003

BLADE

The door to my office opened, and a scent slammed into me so hard I forgot what I'd been saying.

Sweet. Warm. Wrong in a way I couldn't name.

My wolf lunged to the front of my mind. Mate. Mate. Mate.

I turned and my eyes locked with the mutt my men had dragged in. It stood between two of them, head low, chest heaving.

No. What kind of cruel joke was this?

"What filth did you drag into my office?" My voice came out cold and dangerous.

"A rogue. We found him hunting near the border, Alpha."

Red crept into the edges of my sight. If there was one thing I hated, it was rogues who thought they could walk onto my land like they owned it.

"Take it to the cell." I didn't look at the wolf again. I couldn't. "I'll deal with him later."

They pulled it out but the scent stayed.

The meeting went on after that. Men talked. I nodded in the right places and heard nothing. My wolf paced the inside of my skull, and every time I tried to shut him up, he only got louder.

It was a mutt. A rogue and a male, for Goodness sake.

I would have preferred no mate at all. I was straight as hell, and I wasn't about to let the Moon Goddess make a joke out of me.

When the room finally emptied, I stood there with my jaw clenched so tight it ached.

Then I dropped into the chair behind my desk and pressed two fingers against my eyes.

Pack duties had been wearing me thin lately. Every day, more strangers showed up at the gates asking for help. A man whose home had burned. A wounded warrior with no pack. Two brothers who swore they hadn't eaten in days. They kept coming, and every one of them wanted something from me.

I met each of them myself. I looked them in the eye, listened to their stories, and searched for the lie. Because I trusted no one. Not the new faces and not the old ones either.

Anyone could be an enemy. Anyone could have been sent by my brother.

Hunter, even thinking his name made my jaw tighten. Every wolf alive knew how dangerous he was and I knew it better than any of them. He didn't need an army to bring me down. One quiet wolf, one open gate and it would be over.

So I had to be careful. Careful with who I let in, careful with who I turned my back on. One mistake would cost me everything I held and I had already lost too much.

My wolf didn't help. He was still restless, still muttering about that scent.

I looked at the door my men had dragged the rogue through. A strange wolf at my border, in the same week strangers kept turning up at my gates.

My fingers curled against the desk. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just a starving mutt who had wandered too far.

But I hadn't stayed alive this long by hoping.

It had been a long day. So I took the stairs down to the cells instead of going to bed to see who that rogue was and why he had trespassed.

The guard at the door stepped aside the second he saw my face.

The rogue was still in wolf form. It sat curled in the far corner, back pressed to the wall watching me.

My temper spiked. "Shift."

The wolf whined, low and small, It dipped its head. Then it did nothing. He didn't shift nor did he move.

No one defied me. Absolutely no one. Not my betas, not my warriors and not once in all the years I'd held this pack.

"You want to make this hard rogue?" I said quietly. "Fine. I'll make it hard."

I opened the cell, stepped in and shut it behind me. The clang rang off the walls.

"Shift."

The wolf growled.

At me.

A smirk pulled at my mouth before I could stop it. I'd spent the whole day looking for something to put my anger on and here it was, snarling in the corner like it had a death wish.

I crossed the cell in two strides and caught it by the scruff. It twisted and snapped, but I tightened my grip around its neck and hauled it up until its paws scraped the floor.

"I told you to shift."

Nothing. Just eyes, wide and wet and furious, staring right through me.

My free hand curled into a fist. "Last chance. Shift, or I swear I'll rip your head off your neck."

Those eyes widened further. It thrashed, jerked out of my hold, and hit the floor hard. I let it. It lay there shuddering and for one long second, nothing moved.

Then I heard the bones.

It was slow. Painful. A wet, cracking sound that filled the cell, and a thin, broken noise that didn't belong to any rogue I'd ever dragged down here.

Something was wrong.

The legs stretching out across the floor were long. Slender and smooth. Hair spilled across the floor, and it was red, so red it looked like it had been dipped in fire.

My eyes widened. They moved before I could stop them, over the curve of a hip, up the line of her waist, and landed on her chest.

A full round breast.

Everything inside me went still.

Then I was on my knees beside her, and the words fell out of me in a growl. "You're a female."

She didn't answer. She curled in on herself, shaking.

"You're..." My voice cracked. I hadn't stammered since I was a boy. "You're a female?"