LOGINThe heavy, driving bass of the club music continued to rattle my ribcage.The flashing neon lights still painted the writhing bodies on the dance floor in blinding shades of blue and magenta. The air was still thick with the suffocating heat of a hundred dancing supernatural creatures.But my world had just come to a grinding, violent halt.Winter pine.And warm vanilla.It sliced through the stench of cheap alcohol and sour sweat like a freshly sharpened blade.It was a physical force, wrapping around my throat, flooding my senses, and dragging my inner wolf forward until she was practically clawing at the front of my mind.He is here, Violet purred.Her voice was a dark, vibrating hum of pure, instinctual satisfaction.I froze in the center of the crowded dance floor.My arms dropped slowly to my sides. The vibrant, intoxicating feeling of independence and rebellion I had felt just seconds ago vanished, replaced by a heavy, magnetic pull that I couldn't fight."Aurora?" Missy yelled
SCARLETT'S POVThe water filling the massive, imported marble soaking tub was entirely, gloriously scalding hot.It was exactly what I needed.It was the only physical sensation currently keeping my tense, overworked muscles from completely, violently locking up in a state of pure, absolute panic.The cavernous master bathroom of the Four Seasons penthouse was currently filled with incredibly thick, fragrant white steam.The air smelled heavily, intoxicatingly of crushed lavender and ridiculously expensive, imported French bath salts.I reached out with a trembling hand with perfectly manicured nails.I took a slow, deliberate sip of the vintage red wine from the heavy crystal glass resting precariously on the wide edge of the marble tub.It tasted absolutely bitter.It tasted exactly like ash and failure completely coating my tongue.The afternoon severance meeting had been an absolute, unmitigated, complete catastrophic disaster.Alpha Alexander had sat at the absolute head of the l
The silence that instantly followed Maverick's declaration was absolute. It was not the peaceful, quiet calm of a productive Friday morning in a corporate office building. It was the heavy, suffocating, entirely terrifying silence of a vacuum right before a massive, catastrophic explosion. The air pressure inside my small glass office dropped so rapidly, so violently, that my ears actually popped. Maverick completely filled the doorway. He didn't just stand there. His physical presence entirely consumed the limited space. His broad, incredibly muscular shoulders completely blocked the artificial, fluorescent lighting bleeding in from the hallway, casting long, dark, imposing shadows entirely across the carpeted floor. He was breathing heavily. His chest was rising and falling in sharp, jagged, entirely predatory movements that legitimately threatened to completely rip the expensive, custom-tailored seams of his charcoal suit jacket. But it was his eyes that truly, entirely par
CHAPTER 12: Friday morning arrived with all the grace, subtlety, and sheer destructive force of a massive, uncoordinated train wreck. The corporate headquarters of Xanders Financial was an absolute madhouse. We had a hard, unmovable, entirely unforgiving deadline for the final stages of the Smithson corporate merger, and I was quite literally buried underneath a towering mountain of physical paperwork and glowing digital spreadsheets. My desk looked less like the organized workspace of a junior manager... ...and more like a bomb had gone off inside a high-end stationary store. I had been sitting in this exact, stiff ergonomic chair since six o'clock in the morning. I was desperately, frantically trying to catch up on the hours of critical data entry I had lost over the past three days. Three days that had been entirely derailed due to the massive, six-foot-four, green-eyed distraction that kept forcefully invading my office, my personal space, and my every waking thought. Eve
The penthouse suite of the Four Seasons hotel was originally designed to be a sanctuary. It was supposed to be a glittering, glass-walled testament... ...to the absolute power... ...and the immense, staggering wealth that I was marrying into. Instead... It had become my own personal, incredibly expensive prison. I paced the entire length of the sprawling, open-concept living room. My sharp, red-bottomed stiletto heels clicked rhythmically against the imported, dark Brazilian hardwood floors. Click. Click. Click. The sound echoed sharply through the massive, empty rooms. It was a hollow sound. A lonely sound. Three days. We had been in the city of Dallas for three agonizing, mind-numbing, entirely infuriating days. And in that time, I had seen my supposed fiancé for a grand total of perhaps four hours. "Financial emergencies," Maverick had claimed that very morning. He hadn't even bothered to look me in the eye as he stood in front of the vanity mirror, perfectly knotti
By the time Wednesday morning rolled around, the air inside the Xanders Financial headquarters was absolutely thick with it.Gossip.It hummed through the sleek, modern hallways. It buzzed in the employee breakrooms. It practically vibrated through the frosted glass of my office walls. Everyone... every single person... in the building had noticed.They had noticed that the Alpha’s notoriously elusive son, the playboy who was supposed to be on a romantic vacation with his gorgeous Parisian fiancée, was instead spending ninety percent of his waking hours hovering around the fifteenth floor.Hovering around me.I sat at my desk, my fingers resting motionless over my keyboard. I stared blindly at the complex spreadsheet illuminating my monitor, the numbers blurring together into a meaningless sea of black and white.Inside my mind, Violet was pacing relentlessly.He is close, she hummed, her tail brushing against the edges of my consciousness. I can feel him. He is th







