12

Max waited until Lizette’s footsteps faded before he sagged against his desk. The paper he’d pretended to read slipped from his hand and floated to the polished walnut. Sweat trickled down his back.

If her senses had been sharper, she would have smelled his panic…and his regret. But she’d been dulled by the human world—all the fire that made her who she was reduced to a simmer.

And it scared the hell out of him.

Dominic and Remy had given him monthly reports ever since she left the Lodge five years ago, and they were careful to document how much she ate. How often she Turned. How many times a month she ran. Lizette would have been furious if she ever discovered how thoroughly he had her watched—especially if she knew his wolves investigated every human she befriended.

But she’d been raised to believe she was human, and her brain was still wired to think like one. Werewolves were hunters. Humans had evolved out of that mindset millennia ago. As a species, they were unwary…trusting.

It terrified him to think of her alone and unprotected in the world.

Her appearance had shocked him. Like all wolves, she was tall and lean, with a body built for strength and speed. Tonight she’d been thin in his arms—almost frail. It was not a word he ever thought he’d use to describe Lizette Butler.

When he first saw her as a girl, he was surprised she’d managed to blend with the humans as long as she had. The wolf burned just beneath her skin—a dangerous time for an untrained wolf…especially one who didn’t even know what she was.

But she was fearless.

The custody hearing lasted just twenty minutes. Lizette’s foster mother hugged her, handed her a small suitcase, and walked out the revolving door without a backward glance.

Lizette had turned to Max, her fingers white on the suitcase handle, her dark blue eyes like a bruise. “Um…I’m Lizette.”

“Oh, enfant,” he’d wanted to say, “I know more about you than you do.” But then he grasped her hand, and a bolt of electricity shot through him. She didn’t seem to notice—she just gazed at him with those sad blue eyes, her sable brown hair tossed by the breeze on a busy LA street. The magic of their kind had swirled around her like a cloak.

And an ancient power burned beneath her skin.

He’d known he was Alpha since he was five years old. Even before he made his first Turn, his wolf had whispered commands and advice. It wasn’t a kind or gentle being. It didn’t care about feelings or appearances or social norms. Its sole concern was protecting the pack.

The day he met Lizette, his wolf issued a single directive: Take this one. The imperative was so strong he literally swayed on his feet.

He had glanced up and down the street to make sure no one had stopped to stare at them—at the dumbstruck man and the solemn, arresting woman-child taking his measure.

As it turned out, he had not known everything there was to know about Lizette Angelique Butler. He especially hadn’t known she was destined to turn his life upside down.

And to drive him mad.

His gaze drifted to his right hand now, to the dainty bite mark on the fleshy part of his thumb. It tingled and burned.

He pushed away from his desk and crossed to the windows overlooking the gorge and the forest beyond it. He’d spent his entire life in those trees, and he knew them better than anyone. So the night two of his best Hunters reported Lizette missing five years ago, it made sense for him to track her. Most nineteen-year-old wolves—female or male—were capable of taking on whatever they might find in a dark forest, but Lizette’s childhood had consisted of Saturday morning cartoons, not hand-to-hand combat drills. Her selfish, irresponsible parents had seen to that.

He caught her scent two miles from the Lodge. But then he scented another wolf—a male.

Max had heard stories of bloodlust. A few times as Alpha he’d even seen wolves unable to pull back from a kill. But he’d never experienced it himself—until the night he saw Lizette smile up at another male, sultry promise in her gaze.

In that moment, a red sheen descended over Max’s vision, and a high-pitched wail filled his ears.

“I told you, I’m sure,” she said to the male. Then she stretched her sleek body beneath him in offering.

An offer to take what belonged to Max.

Fury had splashed his guts like acid. His claws dug into the earth as he prowled into the clearing. Behind him, his Hunters waited, ready to carry out whatever command he issued.

The male was foolish enough to approach him, but Max’s wolf hadn’t cared about the male—a boy, really. A gnat to be swatted away.

No, the only thing his wolf cared about was making sure she was tied to them forever. Take this one, it said. He removed the boy, then he Turned so he could stop her from escaping. The moment he touched her, blood pounded in his cock.

Max braced his hand against the window. The panes were blown by hand in the last century, and the glass was so old it was thicker at the bottom. The forest outside appeared wavy, almost ethereal.

Like her.

In the clearing, she’d stared up at him, a mixture of fear and desire in her eyes. He’d smelled her arousal—a thick, heady honey—before she noticed it. Then he lowered his gaze to her firm, high breasts, and she bloomed even more sweetly for him.

Ah, she noticed it then.

It was as though a spell had descended on that clearing. Take this one. In his mind, his wolf paced, snarling the command to mate—to bind her to him in a ritual so old it predated writing and language.

Werewolves called it the lux catena, the chain of light. “Chain” was an apt description, because the bond was unbreakable. Not even death could sever it. Forming it properly required a claiming—in the most primitive way a male could claim a female—a blood exchange, and a vow. The elements didn’t have to go in any particular order, as long as they followed one another in quick succession.

At the window, Max lowered his head. The lux catena was revered among werewolves. A gift, they called it. A miracle.

The only miracle that night was that he hadn’t violated Lizette’s body. Even so, he’d violated her trust. He’d brought her to the Lodge to give her a home—to reunite her with her own kind. And then he bit her without her consent. Any other wolf would have sensed the stirrings of the lux catena as soon as he gripped her arms in that clearing.

But Lizette hadn’t grown up hearing stories of the ritual. He had taken advantage of her inexperience and her instincts. Terrified, she snapped at him with blunt human teeth, drawing his blood, and creating a connection between them.

And it wasn’t even the worst thing he’d done to her.

An image of her gazing up at him moments ago, her big blue eyes wells of old pain, rose in his mind. “You hurt me, Maxime. You took what I didn’t offer. You stole what wasn’t freely given.”

“Fuck.” Max slammed his fist against the window. The Anglo-Saxon word bounced off the glass. There was no satisfying equivalent in his mother tongue. A fuckup was a fuckup, and he was knee-deep in them when it came to Lizette.

The morning after he claimed her, she stood before his desk, a bundle of confusion and what might have been shy hope. His shame was such that he’d been unable to look at her. Like a coward, he stood at the windows and stared down at the gorge.

“I’m sending you away,” he told her.

Her heart sped up, the beats so fast he’d worried she might faint. Too late, he realized how cruel he’d been to phrase it that way. She’d spent most of her life as an orphan, with no permanent home of her own.

“I don’t understand.” Her voice trembled.

“You’ve asked about college. I’ve decided it’s a good idea.”

The scent of her confusion—like acrid smoke—nearly buckled his knees. “Why…” She cleared her throat, as if the words she intended to say were stuck there. “Where will I live?”

“We’ll get you set up in an apartment. And I’ll open a bank account for you in Albany.”

“Have I… Have I done something wrong?”

He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to face his reflection in the window. “No, you haven’t.”

She hesitated. “But last night—”

“Was a mistake.” He turned his head and caught a glimpse of her face as it fell. “A mistake that will never happen again.”

She hugged her arms around her middle, and a fist squeezed his heart.