Unscented: The Alpha’s Deception

Kai's POV Claim him. Breed him. Make him ours forever. My wolf's voice curled through the back of my mind like smoke, dark, insistent, dangerous. The primal urge to dominate, to possess, to fill him until he carried my mark and my child clawed at every wall I had spent years constructing. I crushed it down with practiced precision. Not now. Not yet. I was too close to ruin it. "Are you just going to stare?" Jensen Hayes's voice dripped with challenge. Low. Unhurried. The voice of a man who had never once questioned his own power. He spread his legs with shameless elegance, pale skin glowing in the dim light like something sculpted rather than born. His fingers toyed lazily with his pert, pink n*****s, watching me with half-lidded eyes that held nothing resembling vulnerability. Like a possessed doll, he was perfect and dangerous. "Fuck." The word escaped through gritted teeth. His lips curved. He liked that. He liked watching men come undone. "Come on then," he purred, rising gracefully to his knees. "Don't make me beg on our first night." I reached for my jacket buttons with deliberate clumsiness. Amateur. Exactly what a nervous human male would do. He chuckled softly, the sound rich with condescension, and closed the space between us. "Let me." His slender fingers replaced mine, working each button with practiced ease. A gasp escaped me as he peeled away my shirt, leaving only the tie hanging loose around my neck. He pulled me close like a pet on a leash, his nose brushing against mine. I lunged for a kiss— "Tsk." His finger pressed against my lips. "Didn't you read the rules? No kissing." His manicured nails scraped down my chest, pinching my n*****s hard before continuing lower. He rested his head against my nape, fingers skilfully undoing my belt. "But I'll make an exception. You're... enticing." He liked my jaw then looked down, eyes widened slightly when my erection sprang free. "How would that possibly fit?" he breathed, his nose tracing my jawline, the vibration against my skin sending the right signals. I bit back a groan as his fingers wrapped around me, stroking with expert precision. He was a professional. He thought he was in control, thought he'd found another human to dominate. He had no idea I was letting him win, letting him play his game exactly as I expected. I had studied Jensen for years. I knew the exact extent of his power, the specific performance he expected from every man who walked through that door. I had crafted Lancaster Kai to fit every detail of it. And as his hands worked me and his breath warmed my skin, I held my wolf down with both fists and reminded myself of the singular truth that had governed the last decade of my life. Jensen Hayes would never escape me again. * Seven months before the night Jensen would pull me forward by my tie, I was standing in a sterile room in Ashford District staring down at a very different man kneeling before me. "This," I said quietly, "was his favorite?" "For eleven months." Vincent adjusted his glasses without expression. My beta assistant had perfected the art of neutrality around me. "Then discarded. Like the rest." The man's scent turned my stomach, not because he was human, but because he smelled like Jensen. My Jensen. His scent couldn’t be perceived by just anyone with his advanced suppressants. But I was not any alpha. The blood moon had created something beyond the existing hierarchy in rare cases. Special alphas. Enhanced beyond what even original wolves could claim. The mortality rate among those who attempted the transformation was devastating. Those who survived emerged permanently changed. I had survived. "Strip," I said. The man obeyed immediately. After the injection Vincent had forced in his system, I studied the shivering result with cold objectivity. Physically, he was embarrassing, he couldn’t compete with me in terms of size. Over the years, I had interviewed ninety of Jensen’s male partners and twenty of his female ones. One hundred and ten people. I had been meticulous. I told myself that every time the rage surfaced, the white-hot fury of an alpha confronting evidence that what was his had been touched by strangers. Some of those interviews had not ended cleanly. Particularly the ones carrying his scent most heavily. I was not proud of it. I hurt them beyond recovery. What I understood now was that I had been approaching this incorrectly. Jensen’s preferences across one hundred and ten data points were inconsistent. He wanted something he could control completely. Something that posed no threat. I needed to look like a man the world had not been kind to. "Sir." Vincent extended a tablet. "The medical team confirms the alpha suppressant has passed all trials." And that was the beginning of my madness. * The night the blood moon hung in the sky, the world shattered. Three weeks of crimson light bleeding across every nation, every territory, every boundary that had kept the old world intact. Ancient hierarchies collapsed like monuments built on sand. Werewolf packs, districts, entire governments, gone overnight. We had always kept to ourselves, away from human cities and human greed. They had known better than to cross into our territories. The blood moon changed the terms entirely. Humans began to manifest. Alphas, omegas, and betas emerging from what had once been a uniform species. Betas remained closest to their original nature. But alphas and omegas inherited everything, the heats, the ruts, the desperate biological pull toward pack and mate. Even the strength. Only one distinction remained between them and us. They could not shift. They could not hear their wolves. The shamans declared it the goddess’ will. I had no interest in divine intention. I only cared about the aftermath . New packs formed overnight. New districts. Governments scrambled to contain what no existing law had been written to address. But humans carried their worst impulses into this new world. The great moon had stolen millions of newborn lives in a single night, sending the global population into freefall. Alphas, drunk on instincts they didn't yet understand, began to hunt. Omegas, never physically equal, became prey. The gender shield evaporated when human males discovered they could conceive. Fear curdled into violence and spread like plague. Governments formed alliances. Laws were written, revised, contested, rewritten. None of it was enough. Then Jensen built Hayes Biotech. His suppressants were unlike anything the scientific world had produced. Scent technology so advanced it rendered an omega invisible to alpha detection. Heat suppressants, permanent, semi-permanent, and fully reversible, with minimal side effects that no competitor had come close to replicating. His formulas spread across the Republic of Valoria and beyond, giving omegas the first real weapon they had ever held. Jensen Hayes became a god to his kind. An icon. A savior wrapped in surgical perfection and cold fury. And simultaneously, the most despised figure among world governments and alpha communities alike. His inventions had gutted population projections. His omega rights legislation had stripped alphas of the advantages they had come to treat as a birthright. And the best part? Jensen hated them all right back. But his hatred for alphas was something different. Something carved from bone and old memory. He despised our existence, good or bad; it made no difference to him. Original alphas like me were regarded as a specific category of evil. Which was precisely why Lancaster Kai had to exist. A carefully constructed lie. A human scent, a human history, years of perfecting a body language that broadcasts harmlessness. To the world, I remained Harrington Kai; faceless heir to the Harrington empire, CEO of Harrington Aegis Group, operating from Harrington Falls, where old money kept the Harrington name untouchable. But to reach Jensen, I had to become Lancaster Kai. Everything he could trust. Weak. Pathetic . Beneath his notice. I had to become what I despised to claim what I needed. I had to become human.