Chapter Four

**Chapter 4: Dangerous Games**

MERIS

I blinked. And then blinked again, certain the exhaustion and the grief were conspiring against me.

But the face on the screen didn't change.

The same dark hair. The same sharp jaw. Those eyes that looked like they were watching you even through a television screen, steady and unbothered and devastatingly direct.

My breath left me slowly.

"Rafael Belmont, Alpha of the North Crescent Pack, has stepped back into the public eye after five years of complete silence. Upon his return six months ago, he founded the Belmont Companies, growing its stock by three hundred and sixty percent. He is set to take the position of Alpha Chairman this month and will launch a new company this week."

The anchor's voice faded into background noise.

I hadn't thought about Rafael Belmont in years. I'd tried very hard not to. And yet here he was, filling the screen like he'd never left, like five years was nothing, like I hadn't spent the better part of my teenage years completely undone by the thought of him.

He'd changed. And he hadn't.

Still dangerous. Still impossibly handsome. Still the kind of man who makes the air in a room shift just by existing in it.

But it was his eyes that stopped me. Even from the screen. Those same burning eyes.

* * *

Seven years ago. I was seventeen.

My father had taken me to the North Crescent Pack to pay respects to the Alpha Chairman. His son had just lost his mate. I remember thinking, on the drive over, that I would feel sorry for him.

Then I saw him.

Rafael Belmont at twenty-seven was the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing I'd ever stood in front of. He wore his grief like armor, his face blank, his posture controlled, nothing escaping through the cracks. But the moment his eyes met mine across the room, something happened that I still couldn't name.

The world went very quiet.

Just for a second.

I'd damned myself for it. He'd just lost his mate, and I was standing there with my heart doing something completely inappropriate in my chest. But I couldn't stop it. Every night for months afterward, I dreamed about him. Dreams that started out innocent and didn't stay that way. I'd wake up with my skin wet and the sheets twisted and his face still burning behind my eyes.

I wanted him to consume me. I was seventeen, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with that.

I started visiting the North Crescent Pack on any excuse I could find. His stepbrother Connor noticed me first, kept drawing me back, kept finding me, and I let him because it meant I could keep finding Rafael.

Then one day, after my nineteenth birthday, I arrived and was told he was gone. Disappeared. No explanation.

Just gone.

I'd told myself it was a relief. I'd told myself that for three years, right up until Connor became my mate.

* * *

I stared at the screen for a long moment.

"He's not the same Rafael," I whispered. "You don't feel that way anymore."

The more I said it, the less true it felt.

My wolf stirred, and she didn't bother being subtle about it.

I turned back to the television. He was launching a new company this week. That meant new staff. Interviews. An open door.

Something lit up in my chest, small and fragile but real.

I had a distinction. I had two years of industry experience, even if it was built on a foundation that had just collapsed. I could walk into that building and ask for a job and a year's salary upfront, and I could save my mother, and I could stop drowning.

You are playing a dangerous game.

My conscience. I recognized it.

I also recognized that Connor despised Rafael. They were stepbrothers, and the hatred between them ran deep in both directions. If Connor found out I was working for Rafael, living in his orbit, carrying his name on my badge, he would go out of his mind.

The thought settled in my chest and stayed there, warm and sharp and very satisfying.

You are playing a dangerous game, Meris.

That was my wolf this time. Different tone. Older, more careful.

I looked at my mother's hands resting pale against the hospital sheet.

I chose to ignore them both.

* * *

The next morning, I stood in front of the mirror in the apartment I shared with Mum and tried to recognize myself.

Red blazer, red flare pants, black stilettos. Minimal makeup. A clean swipe of lipstick. My hair pinned back with enough precision to look like I'd made a decision.

I looked like someone who had their life together.

I looked absolutely nothing like I felt.

The Uber ride took thirty minutes. When I stepped out in front of the Belmont building, I tipped my head back and took it in.

It was enormous. Glass walls that looked like they could withstand a storm, the kind of structure that mirrors everything around it and still manages to dominate it. It looked like its owner, built to last, impossible to shake, not particularly interested in how you felt about that.

I checked my watch. Six-thirty. Early enough.

I walked in.

The receptionist had her coffee in one hand and her eyes on her computer. She didn't look up.

"How may I help you, ma'am?"

"My name is Meris Volkov. I'm here to see Rafael Belmont."

She looked up then. Really looked, the kind of slow, assessing look that takes in everything from your shoes to your composure. I gave her nothing to work with. My face stayed even.

"You have no appointment."

"Maybe check the system."

I knew it was a waste of time. My name wasn't in any system. But I wasn't going to let her send me back to the street without at least making her look.

She typed. Her eyes moved to me once, then back to the screen. Then she reached into the drawer and slid a card across the desk toward me.

"Floor thirty-five. Last floor. The card is for the elevator."

I stared at the card.

She'd said my name was in the system. My name was in his system. I hadn't called ahead. I hadn't spoken to anyone. I hadn't even decided I was coming here until last night in a hospital room with my mother's hand cold under mine.

I picked up the card and walked to the elevator.

Inside, pressed against the cool metal wall, I watched the floors climb and tried to slow my heart down.

Had he been expecting me?

How?

My wolf stirred again. Not with wariness this time. With something I didn't want to examine too closely.

The elevator chimed and opened onto marble floors and floor-to-ceiling glass and chandeliers that caught the morning light. The whole floor smelled of cedarwood and something warmer underneath. Expensive. Deliberate.

"Miss Volkov?"

A secretary rose to greet me, her smile warm, her composure perfect.

"He's expecting you."

Of course he was.

She led me to a large door, opened it, and stepped aside.

I walked in.

Rafael Belmont stood at the floor-to-ceiling window with one hand tucked in his pocket, his back half turned to me, eyes on the city below. There was nothing between me and his face, and the morning light hit him like it had been arranged specifically to make things difficult for me.

The television had done him absolutely no justice.

Broad shoulders. Dark hair. The kind of build that makes a suit look like a weapon. And when he turned, slowly, unhurriedly, those eyes found mine, and every quiet warning I'd been giving myself since last night dissolved clean away.

Green. Burning. Familiar.

Unmistakably, undeniably familiar.

"I've been waiting for you, Miss Volkov," he said.

His voice was the same. Low and certain, the kind that doesn't need volume to fill a room.

I knew that voice.

I'd heard it last night against my neck in a dark car park, telling me that what mattered wasn't who he was.