Chapter 2- Meeting Sage

With Beta Sage's powdered-blue eyes twinkling with delight, he bent his head and gently caressed Sophie's chin. "Oh, sweetheart, you are such an innocent, pure pawn."

"What?"

What on earth did he mean by that?

Sophie ignored his words as she drew her head away, electricity whizzing along her nerve ends. The joy she'd felt upon realizing she wasn't being abducted but rather saved was quickly replaced by a rush of hatred when she met mockery in the eyes of her future brother-in-law.

After all, it was open news among the werewolf kingdom that this devil's elder brother, Alpha Landon, was her mate and the future Master of all alphas or the King in the Kingdom of Vienna.

Sophie sighed as she looked at the man. His suit was well-cut and a deep midnight color, with the jacket stretching across broad shoulders and unbuttoned to show the white T-shirt he sported rather than a shirt and tie.

The T-shirt was just long enough to cover his large chest's powerful, well-defined outlines. But it wasn't his clothing that made her skin tingle—he had an explosive spark about him behind the stoic exterior. Sage may have given bulletproof glass a run for its money in terms of hardness.

Obviously, she was aware of the physical differences between the brothers. It's hardly unexpected; siblings are frequently like that. After all, she and Cherryl had nothing in common.

However, the Robinson siblings were not simply different; they were directly opposed in every way. It extended beyond their skin color, build, or even their grins, especially their smiles! One made you feel protected; the other, not so much. She shuddered slightly. When it came to Beta Sage Robinson, she couldn't see many people using the word "safe."

"That's right, Doctor Sophie, I'm the rescue party," he said, raising his hand and speaking into the phone in his palm. Sophie saw his fingers as long and capable, with square tips. They had very powerful hands.

What on earth was she thinking? Alpha Landon possessed the same strong hands, capable of doing something pleasurable or wicked. Right?

"Yes, brother, I have her. She's...um, safe." His powdered blue eyes appeared to ponder her for a time, the bone-stripping intensity driving her to squirm in her seat before the man answered the inquiry she couldn't hear. "Almost in one piece. She appears to have been dragged backwards through a hedge, but she retains the capacity to gaze down her well-bred little nose. So, sure, all right—if you like that sort of thing."

His tone implied that he didn't like her, but after seeing the types of women Sage felt were attractive, Sophie was relieved.

He had a type.

Of course, someone with a miniskirt and bouncy tits and a fish brain.

She deduced that it had nothing to do with intelligence.

It was difficult to believe that the unending parade of tall, leggy werewolf blondes whose names had been associated with his were all stupid, but Sophie had always assumed, with an uncommon lack of sympathy, that they probably feigned to be dim! There was a sort of man who couldn't stand a woman who could intellectually question them, and in her perspective, the black sheep of the Robinson household fit the bill!

Unlike her mate, Landon. He was responsible, smart, and, well, smart. A tad boring and demanding, but as an alpha, that was expected of him. Sophie couldn't blame him, though, because he was in charge of Robinson's pack. Not to mention the next treaty renewal, which will take place before Christmas.

However, Landon was constantly on edge, always under the all-seeing eyes of his father, the Master of Alphas.

But Sage? He was the kind of royal pain in the arse that made adjacent packs smugly say, "I told you so... or they should do," she reflected grimly.

It was only that Sage made the unthinkable appealing, and no matter what his transgressions, everyone seemed to tolerate him; and not only that, they adored him despite the reality that he'd been defying authority his whole adult life. The black sheep in the flock of impossibly boring werewolf politicians.

Those foolish, ambitious politicians, like humans, would lick the Master's feet in an attempt to get some type of mercy for their wrongdoing. At the very least, the supernatural and humans were separated into regions; they never bothered the former, and they never bothered the mortals. Not only do they have a treaty among werewolf packs, but humans also have an agreement against the immortal or supernatural that has been going on for centuries.

Sophie had always been perplexed by it. However, sitting a few feet away from him in a confined environment, she began to comprehend it better. He didn't have to go on a charm offensive; all he had to do was breathe!

The sensuous shock wave created by his proximity had to be felt to be believed! She had, and Sophie no longer felt that any of the stories about him were fabricated.

It would not have been unusual if they had never met. For many years, ties between the Savannah pack and the Robinson pack had been, if not icy, at least cold.

That times had changed. The two royal werewolf families had become the closest of friends and co-conspirators, joining in a single purpose.

But Beta Sage had always been missing at every social event where both families were present. In fact, she wouldn't be surprised if Sage had been barred from such gatherings. Sophie had only ever been in the same room as Sage Robinson once, and it had been a very large room, and he had departed very early in the evening by a rear exit, along with the considerably younger men or along with the much younger wife of an elderly diplomat, before they'd had the chance to be formally introduced.

Later that same evening, she remembered the awe-inspiring and rather cold—or so it had always seemed to her—Master Alpha Alfonso Richmond Robinson coming to find his younger son. Landon, she remembered, had covered for his brother. It appeared to be the pattern of the siblings' connection, his brother breaking the rules and Landon covering up for him.

If that encounter had ever happened, she may have been prepared for the force field of raw masculinity Sage launched. It was the most effective type of primal, raw sex appeal.

It caused her skin to tingle, her heart to rush, and her limbs to become heavy, trembling, and vulnerable. She didn't like it, but she recognized that she was likely in the minority. Many, if not most, people will not be offended by his kissable, expressive lips and the harsh sculpted lines on his face. She found solace in the fact that any she-wolf, or rational person, would have recognized her symptoms as the result of shock's aftereffects of pure lycan power.

"Did anyone see us leave...?" He repeated the mystery caller's question.

He nodded his head. "A few, I'd say." Sage's eyes twinkled with malicious amusement as he replied to the person on the other end of the line. "I wasn't actually counting, but, no, she didn't give them any barring curses. But I learned a few new ones!" Sage cringed and lifted the phone away from his ear, waiting a minute, a smile playing across his lips, until finally he pressed it back into the angle of his jaw.

"Of course, I'm not serious, Landon. She was the embodiment of inbred Luna cool," Sage soothed, slipping the phone back into his jacket's breast pocket and rolling his eyes.

Sophie had no idea what was going on, but her need to find out came second to her urge to respond to his words. "I think the next time you criticize someone for being inbred, you should look at your own lineage history."

He laughed deeply and throatily, causing goosebumps to appear on the surface of her skin. "Yeah, whatever, madam. As you are aware, there was once some doubt about my genetic ancestry of being both handsome and sexy at the same time."

Sophie's eyes were wide open, and her mouth hung low. "Seriously? Humble much?" she murmured, clearly mocking. Unbelievable. She thought.

"But you find me appealing, don't you? Even though there is a massive question about my ancestry." Sage said, winking.

Her gaze dropped despite the fact that he showed no signs of the uneasiness she felt. Of course she was aware about the letter. Sage's mother's love affair made headline. After the love letters she had sent to her lover became public after the lover's death, news of the late Luna's romance made its way onto every front page.

Then, in case anybody had missed the sensational headlines, there was the memoir by the nanny, who had been the first to link the dates with the birth of Luna's second child and had shared her concerns with the press.

There had been a show of solidarity by the Robinson pack, and almost every member had also shown their support at the time. The Luna had emerged by her husband's side, her two sons with their hair brushed back and their cheeks glowing.

"But no one believes that anymore," Sophie grumbled.

He gave her a sarcastic glance. "Oh, plenty believe that, woman, and a lot more wish it were true." He shrugged his shoulders, one brow raised. "Including me."

Sophie frowned, "What?" She couldn't disguise her surprise as this sentence took her attention away from her own dilemma. "You wish you were a bastard? That's… Well, I'm sorry, I…"

She cut herself off, blushing frantically, but Sage Robinson didn't seem bothered by being called a bastard.

"Let's just say I don't wake up feeling fortunate that I have Robinson blood coursing through my veins."

"Well, Landon is proud of his ancestry," she defended.

"My brother is kinder than I am, but I'm not forgiving."

"Forgiving of, um, who?" She raised her brows.

As he gazed at her for a long time, the mocking left his eyes. His look was difficult to decipher. "While I'm enjoying this deep and significant conversation, aren't there other questions you should be asking right now?"

She shook her head, perplexed.

"Like, what happened just now?"

She was immediately apologetic. "So, what just happened?"

He gave a throaty chuckle that sounded cruel to Sophie. "Welcome to the rest of our lives, doctor."

"I'm not going to spend the rest of my life with you, or even another second," Sophie declared.

"My loss, I'm sure," he cynically remarked.

Her teeth were clenched. "But why are there cameras? What about the reporters? I don't get it."

Sage's black brows furrowed. "Really? I'd heard you were intelligent," he mocked. "Well, I suppose brilliant doesn't necessarily correlate with being fast on the uptake," he allowed as she blushed fiercely. "A leak has occurred."

Crazily, all Sophie could think about with those blue eyes mocking her was the leak in her bathroom that had occurred last winter, the one that had taken the landlord a month to fix.

Sage sighed, making a growl that sounded suspiciously like an eye roll. Sophie had reached her breaking point.

"Look, Beta Sage, I'm sure having cameras and microphones jab in your face is all part of a normal day in your life, but it's not in mine, so shall we feign just for a beat that you have an ounce of kindness? I'm poorly traumatized and, like you declared, not so quick on the uptake!"

A tense stillness followed her outburst. She never shouted!

"Mind your manners, doctor. Ever heard of volume control? I'm a bloody werewolf; your voice pierced through my ear lobe like a machine gun."

She remained silent, scared that if she opened her lips again, she might do something even more unpleasant, such as cry.

The amusing glitter in his eyes vanished as he glanced at her; however, there was no softening in his forthright tone as he explained the problem. "An insider pitched the story: a full moon wedding, a proposal, a reunion, and the entire master plan of the Robinsons."

She shook her head and gulped through the tennis ball-sized lump caught in her throat. "Who would do anything like that?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. Maybe for money?" he grinned.

She gnawed on her plump bottom lip, resentful of his ease in making her feel stupid and insignificant.