Chapter 3

Light poured across the ballroom in glittering sheets, poured back a hundredfold by crystal, by silk, and by the bright hard gleam of jewelry that had crossed oceans to be here tonight. It was, by every measure that mattered to the people in this room, the finest banquet the Cross family had ever given, and every well-known name in Sweden, and many beyond it, had come to witness it.

Axel Cross stood a little apart, as he always did, and let the room move around him without quite touching him.

The band had just played a few numbers of the local folk song, and waltz time was a signal for the guest to take their partners for the first dance of the evening.  The whole ballroom was filled with women who were wearing designer gowns made by famous designers and magnificent jewelry hung around their necks and ears as they walked with their partners towards the dance floor.

Axel's gaze found the bride, and something in his face, some habitual hardness he wasn't even aware of, eased, just slightly.

Alexia was radiant. She turned in the crowd, showing off some new piece of jewelry, laughing, and the sheer brightness of her happiness struck Axel with an odd, unwelcome force as if he were watching something he had no right to witness, an intruder at the edge of someone else's joy.

She was younger than him by several years, born to the woman his father had married after Axel's own mother died, and in the years since, she and Axel had built something that passed for friendship—warm enough, easy enough, but never anything deeper. He had always been elsewhere, buried in the business, buried in the pack, there had never seemed to be room for a sister in the small, guarded space where he kept the people who mattered, and looking at her now, glowing amid her wedding guests, he felt the absence of that room more sharply than he expected to.

His gaze slid, inevitably, to the man at her side.

Arthur, Duke of Norland, an alpha, ruler of humans and wolves both. Axel had known him long enough to recognize every one of his careful, controlled expressions.

He did not recognize this one.

Arthur was looking down at Alexia the way a man looks at something he still cannot quite believe he was allowed to keep, unguarded, undefended. As though, for that one suspended moment, the entire glittering ballroom had emptied out and left only the two of them standing in it.

It lasted only a second, long enough, long enough for something to twist, sudden and unfamiliar, in Axel's chest.

He went still.

What was that—no.

He shook his head slightly, as if he could shake the thought loose before it finished forming. I am not jealous of my sister and her husband. The idea was absurd enough that he almost laughed at himself.

Sex, he understood completely. Affection, respect, and liking those he could recognize and return it in a proper way. But love was a foreign language to him, one he had been made to learn, and, if he was honest, he had actively avoided that kind of emotion.

He was the Alpha of the Knight pack, ruthless when it served him, and cunning with anyone foolish enough to call themselves his enemy. He was a businessman, and other businessmen were afraid to underestimate him twice. There had never been a woman in his life who occupied his time more than a night, sometimes two; it was pleasant, uncomplicated, mutually satisfying, and never, under any circumstances, mistaken for love. He chose his lovers the way he chose his allies: people who understood exactly what he was offering and expected nothing beyond it. Breaking hearts had never been a pleasure of his. He had learned that lesson, young and had simply arranged his life afterward so the lesson would never need repeating.

He had not yet found his mate. He told himself he was looking. In truth, he had long since settled into something closer to waiting, a slow, patient, faintly stubborn refusal to chase what fate hadn't yet bothered to hand him. Until she came looking for him, he saw no reason to deny himself whatever comfort was near and willing.

He could not picture himself feeling what he had just seen on Arthur's face. The very shape of that emotion seemed to be missing from whatever he was built of.

And yet he was glad that his sister had found a man who deserved her. He and Arthur had been distant cousins once, nothing more, but the years had folded that distance into something closer to brothers. If anyone in this world had earned Alexia's love, it was Arthur.

The ballroom had filled with alphas and dignitaries from half the globe, all of them here for Arthur's name as much as for the marriage, a man whose wisdom and reputation reached further than his own borders. Couples were already drifting into a loose circle, clearing the center of the floor for the two people the entire night belonged to.

The man beside Axel leaned in. “Are you planning to sit this one out, Axel?”

“No,” Axel said. “I am pledged for it.”

But his dark eyes had already moved, pulled, and more than moved to a woman standing alone at the edge of the room.

Princess Marcela.

Elegant, composed. Radiating a confidence that gave nothing away, her lovely face arranged in an expression of perfect, untroubled calm. She was, without contest, the most beautiful woman Axel had ever set eyes on, and something low and animal in him surged toward her before he could stop it.

Adric wants her.

His wolf was already straining forward, every instinct in him screaming to cross the room, to claim, to pursue, and Axel shut it down with the same cold discipline he had used a thousand times before, because Marcela was human, and a human was one thing he could never, ever touch.

Not now, Adric. Don't even think about it. Stay calm.

His wolf whined, low and unhappy, but eventually subsided.

Until the announcement of Arthur and Alexia's engagement, the rare circle Marcela moved in had simply assumed she would become the next Grand Duchess of Norland. If that loss had broken something in her, she had made absolutely certain no one in this ballroom would ever see the cracks.

Regally unreadable, even grieving in private if she was grieving at all, she would never grant anyone in this room the satisfaction of watching it happen and Axel admired her for that more than he was entirely comfortable admitting.

The Princess did not need his protection. Her composure, bred into her from birth and sharpened by pure self-sufficiency, had already turned back every snide remark and swallowed every performance of pity thrown her way. No one bullied Marcela and walked away feeling they had won.

He had met her a year ago when Arthur and Alexia got engaged, and he was introduced to her by an elderly aristocrat who had complemented her beyond words. Ariel was surprised by the quick masculine desire that the old man had for her; he had read amusement in the princess's amazing, green-violet eyes.

He had commented back to the older man's comment by saying that even he agreed with him, not that he wanted to, but Adric, his wolf, was instigating him. He was furious with the old man as well for coveting her. He was probably of her father’s age.

Her amused chuckle had further fired his senses.

"Thank you, my lord," she had said, composure utterly unruffled, and something in that single sentence had lodged itself under his skin and simply never left.

He hadn't been able to forget her since.

Now he carried a different weight, and she was the suspect, a suspicion he wasn't yet certain what to do with. He knew things about her brother that troubled him; he didn't know whether Marcela knew them too. Did she have any idea what her brother was entangled in? More to the point—did she know precisely what her brother was? Half human, half wolf.

He knew that she had built her own life rather than living off her family's name, a well-known television presenter in her own right, respected, and self-made, and yet his informants told him her guardian, Lucas, was quietly shipping her out to the wealthiest groom he could find. Which left an unpleasant question sitting at the back of Axel's mind: was she part of that arrangement willingly? Was money, in the end, what she was really after?

“No. She isn't.” Adric's growl came up from somewhere deep and frustrated, and Axel almost smiled despite himself; his wolf turned into an anxious mess every single time Marcela came into view.

But he needed to know what she knew about her brother. And there was only one way to find out.

He started walking towards her.

She saw him coming; of course, women like Marcela saw everything coming and produced an immaculate, faintly irritating smile of welcome. Her gown caught the exact color of her eyes, cinched close at the waist before falling into curves that struck something dark and unwelcome.   Axel's chest trembled, and he had an urge to find out what lay beneath that flawless composure, to meet her on the most elemental ground, as a man to woman, with nothing else between them.

Adric snarled and clawed for control, desperate to close the last of the distance himself.

Axel forced the wolf down, fixed his most disarming smile in place, and closed the distance on his own two feet.