Chapter Four: When Monsters Collide

Malakai

A WEEK AGO

“I just want to have a little chat, Conan.” I drawl, assessing him.

The atmosphere in the room is tense, and I can tell that beneath all those cocktail dresses and million dollar suits, lingers fear that made them want to shrink into their skins.

Wolves have always been threatened by my kind; of what we are capable of and how dangerously unpredictably we can be.

Conan is not an exception.

He wears an expression of steel, doesn’t cower beneath my gaze, but when you have been dealing with all sort of monsters, you learn that even monsters have their tell.

My lips twitch in a smirk. “Don’t worry. You can take some of your little guards with you.” I offer him a false safety net.

If I wanted to rip his head off his neck, not even the guards in this room can stop me.

He knows that.

I know that.

“I don’t need anyone accompanying me. I can take you.”

I grin, my eyes scanning the room. He didn’t have to beckon me. When he turns around, I go after him into somewhere more secluded.

“Nice spot,” I lean against the wall of the hallway, staring at him with utter amusement.

“I’m not scared of you.” His efforts to reassert his lack of fear for me is doing exactly the opposite of what he intends. “What do you want from me, Malakai?”

“Maybe I just stopped by to say hi at your party.” I shrug, eliciting a scoff from him. “Lycans do not get invited to your little wolf parties. Not fair.”

“No one has seen your kind in decades,” he says with a grimace, wearing unmistakable disgust on his face.

But I’ll be damned if I let that deter me.

“Maybe we were just waiting for the right time to crawl out of our hideouts.”

“Why don’t you crawl back into whatever hole you came from?”

“What if I have an offer?”

He turns around, walking away. “I’m not interested in your offer, Malakai. Leave my party.”

“I want a truce.”

He halts in his tracks. His icy blue gaze rests on me, a little surprised. “A truce?”

I smirk. “I think it’s high time we put aside our petty grievances and call a truce. Don’t you think?”

“I’d rather die than call a truce with an abomination like you.”

Lycans are considered perversions of nature, an upsetting balance of the natural order. We are stronger. We are faster. We are better. We are the apex predators of the apex predators.

He’s so predictable. It amuses me.

When I was coming here, I didn’t think he’d agree easily. Alpha Conan Farrow isn’t malleable or atleast, that’s what he wants everyone to think.

“You haven’t even heard my offer.”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh, come on, Conan.” I snort. “Why don’t we skip the part where you pretend like you don’t give a shit about what I’m offering, when all you have thought about is what I have to offer the second I set foot in your party?”

Conan Farrow will make a deal with death himself as long as it serves him. Well, he should thank the goddess because the devil has delivered himself right on his doorstep.

He pinches his nose in frustration. “What is it?”

“You haven’t seen my kind in years because my Pack and I are not from around here. We migrated from Norway about a few years back. You know—there’s better food, better women, better music—“

“Get to the point.”

I grin. “Gladly,”

“We just want peace with the wolves. All this tension, all this hate, let it end.”

His lips curl in a sadistic smirk as he approaches me. “What if I say no? I could kill you right here.”

“Don’t be stupid, old chap.”

His gaze hardens. “I could say no.”

“But you won’t.” I flash him a twisted smile. “You want to be supreme Alpha. You can exactly do that with your debt profile and bad investments now, can you?”

“How dare you?”

“Relax,” I brush off non-existent dirt on his shoulders. “You want power. I have the means to give it to you. All I ask is acceptance, at most, a truce to foster a relationship between my kind and yours. I just need to be able to get my shit done without your kind digging into it.”

“I don’t trust you,” he says coldly.

“I don’t need you to.”

It’s swift, but I can catch the interest that flares in his gaze.

“A little birdie once told me about your daughter’s engagement to Zane Van Doren.”

“What about it?”

“What if she marries me instead?”