had happened. But he also knew that the longer that she took to make a decision on whether or not to go with him as his mate to stand before the elders, the more damage Eric would be able to do. Alex thought—he wasn’t sure—but he thought that if the distance between them lasted much longer, Eric might make bigger moves. He might actually go after Daphne, knowing that Alex was in love with her, that he couldn’t help but love her as his mate.
He hadn’t been entirely upfront with Daphne. He had wanted to be honest with her but he couldn’t put the pressure on her that would come from telling her the truth. It was possible for her to leave him completely, to lose his scent-mark and no longer be his mate. For Daphne, the attachment would fade, just like any attachment she might form with a regular human, she could forget about him. But the process would be much harder for Alex. He would feel the pull of her for months afterward; scent her in his rooms, in his office where they had had trysts. Now that he had marked Daphne, he would have to work hard to forget her if she chose to no longer be his mate. He would be in pain without her. He could find another mate but Alex didn’t want another mate. He wanted Daphne. If only she would agree to be with him.
Alex took a deep breath. He would have to wait a while longer. Daphne needed time, he knew. But he also knew that he needed to speak with the elders. He needed evidence that Eric was actively sabotaging his life and Daphne’s life as his mate. For Daphne to testify to what Eric had done to her, she would have to present herself as his mate.
His phone rang. Instead of Daphne, it was Ben. “Alex,” Ben said, the moment he accepted the call. “Eric is about to move on a big project. You need to get him before the elders fast.”
“What is he doing?” Alex felt his heart beating faster. If Eric was going to make another move on Daphne—he felt a low growl forming in his throat. If Eric did anything more to harm the woman he loved, Alex was going to bypass the elders completely. He would take time away from Oberon Industrial and hunt Eric down wherever he lived and kill him outright.
“He’s publishing a blog. In it, he’s alleging that the reason you sponsor so many animal rights charities, why you were involved with ARC and with Daphne, is that you have an interest in bestiality.” Alex inhaled sharply. “The post says that Daphne helped you get access to animals. He’s publishing it anonymously but I can link it to him. To have a full case for the elders, though, you have to present Daphne to them.” Alex groaned.
“I told her about marking her with my scent,” he told Ben. “She didn’t like it. I’m trying to give her some space… how soon is he going to take the blog live? And what kind of publicity is he getting for it?” Alex heard shuffling on the other end of the line, wind over the microphone, he wondered where Ben was, what the tracker was doing.
“I just left the girl he’s seeing,” Ben explained, as if he’d read Alex’s mind. Alex could imagine the man grinning. “You’ve got two days to persuade her before the blog goes live. I knew he was planning some kind of publicity but this is a bit extreme. It’s going to be a big deal.”
“I’m not going to ask how you got the information and why you’re leaving his girlfriend’s place.”
Ben chuckled. “I thought we’d catch Eric trying to reveal your status to the world. Of course, he’d be risking himself, if anyone beyond tabloid believers would actually buy it.”
“But this is a lot more believable,” Alex finished.
“Well yeah, everyone knows billionaires are freaky and into the kinky stuff.” Ben chuckled. Alex growled, not at Ben, but at the thought of what Eric had planned.
“I need to talk to her. We’ll have to go before the elders as soon as possible.” Alex could imagine Ben nodding.
“Within the next two days.” Ben hung up, and Alex sighed.
He had to talk to Daphne, he had to make her see reason. He didn’t want to use Eric’s plans as leverage to make the woman he loved—the woman he had taken as his mate—talk to him. But for both their sakes he had to get Daphne to understand. He had to get her to agree to stay with him. Alex set the phone down for a moment. Daphne had met his mom. He wondered if she had spoken to Jessica in the last three days. He wondered if she had spoken to Regina. He took a deep breath. Whoever she had or had not spoken to, Alex had to hope that she was beginning to come around.
He decided that for what he had in mind, a phone call wouldn’t work. He would have to do his persuading in person. Alex picked up the phone on his desk and buzzed his assistant. “I am leaving for the day,” he told her. “Let anyone who calls know I have a family emergency to tend to.”
***
Alex approached Daphne’s building, feeling more nervous than he would have ever guessed a woman could make him. He smiled wryly to himself as he shifted the flowers he had brought with him from one hand to the other. He hoped—he prayed—that he had done the right thing in getting them, in choosing what he had. He hoped that Daphne would be receptive. Both of their
futures would depend on her coming around to the idea of being his mate. Alex had decided that he would wait to tell Daphne about Eric’s latest plan until she had decided one way or the other. If she didn’t want to be his mate anymore, he would have to go to the elders himself. They wouldn’t see Daphne unless she was his mate. He would have to make the case for Eric to be punished on his own.
Alex took the elevator to Daphne’s floor, trying not to fidget, he was almost grateful for the moment that she wasn’t a shifter like he was. She wouldn’t be able to smell the anxiety, the nervousness on him. He took a deep breath. What he was asking her to agree to was not unlike asking her to marry him, he thought to himself. Of course, he wouldn’t bring up that particular parallel until after she had agreed, either. He hated to keep her in the dark and he had learned from her reaction to his previous omissions that she hated it just as much but he didn’t want to give her more than she could handle knowing.
Alex knocked on Daphne’s door. He knew she would probably be home. After all, she certainly wouldn’t be at work, and to the best of his knowledge, she wasn’t on any of the outings he had put together for her to enjoy on her “vacation” before she started applying to work elsewhere. He heard stirring inside the apartment and took another deep breath to steady his nerves. He had to be prepared for the possibility that Daphne would take one look at him and close the door. He wished he could give her more time, to wait for her to really think about what their relationship had been like, to come back to him of her own accord but neither of them had that option. His preternaturally acute ears took in the sound of footsteps, the rattle of the door chain, the slide-and-thunk of the deadbolt.
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