The Billionare Alpha's Desirre

Chapter 3

Seraphina

I managed to avoid Darian for most of the day by escaping to the library. Not that it was hard—he seemed to be doing his best to avoid me, too. Probably didn’t want to be reminded of his mistake.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that what we’d had was just a bit of fun for him. That I was just some human plaything to be set aside when his duty to mate for the pack came calling.

Asshole. I’d thought that about him so many times in the last few hours, I should probably just start using it as a prefix to his name.

I scowled at the pages in front of me, realizing I’d been staring at the same six sentences of my book for the last hour. With a frustrated sigh, I closed it and stood. It was a new one by my favorite author—one I hadn’t gotten around to yet—so to find it here on Darian’s library shelves had been a surprise. In fact, there was a whole shelf dedicated to romance. Someone in this house must be a fan.

Not Darian though. I couldn’t see him reading anything so… frivolous. Probably something dry about lycan history or war among the paranormal races—that seemed more his style. Not romance, even if he totally fit the mold of asshole-alpha-male-who-needed-bringing-down-a-peg-or-two perfectly.

My lips quirked as I headed for the door. There it was again. Asshole. The word slid effortlessly through my mind when I thought of him. Unfortunately, my overactive imagination didn’t stop there. Oh no. Once it latched onto him, it rifled through my memories, raiding them and presenting me with images of Darian naked, his gloriously muscled form stripped for me… the way his eyes flared with amber and darkness when he was aroused. The way…

Shit. No.

I hissed in anger at myself and shut down the thought before it went any further. I wasn’t some desperate b***h in heat, panting after the pack alpha. There would be no more nights wrapped around his heavily muscled form. No more of him moving over me as he drove into me again and again. Not now. Even if he wanted to, my pride wouldn’t allow it. I refused to be good enough to screw, but not good enough to mate.

Fuck that.

Or in this case, not.

Voices outside the library door made me freeze, my hand on the doorframe. Every cell in my body went on alert. Male voices.

“I’ll be gone until nightfall. Make sure our guests are fed and watered,” Darian said, his voice more familiar to me than my own. Yearning tried to creep in at the deep tones, but I shoved it aside with a spike of anger.

“Yes, boss.”

The second voice I also recognized. Frank. I still wasn’t sure how pack rankings worked, but if Darian had a right-hand man, Frank was it. A wave of guilt hit me. And he’d lost his nephew because of me. If I was looking for help, it wasn’t coming from that quarter.

I pressed closer to the door, my breathing shallow as they stopped nearby.

“Get someone to clean thoroughly in here. Smells like half the damn pack have set up camp. And before I forget, make sure Seraphina gets a little something ‘extra’ to help her rest. I don’t want anything to go wrong tonight.”

My eyes widened. He planned to drug me? Of all the low-down, asshole-ish things to do. My lips curled with barely contained rage. A small crack under my hand warned me to get a handle on my temper.

Even from the other side of the door, I felt him pause. Heard the rasp of his breath as he turned. I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining the frown I knew marred his brow. Any moment now, the door would be flung open. Darian had to know I was here.

A deep scent filtered through the closed door. Wild and male, it reminded me of dark forests and forbidden places. My body ached with the need to run, to escape. To feel my heart pounding and dirt beneath my feet—

“Sure thing, boss. I’ll make sure it happens.”

Frank’s voice yanked me back to reality. s**t, what had that been? I’d never had a scent affect me so strongly. I sucked in a quiet, deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart.

“Good. And make sure everything is in place for the exchange. I can’t stand the Earl at the best of times, so I want this done and him off our land as soon as possible.” His footsteps receded, and then—silence.

I sagged against the door, pressing my forehead to the cool wood, letting my senses extend to the distant echoes of their conversation. Finally, a door opened and shut near the front of the manor, followed by the deep, throaty roar of Darian’s car as he drove away.

He was gone.

I opened my eyes and looked down at my fingertips, buried into the doorframe as though it were made of soft cheese. f**k. I yanked my hand back and saw the perfect impressions of my nails in the paint. How the hell had I done that? Property damage wasn’t something I needed on my list of werewolf-y sins.

Biting my lip, I tried to smooth it over, but the wood was hard and unyielding. Realizing I couldn’t undo it, I opened the door and checked the corridor before slipping out toward my room. They couldn’t prove anything—I wasn’t a werewolf. Right?

I’d never been in the forest surrounding the Blackthorn estate on my own. Not at night. Not during the full moon. Especially not during the full moon.

Oh no, I smiled to myself as I slipped out a side door and into the garden shadows. When I’d lived here, all humans were locked up during the full moon, patrolled to ensure we didn’t leave. Can’t tempt some poor schmuck of a lycan into biting them, after all.

I crouched in the shadows by the rose bushes, brushing against their branches and inhaling their heady fragrance. For a moment, I was caught, transfixed by it. Roses smelled amazing. Like a complex symphony for my senses. Shaking myself, I took a deep breath and focused on the task at hand.

Darian was trading a vampire somewhere in the forest. I intended to find out what the hell was going on. The possibility he was trading the vampire for Davie wouldn’t leave me alone.

If that was true, why hadn’t he told me? Perhaps he wasn’t… perhaps there was some other deal with the vampires. But if that was true, why had he wanted me drugged?

Feigning sickness earlier, I’d managed to get a tray sent up to my room. Chicken soup and sparkling water. Easy to ditch. My stomach grumbled at the scent, but I wasn’t risking anything Frank brought me. I didn’t know which one contained the drugs.

Besides, I had a real craving for steak lately. Weird. I was normally a chicken person—or maybe lamb for a rare change—but not steak. And now my body craved it, blood-red and juicy. Not a werewolf, but apparently my appetite was.

Crouched in the shadows, I watched the house. Most of the wolves had left earlier, alone or in pairs, until only a few remained. Frank was last, peeking into my room before closing the door. That was my cue to dress in my darkest clothes and attempt a ninja impression—a rosebush-hugging ninja, that is.

I slipped to the edge of the garden and into the forest. There was no boundary wall here; for a werewolf manor, it wasn’t necessary. I broke into a light jog—three seconds before remembering why I didn’t jog without proper support—and slowed to a sustainable pace, following the barely-there path into the trees.

Which then… ended.

Well, s**t.

I stopped in the darkness, trying to ignore my heart hammering against my ribs. The trees loomed menacingly.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I muttered, clamping my eyes shut. “They can’t just disappear. Not even lycans.”

A breeze brushed my cheek, pulling me left. Instinctively, I followed it, and the undergrowth parted to reveal a faint path. I’d just needed to see it differently. A good lesson for life. I should put that on a mug.

I hurried along, letting instinct guide me. It warned me to slow as I reached a rise. On hands and knees, belly close to the ground, I peeked over…

A clearing. Logs and boulders formed a circle, occupied by lycans in human form and not. My breath caught, my body pulled toward him. But he wasn’t mine—not anymore, if he ever had been. I forced my attention elsewhere.

A tall, tanned, blond man stood in the center. Everything about him screamed wrong—like he was pretending to be human, but wasn’t.

Vampire.

Two lycans dragged a hooded figure, yanking off the bag to reveal another vampire. He looked worse for wear, but I couldn’t feel sorry. These assholes had threatened Davie.

The blond vampire nodded, and two more vampires shoved a boy forward. He went to his hands and knees in front of Darian.

Something familiar clicked in my mind, and before I could stop myself, I raced down the slope between the seated lycans, throwing my arms around him.

“Davie! Oh my god, Davie! You’re alive!”