The Alpha’s $12 Million Bride

93 Days Earlier

Few situations in life can't be improved with a hammer.

A bad day.

A bad sculpture.

A bad wall.

Occasionally, a bad decision.

I was testing the theory on a three-foot block of plaster when my phone started vibrating across the workbench.

I ignored it.

The chisel bit into the surface beneath my hand, sending a thin white fracture exactly where I wanted it.

Better.

My phone stopped.

Then started again.

I set the hammer down.

Whoever was calling me had either died, killed someone, or belonged to my family.

Statistically, the third option covered the first two.

I wiped plaster dust across the front of my jeans and looked at the screen.

My father.

Of course.

I considered letting it ring.

Then I remembered the last time I ignored one of my father’s calls: two men in black SUVs appeared outside my studio twelve minutes later because apparently personal boundaries were for families without private security.

I answered.

“What?”

“Come home.”

No “hello.”

No “how are you?”

No acknowledgment that I have my own life and might be busy.

Very on brand.

“I am home.”

“You know what I mean.”

I looked around the converted warehouse space I’d spent two years making mine.

Concrete floors.

Twenty-foot ceilings.

Clay drying near the giant, old windows.

Half-finished canvases leaning three deep against the walls.

A steel armature hanging from a pulley system because I'd underestimated its weight by approximately eighty pounds.

This is home.

But my father meant the house where I’d grown up.

A forty-minute drive and several tax brackets away.

“I’m working.”

“This is important.”

“So is this.”

Silence.

My father used silence the way other people used threats.

He didn’t need to raise his voice. He simply waited until everyone else became uncomfortable enough to comply.

Unfortunately for him, I had been a professional disappointment to him for twenty-seven years.

I picked up the hammer again.

“What happened?”

“Come home.”

“Is my brother alive?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“Is anyone actively bleeding?”

“No.”

“Are the police involved?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to need more information.”

He exhaled slowly through the phone.

“You’re getting married.”

The hammer slipped out of my hand.

It hit the workbench with a crack.

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me.”

I looked at the plaster block.

Then at the hammer.

Then back at the plaster.

“I think maybe I hit myself in the head and don’t remember doing it.”

“Be here in an hour.”

The line went dead.

I lowered the phone.

For a full ten seconds, I stood completely still.

Then I called my brother.

He answered on the second ring.

“Before you say anything, I had nothing to do with it.”

“You knew?”

“Oh, shit.”

“You f*****g knew.”

“I knew something.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means our father told me there was a conversation happening.”

“A conversation about my marriage?”

“Technically, I don't think you were married yet during the conversation.”

I closed my eyes.

“Thank you. That clarification helped.”

“I’m trying.”

“You’re failing.”

“Also fair.”

I paced past a table covered in charcoal studies, stepped over an extension cord, and nearly impaled myself on a length of steel rod.

“Who?”

Silence.

My brother suddenly became very interested in breathing.

“Who am I marrying?”

“You should probably let our father tell you.”

“That bad?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You made a noise.”

“I breathed.”

“You breathed suspiciously.”

“Apparently that’s a crime now.”

“In this family? Give it time.”

He laughed.

I didn’t.

His amusement disappeared.

“Look, just go talk to him.”

“That sounds like something a hostage negotiator would say.”

“Pretty much.”

I dragged a hand through my unruly red hair and immediately regretted it when plaster dust rained onto my shoulders.

“Do I know him?”

“Yes.”

That narrowed it down to approximately every powerful wolf family on the eastern half of the continent.

My father did not socialize.

He networked.

Every dinner was a negotiation.

Every wedding was an alliance.

Every funeral was an opportunity to see who stood next to whom.

I had grown up around men who discussed territory over twelve-hundred-dollar bottles of wine and women who smiled beautifully while remembering exactly which family owed theirs a favor from 1987.

People liked to call families like mine old money.

That wasn't entirely accurate.

Old money implied the money sat quietly in trusts and investment portfolios and behaved itself.

While our money did do that, it also had personality.

We kept cash in shoeboxes in closets.

Dirty backpacks in garages.

Between walls.

Under floorboards.

Once, when I was fourteen, I opened the freezer looking for ice cream and found forty thousand dollars wrapped in butcher paper.

My father had been furious.

Not because I found it.

Because I moved it to reach the mint chocolate chip.

We didn’t need money.

Which meant whatever this was, it wasn't about money.

That realization turned my stomach.

“I’m going over there,” I said.

“I figured.”

“He can tell me whatever he wants.”

“And?”

“And then I can tell him to go f**k himself.”

He snorted.

“Call me after.”

“I’m considering disowning all of you.”

“Get in line.”

I hung up.

Forty-seven minutes later, I walked into my father's house wearing paint-stained jeans, a black tank top, work boots, and enough plaster dust to require a ventilated mask.

The woman at the front desk looked at me.

Yes.

My father’s house had a front desk.

No.

I did not like to talk about it.

“He’s in the library,” she said.

“Of course he is.”

I passed through the marble foyer.

Past the staircase nobody used.

Past an oil painting of one of my ancestors looking deeply disappointed that indoor plumbing had ever been invented.

The house smelled exactly as it always had.

Leather.

Wood polish.

Smoke from the fireplace.

And wolves.

I couldn't smell the last one, obviously.

Not the way everyone else could.

That was one of the many charming deficiencies my father had catalogued over the years.

No wolf.

No shift.

No heightened senses.

No second heartbeat of instinct beneath my own.

Twenty-seven years old and biologically defective; according to nearly every person whose opinion I had never requested.

My father had stopped waiting for my first shift when I was thirteen.

By sixteen, pack doctors had stopped using words like delayed.

By eighteen, people had started saying never.

Eventually, so had I.

It was easier, less painful.

The library doors were open.

My father stood beside the fireplace with a glass of whiskey in one hand.

He didn’t offer me one.

He didn’t even look at me.

Bad start.

“You’re late.”

“Traffic was terrible. Oh, yeah, and apparently I got engaged today.”

His mouth flattened.

I dropped into the chair across from him.

“All right.”

He looked at me.

I looked back.

This was another family tradition.

Staring until someone became uncomfortable.

Again, he had raised the wrong daughter for that.

My father took a slow drink of whiskey.

“Roman Anders.”

I blinked.

Then laughed.

My father didn’t.

The laugh died.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

Roman Anders.

Alpha.

Billionaire.

Public-company darling.

Private nightmare, depending on which rumor you believed.

His name was attached to towers, acquisitions, charitable foundations, and enough hostile takeovers that business journalists seemed personally offended by him.

He was thirty-two.

Unmarried.

And, to my knowledge, had never demonstrated a crippling desire to marry a wolfless disappointment with clay under her fingernails.

I leaned back.

“No.”

“This isn't a request.”

“Excellent. Then you didn't need me here.”

I stood.

“Sit down.”

I kept standing.

His eyes sharpened.

Mine probably did something considerably less impressive.

“Why Roman?”

“There are advantages.”

“To whom?”

“To this family.”

“Specific.”

“You don't need the specifics.”

“Interesting, considering I'm apparently the merger.”

His jaw tightened.

I sat again.

Not because he told me to.

Because I wanted answers.

“What does Roman get?”

“You.”

I stared at him.

“That is alarmingly flattering coming from you.”

He ignored it.

“There’s a contract.”

Of course there is.

“How long?”

“One hundred seventy-three pages.”

I waited.

“That wasn’t a joke?”

“No.”

“You wrote one hundred seventy-three pages about my marriage?”

“The attorneys did.”

“Oh, good. I was worried this was weird.”

“You won't be reading it.”

That landed differently.

The humor disappeared.

“What?”

“The terms were negotiated between Roman and I.”

“And I'm what, exactly?”

His expression didn't change.

“Part of the agreement.”

Something cold slid beneath my ribs.

I laughed once.

No humor in it.

“Do I at least get to know what I'm worth?”

My father took a drink.

That was my first warning.

“How much?”

“Twelve million.”

I stared at him.

Then laughed again.

He remained completely serious.

“Twelve million dollars.”

“Yes.”

“Father, we have twelve million dollars in places twelve million dollars should absolutely not be.”

“This isn't about the money.”

“No shit.”

His eyes hardened.

I leaned forward. “Then what is it about?”

A knock sounded at the library door.

My father looked past me.

For the first time since I'd arrived, something in his expression shifted.

Satisfaction.

It lasted less than a second.

Somehow, that made it worse.

I turned.

A man stood in the doorway.

Dark suit.

Dark hair.

Broad shoulders.

No tie.

He looked like he'd walked out of an editorial shoot for a boardroom advertisement.

But realistically, he’d just left a meeting where someone had just lost several million dollars and thanked him for the privilege of letting him take it from them.

Roman Anders.

I'd seen photographs.

Magazine covers.

Press conferences.

None of them had adequately conveyed the fact that the man was enormous.

Not absurdly so.

Just enough that the doorway seemed temporarily too small.

He stepped into the library.

And stopped.

His head turned slightly.

His nostrils flared almost imperceptibly.

Something in his face changed.

From where I sat sideways in the wingback chair, I had a clear view of him.

He didn't have the same advantage.

The chair's high back swallowed most of me from the doorway; it was all old French patterns and overstuffed cushions.

I watched his eyes narrow, then shift from soft green speckled with golden brown to molten gold flecked with black as he drew another slow breath through his nose.

He hadn't seen me yet.

But somehow, Roman knew I was there.

His gaze moved past my father.

Found the edge of the chair.

Then found me.

And went completely still.

Gold flashed brightly from his eyes.

Gone almost immediately.

His wolf.

I knew that much, at least.

My father gestured toward me.

“Roman.”

Roman didn't look away.

“My daughter.”

Something strange pulled beneath my ribs; I assumed I’d throw up any second.

Roman's jaw tightened.

Then he said, very quietly,

“I know.”