Riding in the rain lowered my mood faster than any other activity. Humans had invented shelter and then occupied it because having water dripping down your neck and dampening your trouser seat felt utterly dreadful.

When that trouser seat also rubbed and chafed against a leather saddle, the experience rose far above—or below—demoralizing and landed somewhere adjacent to utter misery.

Gods, I wanted to go home and get warm and dry.

Instead, I was here in the cold flying in the face of thousands of years of common sense, because Rivina, my harridan of a cousin, also lived under the only roof I had available to me. And listening to her scream and wail at me, and trying to dodge thrown fruit and books and bottles of wine and anything else she could get her heavily beringed fingers on, would be even less pleasant than forcing my cranky mount down this muddy track through the gloomy woods. I’d had a taste of it before I fled for the stables. Rivina’s shrieks still echoed in my ears.

Not to mention, I had an apple-sized bruise on my shoulder and my best sky-blue tunic bore spatters of southern red.

With a shudder, I urged my mare on with my heels and a flick of the reins. She simply flicked her ear back at me in response. If anything, she moved more slowly. Agnethe could be such a bitch. Of course, that was why I’d named her after my mother. Fuck, all the women in my life, including the horses, were such pains in my ass.

In all likelihood each one of them—including the horses—would’ve said that I was the problem. Hardly. I was the innocent party here.

Mostly, anyway.

“Will you move, for the love of the gods,” I hissed. “Trot. Trot, damn you! I could turn you into a goat.” That was highly unlikely. My magic manifested almost entirely in my music. But you had to keep people on their toes. Hooves. Whatever. “Probably. And if it goes wrong, that’ll be even worse for you! So fucking move!”

“I don’t generally trot on command,” someone said, and I yelped, jumped, and slid halfway off Agnethe’s back, hanging there precariously, my damp pants sticking me to the saddle. I whipped my head around and found him: a tall, looming, ominous figure in a long black cloak with the hood up, in the act of stepping out onto the path from behind a grove of pines. “Not that I’m eager to be turned into a goat, although I don’t think they trot on command, either.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I snarled, my voice shaking a little bit from the force of my suddenly racing heartbeat. No one with good intentions lurked in this part of the forest. No one with good intentions lurked behind trees at all. The last time I’d done it, I’d been lying in wait to try to seduce my brother’s valet. “Piss off!”

Even though I was hanging halfway off, I tried again to nudge Agnethe, and she took three steps—and then promptly stopped dead, damn her, right when I needed her to move the most. She was smart enough to know she’d be home all warm and dry having supper if it wasn’t for me. And she could hold a grudge.

I slid a little further. The stranger stepped into the middle of the path in front of Agnethe. Fuck, he was big up close, tall and broad-shouldered, and a very long sword hung at his belt with a knife on the other side. I had a sword of my own, of course, but I wasn’t any great expert with it.

Something told me this man was.

He reached out and caught a fistful of Agnethe’s reins. Finally she balked—and reared up, tossing me neatly the rest of the way out of the saddle and flinging me across the path.

Everything flipped and whirled around me, and I had a dizzy, sickening instant to try to summon my magic, out of reach and thin like gossamer, fuck, glimmering and taunting me—and then I splatted into the mud, flat on my back, the air whooshing out of my lungs in a sharply painful rush.

Oh, gods, my back was broken. Or my neck. Everything. I blinked up at the darkening sky through the black branches, my eyelashes hazing everything further, my focus going in and out. My body had gone numb. Could I heal myself? Rivina would gloat so unbearably.

Freezing-cold mud soaked through my clothes, finally reaching my skin and chilling and sliming me horribly.

A huge dark shape loomed and then leaned down over me.

My lips moved, but I couldn’t get any words out, just pitiful puffs of air. “Uhh,” I managed.

At least he’d feel properly guilty for murdering me, cutting me down in my gorgeous prime. Gods, someone had better write a song about it, at least. One that rhymed, and had a wrenchingly tearful chorus. Something heartbreaking about youth in full flower, and maybe that could rhyme with power, as in my magic…

Another blink, and my attacker threw his hood back. All thought of rhymes fled my mind.

In the drawing the constable had commissioned of him, he hadn’t been frowning, more sort of moodily staring out of the parchment. But I couldn’t mistake the straight, thick brows, or the firm mouth, or the bold nose and strong jaw.

The artist had gotten the eyes wrong, though. Dark and uncompromising, yes, but they held a subtle gleam that would’ve taken a much cleverer pencil to capture. His brown hair was shorter now than it had been in the picture, too.

But it was definitely the highwayman whose stranglehold on the foothills leading into the mountain pass had driven all the local authorities to frothing rage over the last few years.

And he’d killed me.

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. My throat worked, and at last I drew in enough breath to speak.

“Tell my mother to burn my lyre with my body,” I rasped. “A lyre pyre, as it were. I don’t want anyone else to play her.”

He stared at me, eyebrows slowly raising, rain beginning to drip down off his nose and trickle over his cheekbones. The bastard didn’t even seem to notice or care. Oh, my back was so cold, and—wait, would I be able to feel that if it were broken? With my luck, probably yes.

“Burn your—a lyre pyre? You must be joking. I hope you’re joking. And you’re not dying. I assume you mean you don’t want anyone else to play your instrument, not play your mother? That was a bit ambiguous.”

Indignation choked me nearly as much as the lingering effects of flying off a horse to my inevitable death.

“Ambig—is this really the moment for a grammar lesson?” I demanded. “How dare you mock my last words!”

In the drawing he’d been striking, eye-catching, harsh-featured and intimidating. And frowning in person he’d been even more so. When that frown melted into a wicked, crooked grin, his eyes glinting with laughter, he became…well, I couldn’t really feel much below the waist. But there was a flutter.

“Last words?” he repeated. “Are your last-last words about me mocking you, or do you want to try for a third round about the lyre again, only with more rhymes? To really get it right. How about a lyre fire pyre, or is that redundant as well as stupid?”

“Oh,” I gasped, and my heart pounded, everything going blurry again. “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

My surroundings started to fade into a gray mist, leaving nothing but that white, offensive grin.

“You wouldn’t be the first to make those your last words to me,” he said. “But don’t worry. You’re going to be fine. Held for ransom, but absolutely fine.”

I desperately tried to summon up the strength to tell him to fuck off, or ideally to turn him into a strange, half-formed goat.

Instead, I passed out, dying in the icy mud and rain, my fine wool and velvet cloak no doubt completely ruined.

“Absolutely not. Look at me! I don’t need a nursemaid. I’m a mage, a perfectly competent adult, I’m, I’m tall, for fuck’s sake—”

“You’re a mage who can’t use his magic, and you’re a prince, which means you require a royal guard if you wish to stray outside the gates. Don’t even get me started on what your height has to do with it. And you hardly need me to tell you any of this, Nikola.”

Philippa didn’t bother setting aside her correspondence or so much as glancing up at me, her pen continuing its steady, if obnoxiously scratchy, journey across the paper on her desk as she spoke. A long, shining coil of hair the same mahogany shade as mine hung down over her silk-clad shoulder. My fingers twitched with the desire to reach over and give it a good, hard yank the way I would have fifteen years ago.

Well, all right. Ten years ago.

A few weeks ago. Whatever.

Instead, being a grown man of twenty-eight in the presence of the crown princess of Surbino, I gritted my teeth to keep in a reply that would’ve been beneath my dignity—and more to the point, have badly undermined the argument I needed to make—and strode to the window, turning my back to her so that she wouldn’t see my red cheeks if she deigned to look up after all.

That I was now blocking the light and making it harder for her to finish her letter could be considered a happy coincidence.

A long, put-upon sigh from behind me made my lips twitch. I opened my mouth, wanting to say something teasing, but the words died on my tongue. If I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t tease. I’d say something Philippa didn’t deserve.

Breathing deep, I gazed out at the garden beyond Philippa’s window, a sea of bright green peppered with the orange and pink and white of the mild winter’s small crop of out-of-season roses. They’d been lovingly nurtured by a palace mage with a botanical bent, and they practically glowed in a flood of honey-golden sunlight. Lovely. Everything within the palace walls was lovely, right down to the polished brass curlicues of the ornate frame holding the windowpanes and the high sandstone walls around the garden that glittered with flecks of mica.

In short, every part of my cage gleamed and sparkled, for my mother the queen would have it no other way.

Although no one else appeared to mind their circumscribed lives, from Her Royal Majesty all the way to the smiling kitchen maids. Everyone in Surbino seemed disgustingly happy to remain there indefinitely.

And why wouldn’t they be? Good harvests, thriving trade along the coast and across the mountains, strong but just rulers, and half a century of peace with our neighbors had left everyone in the city and the surrounding lands as happy and fat and dull as could be. No one bothered to have adventures.

Though, to be fair, almost all of them had more ways to enjoy their leisure time than I did. If I saw one more happy couple kissing in a corner of the courtyard, or emerging from a bedroom all rumpled, I might scream.

“You’re going to lose all your teeth before you’re thirty,” Philippa commented casually. Fuck. How had she heard the faint crunch of my molars? She’d always had ears like a bat, damn her. A rustle of paper and the soft shake of sand suggested she’d finished her letter despite my best efforts. “Perhaps you ought to wear that helmet at night—”

“Shut up, Phil,” I snarled, goaded past my patience. I spun around to face her, gripping the window ledge behind me with both hands so hard that my fingers ached. How dare she refer to that contraption the court physician had recommended to help with my habit of clenching my jaw? The moment I’d been forced to try it on, at the sensitive age of fifteen, had perhaps been the most humiliating of my life. “You wear the bloody thing.”

She blinked up at me, pale green eyes wide and limpidly innocent in a way that only infuriating elder sisters could manage—and all the more irritating for being a mirror image of mine when I decided to be a pain in the ass.

“It’s not the most flattering item, I admit,” she said. “But as you refuse to take anyone to bed with you, it hardly matt—”

At that, I saw red, an actual, literal wash of crimson in my vision that obliterated Philippa’s stupid smug face for a moment. “I don’t refuse, I can’t! Who would—I can only—don’t you dare tell me what matters! If Mama had only pushed me out a little faster or a little slower, it’d only have been an hour’s difference either way, then I’d be—” I broke off, panting, knowing that if I tried to spit out the word normal my voice would crack.

I could’ve been either a normal mage or a normal man with no magic at all, but either would’ve been infinitely preferable to being born a cursed oddity.

Outside the window the snick of a pair of clippers carried on the soft breeze, a gardener tending the already perfect flowers. Gods, the peaceful beauty of my home would be the death of me through sheer boredom. Usually I didn’t care. Most days, I simply drifted. But my mother’s decision to take away the very last bit of my independence had somehow brought the rest of it into glaring focus.

“You know damn well a woman can’t simply decide when to push a baby out,” Philippa said, her words falling into the stretching silence and pinging off of my overstrained nerves one by one. She sat back in her chair and sighed. “Niko, love, it’s no one’s fault. And there’s nothing wrong with you. You are what you are. That’s reality. You need to work within it, not against it.”

I let go of the windowsill at last, bringing my numbed hands to my face and scrubbing them up and down. It didn’t help.

Philippa loved me at least as much as I loved her, damn her—and I adored her. It was so hard to stay angry in the face of her open affection. If I didn’t at least try, though, I might cry—tall, grown man though I might be.

“As if you know,” I mumbled through my hands. “You haven’t had any babies.”

“Not only do I have the body parts to do it eventually, which you don’t, I’m a trained midwife, and just because you can theoretically heal with a thought and a touch doesn’t give you the right to minimize the skills and knowledge I had to work for!”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. That theoretically had been a hit below the belt, but perhaps I deserved it. I lowered my hands and met her flashing eyes.

“You know I didn’t mean that, get off your high horse. Phil, it may not be Mama’s fault, but I’m broken, I can’t take anyone to bed while I’m using the potion, and I don’t want to be another man’s helpless dependent if I stop. Who and when I—that’s the only aspect of my life I’m apparently allowed to choose for myself, do you understand?” She nodded grudgingly. Of course she understood. The crown princess had even less freedom in some ways. If I eventually married, I’d be expected to pick someone suitable, but she might not get a choice at all. “I can’t hand that power over to someone else. So that’s that.” She opened her mouth, no doubt to keep arguing, and so I cut her off at the pass with, “And I wouldn’t wear that horrid helmet even if no one but me could see it. Anyway, I burned the fucking thing years ago.”

That earned me the reluctant laugh I’d hoped for, and a shake of her head, along with yet another deep sigh of the kind she reserved for me and our two younger siblings.

“And I don’t need a nursemaid,” I repeated, bringing us back to the point, damn it all. “I’ve been riding out in the countryside alone for years, and I won’t have it. I simply won’t.”

Philippa shrugged and leaned forward, setting aside her finished letter and taking up a new sheet of paper and her pen.

“Only because no one had noticed and everyone assumed you were taking a guard with you as you knew you ought to. Go and argue with Mama and leave me alone, Niko. I need to work.”

Her small smile indicated that she knew precisely how far that would get me—and also that she knew I’d already tried and failed before coming to her. My efforts to change Mama’s mind had resulted in a withering glare and a hint that if I didn’t want a guard, she’d assign me a noble husband instead.

I’d run like hell.

Parking didn’t pose a challenge in this sleepy little northern California beach town, but I pulled into a spot a block down from my destination anyway. Better to keep a low profile.

My mark’s place of employment, the Chipper Bean, was the only business on the block with a light on. (Stupid fucking name, and if I’d been going after whoever came up with it, I’d have been a lot happier.) The sign offended me as much as the name, featuring a grinning coffee bean with very large, very white teeth and a pair of aviator sunglasses. The bean clutched a steaming mug, presumably full of coffee.

Had Cannibal Bean already been taken when they named the place? Either way, the logo looked goddamn happy to be swilling the juices of its fellows. I scowled at it and pulled the door open, setting off a cheery jingle.

One customer hunched over a table by the front window, wearing headphones and staring at his laptop. Another stood at the register ordering, next to a counter with a glass-fronted section holding some sad-looking pastries and another counter with cream and sugar. A few other scattered tables sat empty.

And working away at the espresso machine, wreathed in a cloud of steam, was the guy I’d been sent here to kill.

Not even a guy, really. A kid. He’d looked goddamn young in the photo, but in person he could’ve been a high-school student. He stood maybe less than an inch shorter than my own six-feet-even, so not small in that sense, but a stiff breeze could’ve sent him floating away like dandelion fluff.

His hair, which drifted around his face in a cloud of white-blond waves, didn’t really help; it made him look even more like a dandelion, and even more fragile.

I got in line behind the guy at the counter. “Be right with you,” my target said brightly, his voice as light and sweet as his looks.

Well, this was just fucking great. My mood took a final plummet, ending up somewhere underneath the artfully scuffed floorboards. The kid—John, according to the file I’d memorized, and I’d never seen anyone who looked less like someone named plain John—had a wide fucking smile. Rosy lips. White, slightly crooked teeth.

And as far as I knew, he’d only made my hit list because he existed and someone out there didn’t like it. They hadn’t even offered the justification of making bad coffee.

The barely veiled threats had been very much present and accounted for, though. They knew who I was. They knew who my handler was. They knew everyone we’d ever been in contact with. And they’d made it clear that if we didn’t do what they wanted, they’d decide they didn’t like us existing, either.

Fuck. This.

John gave the customer his drink along with another megawatt grin and turned his attention to me. I felt like his brilliant blue gaze should’ve been an X-ray, showing every flaw down to my murderous bones. But he kept smiling.

“What can I get you? I make a great hot chocolate. It’s a little late for coffee, although—maybe you like to stay up all night?”

His smile dimmed just the tiniest bit as I scowled at him, and he blinked. Was he fucking hitting on me? Not that I didn’t swing that way sometimes, but Jesus. This kid didn’t have one single ounce of self-preservation hidden anywhere on that willowy body. I’d picked my bulky leather jacket on purpose to hide my weapons and also conceal the lines of my own body. I was well-built. Years in the army and a few more years of doing what I did after the army had made me that way. But I tried to play it down, blend in a little. I didn’t look hot like this, not even from the neck down. I looked stocky, and big, and unshaven, and probably only about a tenth as dangerous as I really was—already ten times more dangerous than anyone like John should’ve been getting anywhere near.

“Hot chocolate sounds good.” I wasn’t going to drink it, anyway, so what did it matter?

He winked at me. Actually winked. “It’s a good thing you chose wisely, because I’m going to make sure you try it and tell me if you like it!”

I nodded at him, dumbfounded, and watched as he spun gracefully on his heel and started steaming a pitcher of milk. I wasn’t really the kind of guy to go with the flow. Usually I was the one who stopped whatever the flow was, often permanently.

But apparently I’d be drinking hot chocolate.

And then, after that, I’d find a place to lurk, follow this kid home, and figure out the best place and time to kill him and make it look like some kind of freak accident. In a town this size, a mugging wasn’t all that likely. And my blackmailers—sorry, clients, whoever they were—had been deathly fucking serious about not attracting attention or causing a big police investigation, a real challenge when you left a dead body behind.

Maybe I’d make the body disappear; make him disappear. Fake some kind of note to his friends or roommates about running off to Thailand to find himself. His file said he didn’t have any family. Maybe no one would ever bother to look for him. I’d be the only one to know for certain what happened to that pretty smile and those bright blue eyes, to know where that slender body lay rotting away. The keeper of his final secrets.

A paper cup with a mound of whipped cream materialized in front of me. I looked up sharply, realizing how long I’d been staring down at the counter and completely ignoring my target and my surroundings.

John wore another sweet smile, this time with a bright, mischievous look in those sparkling eyes. “You seem like you’re secretly a whipped cream kind of guy,” he said quietly, as if we were co-conspirators.

I hadn’t thrown up in years, but it took every bit of willpower I had not to lose what was left of my late lunch.

“Yeah, sure,” I said hoarsely, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the cup. “What do I owe you?”

“Three-fifty!” He poked the cash register and stood there expectantly. Was his hair actually floating around his head, or was that an optical illusion? If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought a gentle spring breeze had drifted by, making his soft waves flutter.

God, I was fucking losing it. I pulled out my wallet and gave him a five. “Put the change in the jar.”

And then I had to get out of there. I picked up the cup, even though I wished I could run away and leave it.

“Try it?” he asked, his tone barely shy of pleading. “Just a taste. Let me know what you think. I’m sort of new at this. I need feedback.”

According to the file he’d been working here for months. If he didn’t know how to make a fucking hot chocolate by now, he had to be hopeless. And hadn’t he said he was great at it?

Still. I put the cup to my mouth, and then hesitated. Jesus. It held cocoa, for fuck’s sake. Not rat poison.

Probably. But I knew what rat poison tasted like. I’d be able to tell.

I took a sip, having to slurp the whipped cream to get to the liquid under it.

My eyes widened. It was…the best thing I’d ever put in my mouth. Without question, without any doubt, it tasted better than the first beer after basic training, or the lips of the first girl I’d ever kissed in tenth grade. It was fucking ambrosia.

John’s eyes were fixed on me, oddly intent. “You like it?”

“It’s amazing,” tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it. “It’s good. Really, really good.”

Until his whole body relaxed, I hadn’t noticed John’s tension. He carried himself so lightly that it hadn’t been obvious. But he seemed to settle, his whole posture looser. Jesus. Was he afraid of losing his job if someone told his manager he made shitty hot chocolate? Was his manager the same person who’d chosen the sign out front? If so, maybe I’d make another stop on my rounds.

“Good,” he said. “That’s—good. Thanks for coming into the Chipper Bean!”

I managed a growl that could have been words, turned, and hightailed it the fuck out of there. Maybe I’d go back after an hour and follow John home; maybe I wouldn’t. It could wait another night. Fuck.

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.

Three men sat at the bar, none of them the one I’d come to meet—or at least I sincerely hoped so. Two had to be my father’s age or older, while the third sported some unholy fusion of a mullet and a man-bun.

No position as a CEO would be worth having to look at that every day.

Let alone worth fucking the individual who’d thought that was a good idea, even the once that forming a mating bond would require. Desperation had its limits.

I shuddered and scanned the rest of the dimly-lit space, poking my glasses farther up my nose. A few men had grouped around the pool table in the back past the bar, but they appeared to be there together, and not waiting for anyone.

Several booths, one occupied by a pair of middle-aged women, the next empty, and—there. A lone man with a pint of beer in front of him, slouched back too far into the seat to put his face in the dim glow of the shaded lamp dangling over the table.

Unless I’d been stood up, and I certainly wouldn’t discount the possibility, that had to be him.

And anyway, I’d rather be stood up than have to wait on the guy. Punctuality showed character. I didn’t expect much from some seedy alpha douchebag with more cockiness than common sense, someone who’d managed to end up on the run from not one, not two, but three packs holding grudges, not to mention a variety of loan sharks, but lateness I simply could not abide.

Again, nothing wrong with a few standards. No man-buns, no mullets, no lack of basic time management skills.

And if it kind of sounded, even to me, as if I were trying to think of reasons to call this whole miserable plan off, well…that wasn’t entirely wrong.

The bartender glanced up as I moved away from the door, raising her eyebrows at me in a way that suggested she wondered if I’d come to the wrong place. I’d ditched the tie in the car, but my tailored Italian suit probably cost more than six months’ rent on this dingy, smoky hole. She knew I didn’t belong here.

That made two of us.

I nodded at her and gestured vaguely toward the guy in the booth, and she shrugged and went back to reorganizing the glassware.

He didn’t move as I approached, not even leaning forward to get a better look at me—not that he’d need to, what with the perfect vision all shifters had.

All of them besides me, at least.

Yet another way in which I’d been born shockingly imperfect, along with my barely above-average height and my lack of the stronger werewolf magic that would’ve made me an alpha. Not that my father had known about all of these faults on the day of my birth, of course. He’d still had hopes, at that point, that I’d become something worthwhile—hopes I’d slowly dashed in the intervening twenty-eight years. He never ceased reminding me of it, particularly on days when I’d accomplished more for the family business interests and the pack than my older alpha brother ever would, even in his arrogant, delusional dreams.

Whatever.

Fuck my father, and fuck Blake, and fuck anyone who thought I couldn’t conduct business in a seedy dive as well as in the shiniest board room in downtown Boise.

I lifted my chin and strode the rest of the way to the booth with the same confidence I displayed when doing my job.

Hopefully it’d fool enhanced alpha senses.

“Dimitri?” I said as I stopped at the end of the table.

“Who’s asking?” The slight Russian accent suggested I’d found the right man. But his low, raspy tone didn’t sound all that welcoming.

Jesus, fuck him too. I hadn’t forced him to meet me. Our mutual acquaintance, a seedy fixer I sometimes employed as an investigator, had told me Dimitri Pechorin would be just as pathetically eager to find a way out of his difficulties—well, as I was.

“Brook,” I said. Johnny had probably shared my last name too, but damned if I’d announce it in a place like this for anyone to hear. Showing my face was bad enough. “And if you’re not here to meet me, then say so and stop wasting my time.”

“Wasting your time?” He shifted his weight, the booth creaking. I had the impression of someone a whole hell of a lot bigger than me, but my weak eyes wouldn’t allow me to focus past the pool of light on the table. “You’re the one who set this meeting, Castelli.” I flinched, glancing around guiltily before I could catch myself. “So sit down and tell me what the fuck you want.”

His voice held a hint of an alpha’s command. I gritted my teeth, stiffening my knees as they tried to obey his order, and wished I could tell him to go to hell. The last thing I wanted to do was sit down, now that he’d told me to. But I’d probably attract even more attention standing in front of the table like an idiot.

And I’d spent years obsessing over my situation, and now months stressing over my father’s new plans for me, without ever coming up with a better plan than this.

Maybe my father was right, and I didn’t have what it took to run our companies, the pack, or so much as a lemonade stand.

I sat down with poor grace, sliding a little ways into the booth but making sure to keep a respectable distance from Pechorin.

Once I’d blinked a couple of times, he came into focus at last.

I blinked again, because I couldn’t help it.

Okay, no. He might not have a mullet or a man-bun, and he’d been early for our meeting—and he was obviously an alpha—but there the list of qualifications as a mate ended as suddenly as if it’d run into a brick wall.

Which he kind of resembled himself, actually. His shoulders, anyway.

Rumpled, overly long black hair, the harsh-featured face of a hard man who’d lived a hard life, at least a few days’ worth of unshaven beard, piercing gray eyes, and those absurd shoulders straining the threadbare seams of an olive-green Henley with a hole in one sleeve.

He had all the polish of a battered piece of scrap metal I might find in a junk yard—at least, if I’d ever set foot in a junk yard.

And he looked to be well over six feet, probably a good half-foot taller than me, though I’d only know for sure once he stood up.

Alphas did tend to the large, and I needed an alpha for my plan to work, but…no. He’d dwarf me if we stood next to each other, which we’d need to do all the time: at the formal mating reception, in photos, at our public appearances…and any authority I had would be eroded by the comparison between his overt alpha-ness and my lack of it.

Of course, any authority I had with members of my family or with the pack would derive from having an alpha mate in the first place. The less traditional werewolf and human employees of Castelli Industries might view me with respect—because I’d earned it. But their opinions wouldn’t matter a damn without my father’s willingness to hand over the reins.

A cold, heavy clench caught at my chest. Yeah. And if I showed up with this alpha as a mate, my father would laugh in my face.

For what felt like weeks, I drifted. Hands moved me and rearranged my floppy limbs, voices echoed through my hollow mind. I lay on something soft, a change from before—I thought so, at least.

Sometimes I felt a little warmer or a little cooler. But nothing hurt.

Even in my state of partial consciousness, that seemed odd. Very odd, in fact. Because I knew I’d been hurt. Injured, at least, and that should’ve included the other meaning of hurt, shouldn’t it? I had bandages. I was aware of having them changed: unwrapped, ointment, wrapped again.

But I couldn’t feel anything else beyond the very basic fact of being horizontal, or the sensation of touch versus air on my skin.

They’d hurt me. Again and again, they’d hurt me…until it didn’t hurt anymore. And that had been worse.

But it took me a long time to begin to remember.

The memories came back along with my ability to begin to use my own body again.

I’d been in prison. Not the official kind, with a warden and legal procedures and time spent in the yard lifting weights. I’d had a cell, and a thin pad on the floor, and a sink and a toilet. A high slit of a window cut into one thick concrete wall with no hope of real sunlight coming in through it, let alone an escape attempt going out the other way.

When they’d taken me out of the cell, I’d been dragged to a laboratory.

And they’d hurt me. Until it stopped hurting.

Later, weeks or months of more intermittent torment later, the cell door had broken open, wrenched off its hinges by an enormous creature with glowing eyes and monstrous fangs and claws. He’d been holding an unconscious naked man draped over his shoulder with one arm, with rivulets of fresh blood running down the claws of the other hand and spattered on his face.

And chillingly, he’d had blood on those fangs, too.

Someone else came into the cell once the door clanged against the wall, flung aside with a single motion of the creature’s massive arm like it’d been a piece of balsa wood and not reinforced steel. This one had blood all over him, too, and fangs and claws—though not as impressively terrifying as the creature’s. When he picked me up off the mattress, he carefully held the claws away, not so much as nicking me, wrapping strong arms around me so gently I could’ve cried.

Well, I did cry. But I’d done a lot of that in the time I’d spent in that cell, in that place, in the lab upstairs where they hurt me until they couldn’t anymore.

They’d been delighted with that, which confused the hell out of me. Why would people who’d spent so much effort causing me pain be so pleased when they failed? When they cut into my arm and the blood ran down, and I blinked at it, not understanding why I couldn’t feel it anymore.

That memory hit me hard enough that my eyes finally opened. Searing, blinding light, and I gasped and thrashed and winced away from it, and there were hands on me…

“It’s all right! I promise it’s all right, I won’t hurt you, you’re safe, I promise—”

The voice, deep and a little rough, cut off as I opened my eyes again and stared right into—his eyes.

The one who’d come into my cell. The one who’d lifted me off that mattress, whose shoulder I’d leaned my head on as I passed out from shock and blood loss and whatever else my torturers had done to me.

He had dark brown eyes, almost black.

The rest of his face barely registered. Those eyes…I remembered looking into them for a moment before I lost consciousness.

Those eyes meant I was safe. That he couldn’t possibly be lying to me.

I dropped back against the softness I lay on, panting, gazing up at him.

His hands still rested on my shoulders where he’d been holding me, trying to keep me still as I panicked.

My throat felt like sandpaper. “Okay,” I said—or tried to. It came out a hoarse, incoherent rasp.

“Shit,” he said. “Water. You need water.” He let me go and stood up. Off the bed, I realized. Everything blinked in and out of focus around me like I had a strobe light in my brain.

Bed. A bedroom. Blink, waver. My fingers twitched, which felt momentous after not moving any of my own body for…maybe a long time.

Colors started to pop out at me now that my vision had adjusted to actual light. Pale gray walls with a vibrant landscape hung up, trees and a river and a red and purple sky.

And honest-to-God yellow sunlight flowing over all of it like honey.

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and my vision blurred, clearing after a moment.

My rescuer’s frowning face appeared in front of me again, and now it looked like an actual face and not a watercolor smear with eyes. Largish nose, firm lips, and strong, masculine bones, all perfectly arranged and topped off with glossy dark brown bedhead. I’d been saved from my cell by a guy who belonged on a magazine cover. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it added to the unreality of everything around me and everything in my head.

“How much pain are you in?” he asked, holding out a glass of water. I tried to sit up and failed. “Fuck, you can’t answer that anyway, your throat’s too dry. Sorry, I’m a moron.”

He slipped his arm behind my shoulders and boosted me up, letting me lean against his side and holding the glass to my lips. The water tasted like nothing I’d ever even imagined, like life itself flowing into my mouth and cooling my throat and esophagus all the way down. I guzzled it like an animal, wetting my chin, drops dribbling onto his hand and running down my neck.

At last I’d emptied the glass, and he carefully settled me back down, putting it aside on the nightstand.

I licked my lips, wincing as my tongue caught on the chapped cracks in them. He could’ve been a model, and I must’ve looked like death warmed over. Only not warmed quite enough. Death lightly microwaved?

“I have pain pills for you if you need them,” he said. “Just tell me what you need. And ask me any questions you want. I know you must have a million, but I promise you, you don’t need to ask if you’re in any danger here. I swear, we got out, we got away, and you’re as safe as you’ve ever been in your life.”

We got out. We got away. My mind spun into frantic overload, my vision going all wonky again and my breath coming faster at the thought of asking all the follow-up questions he obviously expected me to ask—all the questions that should’ve been urgently trying to pour out of me.

I’d been in that cell. In those labs.

And I couldn’t remember how long I’d been there.

I couldn’t remember what had come before that.

I couldn’t fucking remember.

His voice came through like bursts of static, distant, barely audible over the pounding of my heart and the rasping of my breath and a high-pitched keening sound…that was also coming from me.

Blackness descended again. I tried to fight it and failed.

When they didn’t take me out of my cell for a few weeks, I knew my time was up.

Or maybe it was a couple of months. I’d long since stopped bothering to scratch marks into the walls of my cell—or into my own flesh, since I healed too quickly and the entertainment value of hurting myself paled after a while.

There’d been that time a while back…sometime, in the past…when I hadn’t healed. When I’d clawed my own arm and then watched, glazed and still too sedated to care, as the blood didn’t stop welling up. That had been after one of the trips to the lab.

And that had lasted for a few weeks. Maybe.

And now this had lasted for a few weeks, maybe, the guard only opening the door once a day to slide in some food and maybe a sliver of soap or a roll of toilet paper, and then slamming it again without saying a word to me.

My cell had concrete walls and a concrete floor, a mattress in one corner and a toilet and sink in the opposite one. The concrete had a hairline crack to the left of the door. It split into a Y-shape near the end.

It was by far the most interesting thing in the cell, and I’d examined it in detail, day after day, staring until the light from the slits along the top of the other wall faded away, and I had to imagine the crack there, tracing it in my mind over and over.

Some days, I’d thought about getting a tattoo of the shape of that crack if I ever got out.

I knew I wouldn’t be getting out.

Either they needed me for something—the endless vials of blood, the occasional injections that left me itchy or screaming or unable to heal, or once, shifting back and forth from wolf to man over and over again within minutes, uncontrollably, until I didn’t know my own skin and could only scream in both my voices until I lost consciousness—and they wouldn’t let me go, or…they didn’t need me anymore.

Footsteps echoed distantly from the hallway.

I looked up from my lap, where I’d been idly contemplating the shape of my knuckles. Gloomy gray light filtered in, so it was still barely daytime. Whatever that meant. Not food time, though. That had already come and gone.

My heartbeat started to lift out of its usual slow tempo, skittering into an unsteady reel. I’d thought the prospect of death didn’t matter to me anymore, but apparently my body disagreed.

The footsteps stopped; the door opened. Two guards stood partially framed in the doorway, the blond one who usually didn’t hit me and the bald one who usually did. No matter what I’d tried, I’d never been able to get either of them, or their several equally laconic colleagues, to give me a name.

“Get up,” the blond said.

I got up. Slowly, though, or as slowly as I dared, anyway. There was a fine line between pissing them off and not rushing to get my throat slit. My heart pounded away, double-time.

“Sometime this fucking year,” Baldy grunted.

My feet felt numb, but I got on them and crossed the cell to the door. The blond took me by the elbow and tugged me out and along the hallway, the concrete out here rougher against my bare soles than in the floor of my cell. Maybe from all the jackbooted assholes marching around out here and scuffing it up.

The hallway lacked windows, but dim fluorescents hung at intervals along the ceiling. One of them kept flickering. I resisted the urge to fight, to struggle, to try for a few more minutes of living. It wouldn’t matter, and I’d end up beaten or tased into unconsciousness. I’d never even see how they were going to end me. Somehow that seemed worse than at least knowing how I was going to die, for the few seconds between finding out and actually, you know, dying.

Blondie led me to the left, and I stumbled, my legs trying to carry me the other way. The labs were to the right, along the hallway and up the stairs. I’d been heading that way on autopilot, even though every time I’d been there I’d been some combination of bored, hurt, and terrified.

But we went left, and the bald guard fell in behind us.

The urge to fight hit me again. A couple of years—I thought? But I couldn’t be sure—of living in that cell, alternately experimented on and ignored, had left me thinner and weaker than I’d been. But werewolves were resilient, and I’d started off tall, muscular, and able to fight.

I could still fight.

Except that every time I’d fought, I’d lost. They had weapons, and these guards might not smell like much except the sharp, acrid tingle of magic that obscured their natural scents, but they weren’t human. They were stronger than me, and armed. I’d lose again.

I walked down the hallway, the blond’s grip on my arm firm but short of punishing. He knew I wouldn’t run. He knew I wouldn’t fight.

Somehow, paradoxically, that drained the last of the impulse to fight right out of me. I didn’t used to be like that. I used to be a contrary bastard.

We reached the end of the hall, and Baldy pushed past me to put his hand against a panel set into the wall by a metal door that stank of magic. The panel glowed faintly purple for a moment, and a heavy thunk and click echoed from inside the door.

The blond pulled it open. The room beyond lay in murky shadows, and I could only see a glint of something metallic. He shoved me through, and I stumbled and tripped a few steps inside.

“Brought you something to play with,” the bald guard said, his voice thick with something foul and anticipatory, making my heart skip a beat and the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

And then the door slammed shut behind me.

The scent hit me first. It wasn’t a bad scent, exactly, although no smells in this place had ever been mouthwatering.

It was a terrifying scent. Hot iron and bone-freezing chill, like fresh blood spilled on glacier ice, with a vein of uncontrollable wildness running beneath.

I blinked and stumbled back again, my shoulder blades hitting the door hard. I pressed my palms against it, clammy flesh on unyielding cool metal. A faint chink of metal sounded in front of me, and I blinked again, adjusting to the lack of light. After a moment, dim slits of twilight gray resolved out of the darkness, tiny windows like those in my own cell, high up in the wall across from me. I focused on them, hard. If I looked at those, I didn’t need to see anything else. Whatever was in this cell with me, I didn’t want to know. The scent had intensified, richer and sharper both, becoming mesmerizing.

And the sense of menace that came with it had grown too. I really didn’t want to know.

Finally I had to know. Night had almost come, and in a few moments there’d be no light at all to see what lurked in the cell with me, no matter how much my werewolf senses compensated for the dark.

I looked down, away from the window slits.

Something sat against the wall on a pallet similar to my worn mattress. Something big. Three faint gleams: a metallic reflection, and twin pale stars, the glow of alpha eyes. Not golden, like the alpha werewolves I’d always known before, but bluish silver.

It didn’t move.

I didn’t move.

Whatever it was took deep, even breaths, slow and calm, and it didn’t move a muscle.

My legs started to shake, protesting their rigid tension after weeks of sitting on the mattress twenty-three hours a day without even the exercise of walking to the labs.

I’d long since given up on exercising in my cell.

I slid down the door until my ass hit the concrete, drawing my knees up to my chest.

Darkness fell. I could still see a little, the faint starlight filtering in through the wall slits giving me enough to make out shapes, at least.

My heart still pounded in my throat at first, but after some indeterminate time of nothing fucking happening, it settled down. I got cold and stiff, but at least calm again.

And nothing happened.

Something to play with.

Either I wasn’t a tempting toy, or the…whatever it was across from me wasn’t in the mood to play.

The air between us hung thick with nauseating uncertainty.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d almost forgotten this aspect of my own personality, the inability to keep my stupid mouth shut. It’d been so long since I’d had anyone to talk to. My lips and tongue practically ached with the need to move, even though my throat felt so dry I didn’t know if words would emerge.

“Who are you?” It came out a hoarse whisper.

The shape across from me moved slightly. I had the impression of size again, of something massive shifting in the depths of the ocean, or of a predator moving in the darkness of a forest. All my hackles would’ve gone up, except that they’d hit peak up the moment the guards opened the door.

“Does it matter?” I twitched, adrenaline jolting through me. That voice, oh fucking gods, that voice. Deep and raw, and not human. Not remotely fucking human, not even in the way shifter voices were human.

I swallowed hard, peering into the darkness at those faintly glowing eyes.

“Since we’re stuck in here together, it matters to me?” My voice came out high-pitched and weak. “I’m Jared.”

His laugh scraped along every one of my nerves, a rusty knife dragging over concrete.

And it was definitely his. No way did that voice, that laugh, belong to anyone not male. What kind of male creature, though…that I couldn’t even guess at. His scent was like nothing I’d ever encountered.

“I don’t give a fuck what your name is,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me. I doubt it matters to you, either. Not in here.”

The third confusing, vaguely disturbing email came in with a ping on the Friday afternoon right before midterms.

Still desperately trying to get my Chem 101 exam organized, I almost ignored the sound from my laptop. I had the questions scrawled on sticky notes, and I’d been shifting them around on the whiteboard trying to make sure I’d really covered everything and hadn’t given away the answer to one question in another.

But any port in a storm, and at this point, my whiteboard resembled a category three hurricane.

I dropped into my desk chair and opened up my email.

And then wished I hadn’t.

 

Dr. McEwen:

I would like to remind you that I am still awaiting a reply to my two previous messages. Please respond immediately. The opportunities I can offer you are much greater than you can imagine, and working with us would benefit you and your pack. I would much prefer to meet you at a time of your choosing, but we will need to meet.

Sincerely,

Dr. Geoff Greenwald

Director of Research

Initech Corporation

 

The first email had been a lot like others I received occasionally: a vague reference to a job in the private sector, and a suggestion to get in touch. I’d trashed it. Academia might not have the money, but I subscribed to the Ray Stantz philosophy of desirable employment: I didn’t want to work for anyone who expected results. I couldn’t even produce enough results—at least not the kind that led to profits and patents—to keep the university happy, let alone a company with a bottom line.

The second email had come two weeks later, and it had also included a reference to my pack. Plenty of werewolves and other magical species attended and worked at Southern Oregon Tech, and I certainly didn’t hide that I’d been sired by a were, but it wasn’t exactly on my university webpage.

And it didn’t seem like something a prospective employer ought to care about.

I’d found it a little unsettling, honestly.

This email, a week after the second, pushed me past unsettled and into nervous.

Was the threatening undertone just my imagination? The last sentence of that email suggested that Dr. Geoff Greenwald was going to—what, stalk me? Kidnap me? Obviously not. Right?

Because that would be crazy. My research was fascinating—I mean, of course it was, it was my research—and it had a lot of potential, eventually. Stimulating dormant supernatural genes in phenotypically human subjects could lead to activating healing abilities in humans, curing all kinds of diseases in people with the right DNA. Or to gaining strength and enhanced senses.

Or to finally becoming what you should have been, if only your chromosomes hadn’t let you down at a crucial point in fetal development.

That last one probably didn’t rank high on Initech Corporation’s list of reasons for trying to recruit me.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. That last one wasn’t even hinted at in any of my research proposals. If anyone found out about it, I’d be so screwed and so fired.

But anyway.

My research had a lot of potential. Maybe. But it also straddled that line between magic and hard science that a lot of researchers on both sides of that particular aisle turned up their noses at. You were a chemist, or a sorcerer. Not both. Especially when you didn’t have any magical abilities to begin with, like me. Magic-users hated the idea of the sciences figuring out how they did what they did, in some kind of quantifiable way, and scientists hated anything they couldn’t quantify.

Not to mention that other researchers had gone down this road before, and they’d never come up with anything. Connecting specific magical properties to specific molecular structures hadn’t worked in the past.

Of course, those researchers weren’t me. And I was arrogant enough to think that would make the difference.

But either way, my grant proposals were, at this point, a matter of form, or possibly my own version of masochism. No one ever approved them. I got by without any assistants, without any specialized equipment. Basically, I had the same resources as a grad student, only I could access the labs whenever I wanted to without a professor signing off. My startup funding from when I’d gotten hired had nearly run out.

I lived in a tiny apartment and ate a lot of ramen so I could afford to buy my own reagents.

Initech might fund me, whoever the hell they were. I’d looked at their website, but it redefined bland and noncommittal, like the internet version of a chain dentists’ office. It didn’t exactly inspire me. Dr. Greenwald didn’t have a profile on any of the usual professional sites, either.

And I didn’t trust anyone who wrote emails like Greenwald did, anyway.

Shit.

The urge to swipe all the printouts, highlighters, empty coffee cups, and sticky notes off my desk and onto the floor came over me. Again. My fingers twitched, itching to grab my phone and call Colin, like I always wanted to when I needed a sounding board.

But Colin was too busy to bother with my annoyance over a few emails.

“A little help?” Nate said irritably, turning to glare at me over his shoulder. “All those alpha muscles ought to be good for something!”

He startled me out of my fugue, and I blinked at my red-faced mate, who was sweating even though the temperature had dropped to near-freezing and the air smelled like snow. Nate had needed to bend over really, really far to load the trunk of Matt’s Prius. And then wriggle around. A lot. With his ass in the air, waving back and forth hypnotically. I hadn’t even noticed he’d been struggling to shut the trunk and cursing under his breath until he brought me back to the present and I rewound the last couple minutes in my head. I’d been too focused on how someone so thin could have such a round ass.

Magic? Nate used magic. Would he use magic on his own ass? Would he let me watch?

“Your fault for not wanting to bring a real car,” I said, trying to distract him from the bulge in the front of my jeans. My mate and my brother both had shitty taste in cars, and they ganged up on me. Especially since Nate hated my driving. Arguing some more about the car was sure to distract him. He’d never let me hear the end of it if he caught me getting that hard in a hardware store’s parking lot. Especially standing next to a Prius.

On the other hand, trying to stuff that many light-up candy canes into my Barracuda would’ve been fucking sacrilege, so maybe it was just as well. Christmas. We didn’t do Christmas.

Until Nate came along. Now, apparently, we did Christmas on steroids.

“Real car,” Nate huffed. “Real piece of — eep,” he finished, as I crowded him up against the car and loomed at him.

“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.”

Nate batted his eyelashes, giving me teasing glimpses of his mischievous dark eyes. I’d have suspected he used magic on those, too, if I hadn’t seen both his eyes and his ass under circumstances where he didn’t have any magic to spare. They were naturally that fucking amazing.

“What are you going to do, Ian? Bite me? Throw me over your shoulder and drag me off somewhere to do unspeakable things to me?”

“Been there, done that, got the magical socks,” I grunted. I tried to scowl at him, but the way my hands had found their way to his waist and started tracing little gentle circles probably made that a losing deal.

“Mmm,” Nate hummed, relaxing under my touch. “Help me fit all this stuff in here and close the trunk and then set up the candy canes along the driveway and put up that Santa,” he said in a rush, like I’d miss the details if he hurried, “and you can do unspeakable things to me all night.”

I looked over his shoulder at the sheer volume of fucking candy canes. And the inflatable Santa. Fuck, did I even have the right kind of pump in the garage? Did I need one? And the boxes and boxes of jumbo-sized all-weather rainbow-hued ornaments he claimed were going on the trees in front of the pack house. And the strings of lights, like a dozen of them. Why? Jesus fucking Christ. Our pack barely had money for the utility bills, let alone this kind of thing. We definitely wouldn’t be able to afford electricity after he plugged all that shit in. Nate had paid for it all out of what he’d earned with his freelance warlock business, and that rankled even more. I ought to be able to provide for him. Even if he wanted red-and-green plastic crap covered in fairy lights.

“Setting those up will take all night. How stupid do you think I am?” Nate stretched up and nibbled the side of my neck, rubbing his body against my half-hard cock like the little tease he was. “That stupid, okay,” I grumbled. “Yeah. Okay. But really, really unspeakable. I’m tying you up so you can’t try to get out of it.”

Nate’s eyes gleamed. “Promises, promises.”

I got the trunk shut in record time, and in spite of how much I hated this fucking car, I insisted on driving, dangling the keys over my head out of Nate’s reach until he stopped hopping around and gave up. If Nate took the wheel, we’d get home two stops for coffee and a million years of following the speed limit later.

He sulked most of the way, but brightened up when we pulled off the main road and into the long, winding driveway that led from the pack territory’s boundary to the main compound and the pack house.

“There’s a lot of driveway,” he said with glee. “Lots and lots and lots of driveway. Good thing I got a lot of candy canes!” And then as soon as we pulled up at the house he leapt out, grabbed an armful of non-driveway decorations, and ran inside, calling out, “Put the Santa up out in the back yard, and have fun!” over his shoulder.

Oh, he was so going to fucking get it. I adjusted my cock a little so it wasn’t pressing against my zipper and got to work.

Being chained up in a basement wasn’t as bad as being chained up in a cave, an outhouse, or a condemned poultry-processing plant. What did it say about my life that I could draw that comparison? Some might’ve pointed out that I ought to stop doing the shit that led me to be chained up, period.

I disagreed. That was victim-blaming, if you asked me. What was a little necromancy, anyway? Like, the guy I’d turned into a giant wolf-zombie-thing the other day was a complete asshole to begin with. I might’ve even improved his personality.

Not that anyone had asked me. As usual, I’d been ignored other than being locked into spelled manacles and dumped onto the floor of a secured room like so much dangerous trash — the radioactive waste of the supernatural world. Too hot to touch. Too toxic to discard in the open. Nearly worthless if I didn’t cooperate, but still with some potential to be used, if my captors figured out how.

First they’d try to get some magic out of me. Then, when I refused, they’d rape and beat me — they’d get some entertainment that way, if nothing else.

At least, that’s how it had gone before, more than once. Who knew what addled, bullheaded Matthew would do to me, or let his pack do to me, while under the influence of my spell? I’d never been raped by someone who thought he loved me before. Maybe this time I’d get a new experience. Broaden my horizons. Let another fraction of the miniscule bit of faith in humanity I’d held onto all these years shrivel and die. Not that I’d had much to begin with. I had faith in myself. Everyone else was a threat or a mark, and often both.

For now, though, I reclined on the beat-up orange shag carpeting, inhaling the acrid dust of decades that puffed out of it every time I shifted my weight. I closed my eyes, finding my center as well as I could with chains wrapped around me and cutting off my magic, the one thing I’d ever been able to control — other than the occasional undead monster.

I was Arik. I held on to that — the one, unshakable foundation of my identity, the name I’d been given by the only person I’d ever loved.

I was a shaman. A little quiver of ironic laughter there, because I hated that title as much as every alpha I’d ever encountered craved the use of someone who held it.

Sam Kimball was dead.

That allowed me a flicker of a smile. 

And lastly, I had the Armitages’ alpha pack leader by the balls. And if he thought he could use me without reciprocation, he was about to have a rude fucking awakening. Chains, torture, and even fucking shag carpets couldn’t break me. Nothing could break me.

I was Arik, shaman and necromancer and survivor. I did the breaking.

Deep breath. I’d repeat that until I believed it.

I had the chance to repeat it several dozen times before anything happened to disturb me. Footsteps — several sets of them, it sounded like. Fucking yay. Maybe it would be all three of the stooges this time, instead of just Ian Armitage, Matthew’s brother, who’d come downstairs once the day before to growl and shout at me.

I’d ignored him. Then he’d shouted more. Then his mate, that little fucking asshole warlock Nate Hawthorne, had stomped to the top of the stairs and shouted at Ian about how they’d agreed he was going to deal with me himself. Really, I’d had better conversations.

By the time the door to the staircase opened, I’d managed to prop myself up into a half-seated sprawl against the end of an ancient ratty plaid couch. Couldn’t they have put me on the couch? No, of course not, but given how gross it was I was probably better off on the floor anyway.

I stopped short of laying the back of my hand against my forehead like a Victorian lady with the vapors, mainly because my arms wouldn’t stretch like that with the length of my chains. But I thought I probably got the point across. Limp arms, labored breaths, fluttering eyelashes, check check and check. That love-struck fool Matthew didn’t stand a chance. He might take his anger out on me at some point, or let his pack do it for him, but that would serve a purpose too. The more pathetic I looked now, the more guilt he’d store up for me to tap into later.

The first one through the door was Ian. He’d ripped the head off of Sam Kimball, leader of the Kimball pack, in the pack battle two nights before. The goons who’d lugged me down to the basement had made a point of bragging about it. Not that Sam had really been a Kimball anymore, not after the magic I’d laid on him. Either way, no loss there. If the goons thought I’d be crying over Kimball’s death, they didn’t know much.

Of course, it was obvious they didn’t know much. I doubted they knew how to tie their own shoes.

Ian was fucking huge, had an even bigger chip on his shoulder, and hated my guts. I wasn’t going to waste my focus on him, because I already knew how he’d react to any given stimulus: ripping off heads, etcetera. Boring and predictable.

Next came Nate, his mate, the bitch who’d knocked me out with a water bottle of all fucking things. Even in the dingy light of the one bare bulb on the ceiling, he looked better than he had the last time I’d seen him. The other night his dark hair had been matted with filth, his baggy clothes torn up, his face a pale rictus of terror and misery. Now he just looked mildly exhausted and was wearing jeans that fit, if you liked jeans that cut off the circulation to your dick. His brown eyes gleamed with wary suspicion, and he stayed close to Ian.

Matthew was last.

Matthew, with his broad shoulders, intense blue eyes fixed on me like he couldn’t look anywhere else, and a fucked-up mix of longing and loathing written all over his square-jawed face. My only hope for getting out of this alive.

When I’d cast that love spell on him, it’d been at Kimball’s suggestion. Or rather, Kimball had ordered me to get Matthew in line somehow, intending for me to tie Matthew directly to him. The love spell had been my…elaboration. Having Matthew attached to me, rather than to Kimball, had been my ace in the hole. It’d ended up screwing Kimball over, since Matthew had thought he’d been helping to ‘rescue’ me when he brought Kimball’s plans, and barn, down around his head.

Remembering how he’d thrown everything away to make sure I was safe made it a little harder to plan to use the spell against him…but his feelings were fake anyway. He didn’t get credit for them.

And besides, it’d helped me then and it’d help me now. I loved it when I planned ahead.

“Hello,” I whispered. My voice was so hoarse and scratchy I sounded like a three-pack-a-day hooker trying to attract a john. Hopefully they didn’t make that comparison. “Did you forget to bring breakfast again?” I put as much pitiful confusion into my tone as I could, and let my head loll back as if my neck simply couldn’t hold it up. That also had the effect of baring my long, pale throat to Matthew’s no-doubt interested alpha gaze. “What day is it?”

“It’s afternoon,” Nate snapped, just as Ian said, “Go fuck yourself.”

Matthew’s head whipped around so he could glare at his brother. “What the hell?” he demanded. “You told me he’d been looked after. That you were taking care of everything. He’s chained up on the floor and you haven’t even been fucking feeding him?”

I ducked my head — making it look like I was drooping the other direction with hunger and despair, but really to hide a triumphant smile. Score. Discord sown. First volley to me. “I don’t remember when they fed me last,” I said quietly. Sadly. Meekly, even.

Heavy footsteps shook the floor and I braced myself for a hit. “Hey.” Instead, a huge, warm hand wrapped around the back of my neck, the fingers tangling in my long hair and caressing gently under my ear. I glanced up through my lashes. Matthew’s brows were drawn together, and his eyes were soft with worry. “It’ll be all right, Jonah. We’ll get you out of these chains, get you a real meal and a bed, and you’ll be fine. You were confused. That bastard Kimball was threatening you. You’re safe here, I promise.”

Oh, thank fuck, that made for good hearing, even though the sound of the stupid fake name I’d chosen when Kimball’s shaman Adam asked for one three months before made me wince. This was going to be even easier than I’d thought. Matthew was wrapped around my tattooed little finger.

A second later, Matthew’s eyes rolled back in his head, the hand on the nape of my neck went limp, and he toppled to the floor, his head knocking a puff of filthy dust into the air as it thumped into the shag carpet.