Claimed By The Ruthless Alpha Devils

A strange gift

MIRABELLA

Zack’s yacht is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life.

It rises from the water in tiers, each deck lit up against the darkening sky like something out of a magazine spread. One level has sleek, expensive furniture arranged in careful groupings. Another has a hot tub where people are already crowded in, laughing too loudly. And on the highest deck, students are dancing to music that throbs through the hull and into the soles of my feet even before Sophie and I step aboard.

“Sophie,” I say slowly, craning my neck to take it all in. “How much did this thing cost?”

“Custom built,” she says, in the tone of someone reciting a fact she finds both impressive and faintly obscene. “Over a hundred million dollars.”

My stomach turns over. A hundred million dollars. For a boat. I think about the one bedroom apartment my mother and I shared for most of my childhood, the way she’d stretch her paycheck to the end of the month, and something sour rises in my throat. This is a floating palace, and everyone on it is acting like it’s completely normal.

There are so many people already crowding the decks and the dock that I wonder if there’s going to be anything beyond standing room. My palms go damp and I drag them down the front of my jeans, grounding myself in the familiar texture of the denim. I dressed deliberately tonight—no fancy dress, no attempt to fit in with their aesthetic. Just my own clothes, jeans and a fitted top, things I chose for myself. At least when I’m dressed like this, I know how to act, how to respond.

“This isn’t a good idea,” I groan, but Sophie already has her arm looped firmly through mine, steering me through the crowd and up the gangway like she’s afraid I’ll bolt if she loosens her grip, which, to be fair, is not an unreasonable concern.

The inside of the main deck is thick with heat and noise, the smell of expensive cologne and alcohol layered over salt air. Trays of drinks circulate through the crowd, and I take a Diet Coke when one passes close enough, clutching it like a lifeline. I don’t need anything blurring my edges tonight. Sophie, on the other hand, is already on her third glass of something pale and sparkling, swaying just slightly on her feet in a way that makes me resolve to keep an eye on her.

I scan the room out of habit, the way I’ve started doing everywhere I go since moving into the Windsor house, cataloguing exits and threats with an instinct I didn’t have three months ago. My eyes drag across clusters of people, past laughing faces and expensive haircuts, and then they snag on something and stop.

A guy, standing maybe fifteen feet away, is already looking at me.

The first thing I notice is that he’s cute—genuinely, straightforwardly cute in a way that isn’t polished or calculated, dark hair pushed back from his face, a warm, open expression. When our eyes meet, he smiles. Not a smirk, not an appraisal, just an actual smile, uncomplicated and real, and I feel something in my chest loosen slightly. I smile back without thinking, heat crawling up into my cheeks, and quickly look away.

That’s when I find Kaden.

He’s standing in the far corner with his arms crossed over his chest, head slightly turned like he’s half-listening to something one of his friends is saying. But his eyes are already on me—green and flat and cold, like light on ice. It only lasts a second, that eye contact, maybe two, but it stretches out inside my chest like something much longer because suddenly I can’t breathe properly, can’t remember if I was already breathing or just forgot.

A cluster of drunk girls stumbles between us, breaking the line of sight, and I exhale.

He knows I’m here.

“I’m going to grab more soda,” I tell Sophie, keeping my voice even, and she waves me off with her champagne glass and turns back to her sister, who’s materialized from somewhere in the crowd looking pleased with herself.

I make my way to the drinks table at the edge of the deck, where someone has set up a neat row of sodas and mixers alongside the alcohol, and I’ve barely had time to reach for a new can when I hear footsteps beside me and look up.

It’s the cute guy.

Up close, he’s even more straightforwardly decent-looking, the kind of face that doesn’t have anything to prove. “Hey,” he says, and his smile is the same as it was from across the room, easy and genuine. “I’m Levi.”

“Mirabella,” I say, and something about the normalcy of the exchange—just two people introducing themselves, nothing loaded or complicated—makes me feel almost like a regular person at a regular party.

“You don’t look like you’re having the time of your life,” he says, which makes me laugh before I can stop myself.

“Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” he admits. “But honestly? Same.”

I’m about to say something back, maybe even something clever, when a voice comes from behind me.

“If it isn’t my sister.”

Levi’s expression shifts, that easy smile flickering out like a candle someone’s cupped a hand over, and before I’ve even fully turned around, he’s already making his excuses with a quick murmur I don’t quite catch, dissolving back into the crowd and leaving the space beside me conspicuously empty.

Kaius stands there looking satisfied in the way that people do when they’ve just demonstrated exactly how much power they have, without having to say a word about it.

“Did you come here just to work the party?” he asks, letting his gaze slide over the crowd before settling back on me with something sharp and deliberate in it. “Find yourself some new rich client?”

“Oh, believe me,” I say, holding his gaze, “I already have my hands full with the current one I have.”

His jaw tightens. The muscle there jumps once, the way it does when I’ve gotten under his skin, and some traitorous part of me notes it with a small, private satisfaction.

“Let’s just hope you still have that attitude at the end of the night,” he says, and there’s something under the words that isn’t quite a threat and isn’t quite a promise but sits in that uncomfortable territory between the two.

He gets closer. Close enough that I can smell whatever expensive, infuriating thing he wears, close enough that his breath feathers against the back of my neck when he leans in, and every muscle in my body goes rigid. I stare straight ahead at the drinks table, gripping my soda can like it’s the only stable thing in reach.

“A gift,” he murmurs, low enough that only I can hear it, “just for you, sister.”

And then Sophie is at my left elbow, pushing through the crowd with an expression that she’s trying to keep neutral and isn’t quite managing. Kaius straightens, looks her up and down with that arrogant little flicker of a smirk, and turns away, the crowd parting around him as he goes like it would be unthinkable to make him navigate them.

Sophie’s smile when she looks at me is bright and slightly too tight at the edges, the expression of someone working hard to appear more casual than they are.

“I was thinking maybe we could go, just the two of us,” she says. “Somewhere quieter. We could walk on the beach instead.”

I look at her, at the careful brightness in her eyes, at the way she’s standing with her body angled slightly toward the exit. She worked this hard to get me here. She pleaded. She prayer-hands. And now she wants to leave.

“Are you trying to get me off this boat?” I ask slowly, and the knot in my stomach tightens as the answer writes itself across her face before she can stop it. Dread washes through me, slow and cold, settling into my bones.

She knows something. Something is already in motion, and I’m the only person on this yacht who doesn’t know what it is.

Oh goddess. What the hell could they possibly be up to this time?