The Alpha’s $12 Million Bride

My father sold me for twelve million dollars. Ninety-three days later, I’m standing in an abandoned warehouse with a gun pointed at my husband’s chest. In retrospect, twelve million might have been a little low. Rain battered the corrugated roof, filling the cavernous space with a relentless metallic roar. Water found its way through the eaves overhead and gathered in shallow pools across the concrete floor. Every few seconds, another drop struck the puddle beside my boot. Normally, details like that would’ve captivated me. The leak. The rust creeping along the steel beams. The smell of wet concrete and motor oil. The wooden pallet someone had left leaning against the emergency exit, which was almost certainly a fire-code violation. I notice things. I would’ve pulled out a sketchbook and pencil. Drawn the rust creeping along the steel beams. The water stains bleeding down the concrete. The warped wooden pallet someone had left leaning against the emergency exit. I might’ve even wondered whether that was a fire-code violation. Tonight, all I could see was Roman. He stood twenty feet away beneath a flickering fluorescent light, looking considerably less like the untouchable man whose name appeared on skyscrapers and considerably more like something that had crawled out of a war zone. His white dress shirt was soaked through and streaked with blood. His jacket was gone. One sleeve had been ripped nearly to the shoulder, exposing four deep gashes across his upper arm. I tore my eyes away from his heaving chest, his shirt clinging to every muscle, and watched the edges of the wounds slowly knit themselves together. Even the ones deep enough to expose bone. Of course they were. Alphas were annoyingly difficult to kill. “Let’s go.” Roman’s eyes dropped to the gun in my hand. “No.” One word. Calm and controlled, delivered in the same maddening tone he used in boardrooms when telling men twice his age that he’d just acquired their companies. I tightened my grip. My finger settled against the trigger. “Don’t look at me like that.” “Like what?” “Like I’m the one being unreasonable.” His eyes flicked toward the gun. “You are pointing a gun at me.” “Oh, so you noticed.” “I notice things.” “That’s my thing.” Something almost like a smile touched his mouth. Wrong time. Wrong man. Wrong reaction from my body. “You don’t know what happened,” he said. “I know enough.” “No.” His voice lowered. “You know what your father wants you to know.” My father. Three months earlier, he’d informed me that I was going to marry Roman Anders. There was a contract. One hundred and seventy-three pages negotiated between the two of them, none of which I’d been allowed to read. Apparently, my part required considerably less paperwork. A signature. A wedding. And watching twelve million dollars changing hands. Tonight, my father had called to tell me my brother was dead. That Roman killed him. Short. Cold. Simple. Almost believable. Except nothing involving Roman had been simple since the day I met him. “Call your father,” Roman said. “I already spoke to him.” “I know.” Something about the way he said it sent a thin ribbon of cold down my spine. Roman took one step toward me. I raised the gun. He stopped. “Don’t.” “I swear to God, Roman.” “God hasn’t had much jurisdiction over either of our families for a very long time.” A laugh escaped me as a snort. My brother was dead. My husband was covered in blood. I had a gun pointed at his chest. And Roman Anders could still make me laugh. Asshole. He took another step. Something beneath my ribs pulled tight. There it was again. That strange tug that started after Roman entered my life. Sometimes it was barely noticeable. Other times it felt like my body had developed an entirely separate opinion about my husband and was determined to make it known. Tonight, it wanted closer. I moved back. Ninety-three days of marriage, and I still hadn’t kissed him. Not really. Not voluntarily. Not in any way that mattered. It was the one decision in this arrangement that still belonged entirely to me. Unfortunately, my body seemed determined to challenge the ruling. Roman stopped. His eyes narrowed. “What?” “Nothing.” “You did it again.” “Did what?” His gaze dropped briefly to my chest, as if he could somehow see the thing pulling beneath my ribs. I hated when he did that. Mostly because I had no idea what he was looking for. For twenty-seven years, I’d lived without a wolf. No shifting. No voice in my head. No second set of instincts overlaid with my own. My father called it a defect. My brother called it freedom. I’d settled somewhere around inconvenient embarrassment. But since Roman Anders walked into my life, things had gotten...strange. Knowing he was behind me before I heard him. Feeling his attention from across crowded rooms. Dreams I couldn’t remember but woke from with my heart pounding. And that pull. Always that f*****g pull. “Where’s my brother?” Roman said nothing. My hand started to shake. I hated that he could see it. He took another step. “Don’t.” Another. “Roman.” “You’re not going to shoot me.” “Want to test that theory?” Ten feet. “Stop.” Eight. “Roman, I mean it.” Six. Every instinct I wasn’t supposed to have screamed at once. Run. Stay. Fight. Closer. The gun shook harder. Roman stopped less than six feet away. Something burst into my senses. Freshly milled cedar. Summer rain hitting hot pavement. Something warmer beneath it, unfamiliar and somehow achingly familiar. My lungs filled again before I could process where the smell was coming from. Then they filled a third time. Fucking traitors. Something shifted at the edge of my consciousness. Not a thought. Not a voice. Something intertwined. A whisper brushed the inside of my skull. MATE.