Chapter One
The knock was always the same—delicate like a hummingbird. It was deceiving. That soft rasp on the door was the unassuming knock of a monster.
From where he sat, Wyatt James glared at the doorknob and hated the hole he’d dug himself into. He had no one to blame but himself, but that fact didn’t settle the tremor of disgust in his stomach.
He could tell Arabella “no” this time. He could tell her to leave and never come to his cabin again, but then he would be right back to square one. He would be back to amounting to nothing.
Harper deserved better.
Stop it.
Wyatt swallowed the bile that crept up the back of his throat. He had no business thinking about her. Not here, and not now as the monster outside knocked politely again.
Clenching his fists, he stood slowly, then inhaled deeply to steady his pulse. Arabella would hear it. She would mistake his quickened heartbeat for fear. Arabella fed on fear. She would make it hurt worse.
She could save you, his inner bear snarled. If you can’t save yourself, Harper can.
Wyatt gritted his teeth and threw open the door, careful to keep his eyes hollow. It hurt less if Arabella thought he was broken. Broken. He wanted to snort a laugh. No one could break him anymore.
Arabella was beautiful in that cold, hard Grecian-sculpture sort of way. She had perfect honey-colored curls that cascaded down her delicate shoulders. She wore a black, curve-fitting dress and burgundy lipstick. Her eyes were gray—a color he’d found striking on her in The Before.
Before he got desperate.
Before his bear went out of control.
Before he knew what Arabella was.
Now her eyes reminded him of the gray hue of a corpse. With a wicked smile, she canted her head and dragged her gaze down his face to his throat, then back up to his eyes. “You’re thinking of her again.”
Wyatt wanted to rip off her head. He wanted to tear her limb-from-limb for even talking about Harper. “Stay out of my head.”
“You invited me into it,” she whispered, stepping into his house and running a seductive hand up his chest. “Remember?”
Remembering hurt, though, so Wyatt winced away from the flashes that could bring him to his knees. Gripping her hand, he stopped her progress up his chest. She wasn’t going to make him feel trapped. Not this time. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Mmmm.” Arabella pouted. “No fun, Wyatt.” She licked her lips and tossed him a fiery gaze, then let a wad of money fall from her fingertips to the table beside the door. “Don’t forget that we both need each other, consort.”
Consort. Wyatt swallowed hard and closed his eyes. He was the son of Tagan James, the long-running Alpha of the Ashe Crew. He harbored a dominant grizzly bear and wielded a power not even the humans understood, yet here he was, reduced to this—to nothing.
For Harper…
Arabella’s teeth were like razors against his neck. She wasn’t careful, but she didn’t have to be. He had shifter healing. He wouldn’t die easily. He wasn’t some human she could drain and toss away. No, he was her chosen one. He was her prey. She’d hunted him for a long time so she could buy moments like this, when she would feed and know she was cowing a predator shifter. It was all about power for a woman like Arabella.
Wyatt linked his hands behind his head so he wouldn’t touch her any more than necessary as she drank him up. God, it hurt. Every second dragged on for an hour. Her teeth were sharp, but she had a terrible habit of gnawing when she hit the veins just right. His hands grew cold behind his head, the tingling sensation flowing down to his palms, his wrists, his forearms.
“Enough,” he murmured sternly.
His legs were feeling it now, too, the numbing sensation that came with the loss of so much blood. Arabella made a possessive hissing noise deep in her chest and clutched his neck, bit deeper.
Wyatt gripped her hair and yanked her backward. With as much hatred in his voice as he could muster, he gritted out, “Enough.”
Arabella had that drunk look in her eyes as her pupils dilated. Her smile was tipsy as she wiped crimson off her lips. “So stingy, love.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
Wyatt gave her a dead look and backed away slowly. “Because you don’t know what love is.” She never had and never would. She only knew fealty. She only knew what money could buy her.
Her bodyguards stood just outside the door, dressed in black three-piece suits, their hands clasped in front of their thighs, grim expressions on their pallid faces. “Careful,” one of them murmured. “You’ll hurt our queen’s feelings.”
Wyatt thought he saw the other guard smile, but perhaps he was mistaken. He’d come to learn monsters didn’t have senses of humor.
Arabella sashayed out of his cabin, but turned on the porch, lips parted. Unable to listen to another word, Wyatt slammed the door.
The sound of Arabella’s nails scratching down the wooden barrier that stood between them made his skin crawl.
Warmth trickled down his neck, and he let off a soft grunt as he pitched forward and landed on his balled-up fists and the toes of his boots. Blood made a sick pitter-pattering sound as it painted his dark wood floors red and trailed into the seam between planks. It wasn’t the pain or loss of blood that made him retch. It was how dirty and used he felt. He couldn’t force himself to look at the money on the table. Sure, it would help him establish a territory, and his bear needed it desperately, but no longer could he convince himself he was just donating his blood to help Arabella survive.