9

The sound ripped through her like a thunderclap, and her knees almost gave out. She clenched her fists and pressed her fingernails into her palms—a trick she learned from Dom. The pain steadied her. She pushed the door open…

…and locked gazes with the Alpha. Her Alpha. Maxime Alexandre Simard.

He sat behind his desk, his posture relaxed. A lord in command of his domain.

And in the werewolf world, that’s exactly what he was.

The first time she saw him was in the back of a Los Angeles County courtroom. Her caseworker had called her foster parents the day before, breathless, saying a relative had come forward—a distant cousin of Lizette’s mother. He was flying in from New York and would be there the next day to file the paperwork.

In court he wore a charcoal gray suit and a dark blue tie. His jacket sleeves rode up when he shook her foster father’s hand, exposing his shirt cuffs and the strange metal jewelry he wore there instead of buttons. When she slid past him to climb into the limo, she accidentally brushed his sleeve, and the fabric felt like a cloud against her skin. He’d smelled of pine and soap and something…darker...a rich spice she couldn’t identify.

Lizette knew right away that he wasn’t human. There was something other about him. At fifteen, she’d been old enough to see through a disguise, even a convincing one. As soon as the door closed, she’d blurted, “Are you human?”

“Not entirely.”

Her heart had pounded so hard her chest had hurt. “Will you hurt me?”

“Never. I promise you.”

“Are you…” She thought back to the stash of vampire novels she kept hidden under her bed at her foster parents’ house. “Are you immortal?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Disappointment washed over her...followed by renewed curiosity. “How old are you, then?”

“Twenty-seven.” She must have looked surprised, because he smiled. “You expected me to be older?”

“If you’re not human, then what are you?” He spoke perfect English, but he had an accent…something refined and Old World. It curled around her brain like a lazy cat. She caught herself leaning toward him, hoping he’d speak again.

“Ah.” He looked thoughtful for a minute. “What do you think I am, petite?”

“I…don’t know.”

He tapped on the glass dividing the back seat from the front, and the car rumbled to life and slid into traffic. When he turned back to her, his light blue eyes were different. Sharper. “What if I told you that you and I are the same…”

Sitting behind his desk now, Max looked exactly as he had in the courtroom nine years ago. Knowing what she did today, Lizette knew he’d look more or less the same for the rest of his long life.

His face was aristocratic and refined—his patrician nose set between straight black eyebrows. He wore his thick black hair brushed back from a broad, unlined forehead, and his jaw was shadowed by what looked like several days’ growth of beard. But his light blue eyes were his most arresting feature. Pale as a spring sky, they focused on her as if she was the only creature on earth.

He was the only wolf she knew whose eyes changed very little between forms. To notice any difference, a person had to be standing toe-to-toe with him.

Or kissing him.

Her breath hitched. She realized she was staring and dropped her gaze to the thick patterned carpet. Shit. First she challenged Dom. Now she just challenged Max. With Dom, she’d breached protocol because she was angry. This time she hadn’t even realized she was doing it.

“Sit,” Max said, his voice curt. He remained seated as she approached the leather chairs in front of his desk. That didn’t surprise her. Alphas stood for no one—especially this Alpha.

She perched on the edge of one of the chairs, her gaze on the space near his right shoulder. He sat with his elbows on the desk, studying her. He’d rolled back the long sleeves of his starched white button-down, revealing muscled forearms sprinkled with black hairs. The casual style should have made him look less intimidating, but it did the opposite.

She felt his gaze wander across her body, its heat like a spotlight against her skin. All thoughts of controlling her heart rate fled—the meditation she practiced during the drive scattering like a flock of birds.

As if drawn by a magnet, she locked gazes with him again. The back of her neck tingled as they stared at each other. If he felt anything in the soft skin of his right thumb, he gave no indication.

After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, he let his wolf creep into his eyes. “You think to challenge me?” he asked softly, sounding merely curious.

She lowered her gaze to his collarbone. “No.”

His chair creaked as he leaned back. “You’ve been too long in the human world. You forget our ways.”

“So I’ve heard,” she muttered. The thing was, it was true when Dom said it. This time, though, she hadn’t forgotten. Normally the wolf’s instinct kicked in and compelled her to drop her gaze whenever a more dominant wolf was around. Max was the most dominant wolf in any room, which meant her instinct should have been firing on all cylinders. But it had deserted her just now.

For a brief moment she’d forgotten to avoid staring directly into his eyes. She was surprised she was able to maintain eye contact as long as she had. Apparently the usual rules didn’t apply to them.

“Well,” he continued, “we shall remedy that now that you’re here.”

She cleared her throat. “Since you brought it up, I’d actually like to know why I’m here.”

He rose and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the gorge a hundred feet below. The windows took up the entire wall—a feature that repeated across most of the rear of the Lodge, which had been built to take advantage of the area’s natural beauty. The wall behind his desk displayed a large map of the United States and Canada. Instead of showing the usual boundary lines, however, it was sectioned into sixty territories—each marked with a capital no human would have recognized. They sat in the New York Territory which, predictably, included all of New York. Unlike the human version, Max’s domain extended all the way north to Quebec.

She tore her gaze away from the map. She didn’t need another reminder of his power. It was literally in the room with her, almost like an aura shining around him. She’d never felt it so strongly before. All high-ranking wolves oozed power, but most wielded incredible control over it. If they chose, they could also mute their power so it wasn’t so obnoxious.