The Alpha’s Gamble

In my experience, private casino back rooms were plush, quiet oases, well stocked with top-shelf liquor, with absurdly attractive staff on call to cater to my every whim. Chairs so comfortable you could sleep in them, or even fuck on them—the staff really would cater to my every whim.

I shifted in my seat, plastic armrests creaking, trying to find an angle for my ass that didn’t squish it against unyieldingly flat metal.

My mouth had gone so dry I’d have killed for even a lukewarm glass of nasty Vegas tap water.

My poker rooms had always been stocked with chilled Alpine mineral water.

New experiences were highly overrated.

Fuck this. All I’d done was mind my own business, doing my best to keep from getting crushed in between my overachiever little brother’s single-minded drive to rule our family company with an iron fist and my parents’ obsession with maintaining the perfect image of a wealthy, high-profile pack full of vigorous alphas. I’d simply wanted to be left alone to drink, fuck, and spend my time—and money—as I pleased.

My father’s lies had put an end to that.

Cut off. My trust broken and used to pay off debts, not all of them even mine.

Well, to be fair, many of them were mine. But that had been what the credit cards were for, damn it.

I’d been left with nowhere to turn but the Morrigan casino, where I’d still had a line of credit and VIP status—at least until they’d apparently figured out, belatedly, that my situation had changed. Counting cards came as naturally to me as breathing. I should’ve been able to get ahead.

Fuck. An attempted deep breath that didn’t go all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, and I had to stop brooding. It certainly wouldn’t help me in here.

The metal table in front of me gleamed dully in the flickering light of the tube fluorescents overhead. Plain gray walls when I turned my head. Like a prison, or a police interrogation room.

At least they hadn’t tied me up. Maybe they didn’t have any restraints that would’ve held an alpha werewolf, or maybe they just knew they didn’t have a good justification to treat me that way, the fuckers. They’d given me the suite and credit at the tables voluntarily. All I’d done was walk in the door.

The room didn’t have a clock, and they’d taken my phone and my watch along with my other personal effects. Illegally, I was pretty sure, and I was going to have their asses for that…once I had the chance.

But it felt like hours since I’d given up shouting and banging on the door—which was strong enough to hold an alpha werewolf, it turned out. Maybe that explained the lack of restraints. I’d picked up the chair, meaning to beat it against the door too, but then set it down again. Where would I sit if I broke it? The dusty concrete floor? In jeans worth more than a month’s paycheck for one of those fucking asshole goons who’d pulled me away from the cashier’s window on the casino floor and taken me back here? Yeah, no.

Why hadn’t I resisted them, caused a scene? I was cursing myself for that now, but at the time, I’d assumed a supervisor would be attending to my needs personally, somewhere more private, and had sent security to escort me safely to a back office.

And so they had, in a manner of speaking.

More endless time dragged past, and I tried again to find a comfortable position in this miserable excuse for a chair.

Finally, footsteps and voices filtered in from the hallway. One voice stood out, deep and commanding. A little involuntary shiver went down my spine. That didn’t sound like some security peon with delusions of grandeur.

At least they’d finally realized I deserved the attention of someone with authority. Because anyone that voice belonged to had authority, I had no doubt of that.

The door opened, and three men stepped in. My nose twitched. My werewolf senses, the part of me that interpreted the presence of magic via instinct and smell and something I could almost taste on the air, went on high alert.

Most of the magic was coming from the shorter man on the left, a freaky-looking guy with a handsome face that was way too smooth and expressionless. A warlock, maybe, because I couldn’t really place his scent, and he certainly wasn’t a shifter.

And I immediately dismissed the second man. He had the trying-to-look-expensive-and-failing necktie beloved of middle management everywhere, and a faux-brass nametag with the casino logo on it. No one important wore a nametag.

But the third guy. Once my gaze caught on him, it stuck.

Everything about him screamed alpha, from his height and broad-shouldered build to his very faintly glowing eyes, and everything in between. And he had that presence. You couldn’t fake it.

My father had tried to fake it for decades.

I’d been shocked when the truth came out. That he’d been using a shaman’s magic to imitate an alpha’s traits, covering up what he saw as his shame, and projecting all of his insecurities onto his sons.

Shocked. But not surprised at all. Because he’d never quite had it, that intangible quality that marked a shifter with the enhanced magic of an alpha. And with a couple of months since the revelation to brood over it, I’d thought of a lot of clues I really shouldn’t have missed, like the way he’d always seemed to hate me despite how proud he pretended to be of his alpha son.

I’d thought that if I fit the mold he’d wanted me to cram myself into, he’d do more than give me money and shout at me.

That hadn’t worked out well.

In any case, unlike my father, I was genuinely an alpha. But like him, I’d never had that je ne sais quoi.

This man had it. In spades.

He had a really nice suit, too. Dark gray Italian wool. And his tie passed muster.

His lip curled as he stared down at me out of cold, hard dark eyes.

Other than that, his face didn’t give anything away.

“Do you know who I am? I demand to contact my lawyer,” I said, the words taking effort to force out through air that felt congealed with tension all of a sudden. “I demand—”

The words died on my lips as the alpha had the gall to laugh at me, chuckling and shaking his head slightly. A lock of his dark brown hair fell onto his forehead with the motion. It should’ve made him look less intimidating.

It didn’t.

“I know who you are. You’re Blake Castelli, and you’re not really in a position to demand much of anything.” His voice matched the rest of him: deep, smooth, and cold, like glacier ice. “You’re lucky the cops aren’t here right now.”

Sweat broke out along my hairline, but I kept my expression neutral through force of will. I could bluff; I did it at the poker table, and this wasn’t any different—except that the stakes were higher. They couldn’t prove I hadn’t believed that check was good. In any case, it should’ve been. In a just world, it would’ve been.

“Counting cards isn’t a crime,” I said, as evenly as I could. And it wasn’t like it’d done me much good, anyway, so they really shouldn’t care. My luck had been shit enough to counterbalance any skill with numbers. Didn’t they want to make money?

I ignored the little voice in the back of my brain that commented, in a dry tone that sounded way too much like my know-it-all brother, that if I couldn’t pay up for the money I’d gambled on credit, they weren’t exactly making a profit off of my losses on paper, now were they?

The middle-management guy cleared his throat, glancing nervously over and up—way up—at the alpha. “No, it’s not a crime,” he said. “But the check you attempted to cash was invalid. That’s fraud.”

“I’ve been a valued guest at this establishment for years!” The best defense was a good offense, after all. And they were being pretty damn offensive themselves. “You comped me and extended my usual line of credit, and now you’re acting like—”

“Like you failed to disclose your changed financial circumstances and defrauded us twice,” the alpha cut in, eyes flashing gold. “Once by taking perks you weren’t entitled to, and twice by playing on credit you couldn’t cover. And an attempted third time, when you tried to pass that rubber check. Anything you’d like to add?”

Shit. I straightened my spine, glaring the alpha straight in the eyes, feeling my own start to light up in response to the challenge, to my anger, to the urge to fight and then flee that rose up so strongly I almost choked on it.

“I’m not responsible for your poor business decisions,” I snarled. “You comped me. You extended the credit. And who the fuck are you, anyway? You have no authority over me.”

If I’d hoped my own alpha display, hands flexing with claws close to the surface and eyes glowing, would make this man back down…well, luckily my hopes hadn’t been all that high.

His lip curled, and he stared down his nose at me like I’d been lying on the floor and whimpering instead of posturing. Fresh sweat broke out along my spine, and the golden light of his eyes seemed to shine right through me.

My father, the fake alpha, had always berated me for being an inadequate one, the hypocritical bastard. I’d seethed, and I’d pretended to submit, and I’d been so damn sure he was wrong. Not wanting to take over the family business, having no interest whatsoever in chaining myself to a desk in fucking Boise and arguing with the board for the rest of my life, didn’t make me inadequate. It meant I had too much common sense to want to play my father’s sick games the way my brother Brook did, to be our father’s alpha proxy in business and everywhere else, too.

Of course, the way I’d gone about avoiding said desk and board of directors had been—in retrospect, because I’d had more time on my hands to be alone in my head lately than ever before, and I’d hated every fucking second of it—childish and cowardly. Alphas were bold, strong, in charge. They confronted their problems head-on.

Maybe it’d taken a shitty alpha to know one all along.

Because facing this guy down…I’d never felt so inadequate in my life.

Whimpering on the floor wasn’t out of the question if he kept looking at me like that.

“Oh, I do indeed have authority over you,” he purred, voice dipping even lower. “Declan MacKenna, at your service. I own this place, darlin’.” Darling? Especially with the dropped g? And now that I noticed, his voice had the very faintest lilt to it. Not quite an Irish accent, but something adjacent, just enough to go with his name.

Still condescending as ever-loving fuck, though, even with a hint of authenticity.

And a hint of familiarity. Had I ever met this man? I’d remember him. I’d definitely remember him, wouldn’t I?

Or maybe I was remembering a Lucky Charms commercial and mixing it up with alpha porn. Who knew. I’d spent a lot of time drunk in my life.