The Alpha Heir's Fated Witch

1. Brynn

brYNN

The love seat is on fire again!

There’s a flame licking up the velvet armrest of the compatibility lounge’s most expensive piece of furniture, and the couple who triggered it are too busy making out to notice.

“Okay, lovebirds.” I snap my fingers. A ribbon of cooling magic loops over the cushions and the flames hiss out in a curl of smoke. “Passionate. Very romantic. Also a fire hazard, so maybe take the eternal-soul-bond energy back to your villa?”

The witch breaks away from her shifter long enough to beam at me. “The mirror said we’re a ninety-eight percent match.”

“The mirror is a hopeless romantic. Go. Be happy. Stop torching the upholstery.”

They go, hand in hand, glowing like idiots.

I love this job. I do. Most days.

Today is not most days.

I jog through the east wing of Eclipse Resort, heels clicking on black marble, and try to remember which disaster I’m supposed to be putting out first. There were three when I left my desk. There are probably six now.

This is what being assistant matchmaker actually means. Not candlelight and destiny. Damage control.

A pair of moon-moths have escaped the dream garden and are dive-bombing the welcome fountain. A guest’s love potion has gone sentient and is trying to propose to the concierge. And somewhere on the second floor, a compatibility mirror has been screaming for forty minutes.

I take the screaming mirror first. Screaming is always a priority.

The gilded frame rattles on the wall when I reach it. Inside the glass, two faces flicker, swap, dissolve, and reform, like the mirror can’t decide who belongs with whom.

“Hey. Hey. Talk to me.” I press my palm flat to the surface.

That’s my mistake.

My magic answers before I tell it to.

Resonance Magic isn’t supposed to do that. It’s supposed to read bonds, not feed them. But lately mine’s been waking up on its own, stretching like something that’s been asleep too long. When my hand meets the glass it pours out of me in a hot rush I can’t pull back.

The mirror’s readings spike.

Compatibility: 412 percent.

Then: ERROR.ERROR.

Then numbers turn into symbols I’ve never seen. Old ones. They scroll faster and faster, and the glass goes white. I yank my hand away one breath too late.

The mirror explodes.

“Dammit!”

I throw an arm up. Glass sprays past me and freezes mid-air, every shard hanging there, caught in a net of silver light I didn’t mean to cast.

For a second the hallway is silent.

Then the shards drop, harmless, to the rug.

My heart’s going too fast. My fingertips are still buzzing.

That’s the third mirror this month. The third one to react to me and short-circuit.

“Brynn.”

Marguerite, the Head Matchmaker, sweeps around the corner in robes the color of a storm cloud. She’s three hundred years old and looks at me like I’m a kettle about to boil over.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Your magic is flaring.” She catches my wrist, turns it over, studies the faint glow still fading from my palm. “Again.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re exhausted. You need to rest before convergence.” Her grip tightens.

“I mean it this time. Go to your rooms. Sleep. The bonds can wait.”

“The bonds can’t wait, the Van Alsteins arrive in twenty minutes and you put me on the welcome detail.”

She closes her eyes and sighs. I’ve won, and we both know it, and neither of us is happy about it.

“Rest after then, for sure,” she says.

“After,” I lie.

I never rest lately. Not when my magic is trying to claw its way out of my skin all of a sudden! Anyway, the Van Alsteins don’t wait for anyone.

I make it to the grand foyer just as the lunar doors swing open.

I’ve read the file. The Van Alstein brothers are old money and with an even older bloodline. Blood Shifters. The kind of supernatural royalty that doesn’t book a resort so much as it allows the resort to host them.

Reading the file doesn’t prepare me for the reality.

The mother comes in first.

Evelina Van Alstein doesn’t just enter a room. She arrives at it, like the weather. She’s draped in silver, with silver hair, ageless, with silver blue eyes that have clearly catalogued every flaw in the architecture and found the marble adequate.

“Eclipse Resort.” She inhales. “Smaller than I remembered. Charming.”

Behind her, four gorgeous men fill the doorway, and the foyer gets very small.

I clock them fast, the way I clock everyone. It’s my magic. I can’t help reading the shape of people.

The flirt is easy. He’s already grinning at me, dark eyes sparkling, dark hair, golden and loose-limbed, the kind of handsome that knows it. “Well,” he says. “Hello.”

“That’s Tristan,” says the one beside him, dry as dust. “Ignore him. We all do,” says Evander.

Evander is the one that's watching everything.

Sharp. Suspicious. Dark hair, eyes shaped just like Tristan's, but Tristan's are blue and Evander's are green. They look very much alike because they're twins. They are identical but probably looked more identical when they were younger. The way they dress and hold themselves now make them seem different because they have different personalities. He scents the air once and something in his face goes still, like he’s caught a thread he doesn’t like.

Evander, the file said. The one who reads lies.

The youngest leans in the doorframe, hands in his pockets, has dark blond hair and blue eyes, easy and amused and not bothering to hide that he’d rather be anywhere else. Dominic.

And then there’s the one in front.

I don’t need the file to know which brother he is.

He stands like the weight of the whole family rests on him and he’s decided to carry it just to spite gravity.

Black suit. Dark blond hair and blue eyes like his younger brother.

Also, gorgeous like his brothers. He sweeps the foyer with a single cold look, and where his brothers found it charming, he finds it a waste of his time.

Leopold Van Alstein. Acting CEO. The Ice King himself. Also known as “Leo” to his family and good friends.

His gaze lands on me.

And my magic perks up.

Not a flare. Worse. A pull. Like every nerve in my body just turned to face him without asking permission.

I ignore it. I am very good at ignoring things.

“Welcome to Eclipse.” I plaster on my brightest smile. “I’m Brynn, your matchmaking liaison. We’ve prepared the family suite in the north wing, the compatibility ceremonies begin tomorrow, and if anyone needs anything at all, please let me know.”

“We won’t,” Leo says.

His voice is low and flat and absolutely certain, and it scrapes down my spine in a way I refuse to examine.

“Won’t need anything?”

“Won’t be participating.” He’s already moving past me. “We’re here for a week. We’ll attend dinner. We will not be matched. My mother can explain the difference.”

“Leo.” Evelina’s tone is sugar over steel. “Don’t be rude to the help.”

“I’m the liaison,” I say.

“You’re delightful,” Tristan says.

“You’re going to get yourself bitten,” Evander says, to Tristan, not looking up.

“Promises, promises,” Tristan says.

Dominic snorts.

It’s chaos. Loud, fast, four enormous predators bickering like they’re at a kitchen table, and the matriarch presiding over it like a queen who finds her court exhausting and beloved in equal measure.

I’m halfway to laughing.

Then Leo stops.

He’s pulled a folder from inside his jacket, some contract, and as he turns to hand it to me, he doesn’t watch where his hand goes.

Neither do I.

Our fingers brush.

It’s nothing. It’s less than nothing, skin on skin for half a second.

But, my Resonance Magic detonates.

It rips out of me, and this time there’s no pulling it back, no net of light, nothing. It pours straight into him and slams back into me twice as strong, and for one blinding second I feel everything. The hammer of his heart. The thing inside him that’s been pacing in the dark for years. His wolf.

It lifts its head and looks at me.

Leo goes rigid. His eyes, gray a second ago, flood silver from edge to edge.

“What did you do?” he breathes.

“I didn’t do anything.” My voice cracks. “I swear I didn’t, I don’t know why it did that. That’s not how it works!”

The foyer lights flicker.

Above us, the great compatibility chandeliers, the ones that hang in every hall of Eclipse to read the bonds passing beneath them, begin to hum. One by one. Down the entire length of the resort. A sound like a struck bell, building.

Evelina’s smile slips. Just slightly.

“Oh,” she chuckles softly. “Oh, you ridiculous children.”

The chandeliers blaze.

Red. Deep, arterial, blood red, every crystal flooding the same furious scarlet at once, washing the foyer in a glow like the inside of a heart. Tristan stops laughing. Evander’s head snaps up. Somewhere a guest screams.

And across the whole resort, in mirror and crystal and stone, in a voice that is every voice and no voice, Eclipse delivers its verdict.

MATING BOND DETECTED.