Chapter 31
My dreams were restless. Drugged sleep held me under like an anchor. Roses and redwood surrounded me, sending me into a panic each time I surfaced, but like a cruel trick, my sleep was clear of nightmares at last; I didn’t dream of Ace at all. Instead, I was drawn back to a much more distant memory.
I was reading on a bench in the garden of my father’s manor when an Alpha took a seat at my side.
I’d looked up, inhaling the entrancing scent of snow santal, and found myself tumbling head first into ice-blue eyes. He had fewer tattoos back then, but the spindle-thin crown along the edge of his jaw was an arrogant nod to his heritage.
“You’re…?” I blinked.
Zed Maverick.
A son of the head of the Brotherhood—a gang we were on the edge of an all-out war with.
And he was my scent match.
Dread seized me as I stared at him, walls closing in. My pulse was erratic, the obscene attraction I had to this Alpha making me want to run.
I was finally out of time.
My whole life had been a series of decisions others had made for me. Reared to be a perfect offering by a family that considered me nothing more than a tool.
But this…?
I’d always been afraid of a scent match. I’d always known that however powerless I felt, it would be nothing in the face of fated mates. My independence was further stripped from me until I was left with no choices at all.
My family was careful who I was exposed to, hoping I’d match an ally that was appropriate.
I’d just turned eighteen, and I’d even held out the sad hope that my father would choose a pack for me before I matched one, so that my future wasn’t pre-ordained two fold. I don’t know why it was worse, but a political scent match gave validity to the control he already had.
Thismatch, though, it was… unexpected.
I frowned.
Why was he here?
He must have known.
“Does your father—?” I began, but he cut me off.
“We’ve said nothing.”
“Then how did you know?”
He draped an elbow on the back of the bench, leaning back and fixing me with a curious gaze. “Three nights ago, my pack mate was sent to kill you.”
There was one long beat, and then I reacted on instinct, blade from my thigh in my fist. I caught his wrist with my other hand as he flinched, twisting it and keeping my way open. I ended up on top of him, my knife pressed to the left side of his neck, switching my grip from his hand to his hair and tugging his neck back.
“Why are you here?”
A rather unexpected smile crept onto his mouth, so beautiful it set my heart fluttering. “That’s up to you.”
I didn’t move.
There were two options with an enemy scent match.
Alliance or murder.
“If I was here to kill you, we wouldn’t be speaking,” he offered, like that made things better.
My eyes darted around the nearby hedges where my father’s guards usually lurked.
I saw no one.
“They won’t wake for a while,” Zed added.
I tensed as I felt the brush of his hands at my waist. My eyes darted between his, hormones surging.
“A prince for a princess?” Zed asked. “Maybe, one day, a king for a queen.”
That, I’d expected. He was suggesting flipping the script. Alliance from war. Scent-matched betrothals changed things.
“But only if she wants it.”
Those words drew me up. “If I… what?”
Was he messing with me?
“Unstack the odds,” he said. “I don’t want this to be about politics.”
I almost laughed. “Isn’t it?”
“This is about a scent match,” he said coolly. “The moment they find out, they’ll strip every choice from us—from you.”
I almost dropped the knife as he spoke words he could have pulled from my own heart.
“What are you saying?”
“I want you to choose us because you want us. My pack. My family.”
His family?
The way he said that was like nothing I’d ever heard before—not from Alphas like him.
“You want…?” I frowned, the words so foreign to me it was hard to process them. “What?”
“Let us court you before anyone learns. If you don’t want us, we’ll never tell.”
The knife slipped further as I tried to find a lie in his pretty blue eyes, but even his scent, a beautiful winter forest, was serene, as if saying these words was a weight off his chest.
“Why would you do that?”
The Brotherhood were the underdogs in the brewing discord, and my family was known for honouring fate. For him, this was an opportunity like no other.
“I love my pack, but we were chosen for each other—they were chosen for me. I don’t want that happening again.” He tilted his head. “You’re the last choice we get to make. I want you to fall for us first.”
I blinked, still struggling to process what his words meant. “A scent match means it’s already been decided,” I said. And besides, who would be mad enough to reject a scent match?
“I don’t see it that way.” Zed grinned. “If you could walk away, doesn’t that make the choice all the more… powerful?”
And Zed had kept his word.
For four months, the Maverick pack met me in secret. And the freedom they’d offered me was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
It had been the sweetest time of my life. Where I learned to slip from my father’s careful watch and tumble into their arms. Knight had taken me on dates to the movies like we were just normal people, with popcorn and jump scares. I’d found a gift in the garden, a set of earrings, each a delicate crown with a diamond stud. Once, I’d got away for the day, and we’d driven to the Grand Canyon and stayed so long my father almost sent out a search. As things became more dangerous, they became all the more exciting. Kyan had visited me, knocking on my balcony with flowers like something from a movie, so I’d learned how to sneak into their home and surprise them in their rooms.
I’d fallen harder for them than I ever thought possible.
I’d fallen for them in a little bubble of paradise, a courting of my dreams, without my parents’ oversight, without the world knowing.