5. Playing Dirty?

Mi Amor Mia

The Grand Lumière Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina had become something of a second home over the past three days. I’d checked in after attending the remembrance ceremony for my adoptive parents, Theodore and Meredith Foster. Five years since they’d fallen in battle, and the pain hadn’t dulled. If anything, it had sharpened into something cold and permanent that lived in my chest.

I was barely eight years old when my birth parents shipped me off like defective merchandise to live with my aunt and her family in Ironwood Pack.

My uncle-in-law, who was a strong warrior, had seen potential instead of problems like my birth parents had. “We’ll teach you how to win,” he’d told me on my first day in Ironwood territory.

And he had. For fifteen years, he and his wife had given me everything my birth parents never could. They’d trained me, turning my wild, untamed energy into something deadly and precise. And I grew into a warrior, a leader, and someone who commanded respect through skill rather than birthright.

Not long after, they died defending their pack from a rogue attack, and I’d been alone with armies at my command but no family to come home to. I had no reason to return to except Shadowmoon where I’d been nothing but an inconvenience either, so I became a wanderer. But on days when I miss the homely feeling, just like the day of their remembrance, I settled at Grand Lumière Hotel where I could see the view of the columbarium from the VIP suite.

The bartender nodded as I passed through the lobby, heading toward the elevators. Just then, a scent that made my wolf surge to attention hit me with a violence I'd never experienced.

My feet stopped moving, and my heart slammed hard against my ribs. For the first time in twenty-six years, my wolf echoed the word ‘mate’ with absolute certainty:

“No. That was impossible.” I disagreed.

I’d spent two decades convinced I was mateless, and that the Moon Goddess was punishing me for whatever sin I’d committed. I’d watched other wolves find their mates, while I was forced to live with the unspoken fact that I was meant to walk through life alone.

But this scent was undeniably the scent of a mate. It wrapped around me, calling to something primal and desperate in my chest. Before I could think, I felt my legs move against my will.

I followed through the lobby, down a corridor, and finally into the hotel bar. The space was dimly lit and crowded with loud music echoing through the gigantic speakers. I stood at the entrance, my eyes scanning the crowd while my wolf howled inside me.

Find her. Find her. FIND HER.

And then my eyes caught a lady sitting at the bar, with a half-bottle of whiskey in front of her.

Just before I could look away, she turned and the sight of her face made me stop cold.

“Holy shit! Is this even real?” I asked myself.

This babe is drop dead gorgeous. For one heartbeat, I just stared at her, drowning out the noise.

“Say something you dummy!” I heard my wolf blurted in my head.

Before I could process what was happening, I felt her hands in my hair and lips were on mine.

I felt the scent wrap around me again as my wolf roared in triumph.

“The scent was from her?”

“This is a public entrance, not the one to your bedroom!” someone shouted behind us.

With her plastered against me like she was trying to crawl inside my skin.

I scooped her up without breaking the kiss, her legs wrapping around my waist instinctively.

She was light in my arms, and the way she clung to me made my wolf preen with satisfaction. I carried her toward the elevators, barely registering the looks from hotel staff.

This wasn’t my first one-night stand. Wasn’t even my hundredth. I’d spent years moving from bed to bed, from city to city, trying to fill the emptiness that came from having no home and no mate. I’d gotten good at reading women, and giving them what they wanted before disappearing into the night.

But this felt different. Everything about her felt right in a way I couldn’t explain.

Maybe it was just my desperate wolf hallucinating. Maybe she was one of those women faking mate bonds with fragrances to trap powerful wolves.

But as I carried her down the hallway to my room, her lips moving against my neck, and her hands fumbled with my shirt, I found I didn’t care about maybes, logic or caution. For once in my life, something felt right.

I managed to get the door open one-handed, her back hitting the wall as I struggled to guide her inside while kicking the door shut behind us.

She made an impatient sound and attacked my shirt with renewed determination, her fingers working at the buttons with the kind of focused intensity that suggested she’d done this before.

I kissed her harder, claiming her mouth, and she moaned against my lips.

“Mmm, you’re a pretty wild one, huh?” I murmured, and she responded by successfully getting my shirt open and dragging her nails down my chest.

The pain was exquisite. I growled, and she smiled against my mouth; a smile that was equal parts seduction and challenge.

“Oh, we're playing dirty? Perfect.”