Chapter 1
Aisling
I opened the door as I had so many times over the last two years, and the room was still warm and dim, lit by a lamp on the far side.
For a moment I saw nothing except the distinct shapes of clothes strewn on the ground; a jacket on the floor, a shoe kicked under a chair and piles of clothing near the bed I had slept in so many times.
The tangle of bodies on top of the bed caught me especially off guard and it took me longer to understand than it should have, before the shapes resolved into two very familiar figures.
I had known for a while that Naomi was in love with Jaden.
It was impossible not to realize this fact, and it was always slightly amusing to me that he pretended not to see and was secretly immensely flattered by the way she followed him around, called him every day, made sure she was the last person he spoke to before he went to sleep and did everything to show him just how much she liked him and, in turn, hated me.
He had, however, never looked at her the way she wanted him to; he never looked at anyone that way, and that was why I'd felt safe enough to hide my identity and start a casual relationship with him; a man who could be kept at arm's length and took what I gave him without asking for more was very attractive to me at this point in my life.
I had not expected to find him naked with her on this bed.
I stood in the doorway and waited to feel the kind of things one is supposed to feel when one finds her lover in bed with someone else, but all I felt at that moment was relief so immediate I had to fight the urge to laugh.
Lately, I had begun to worry that our arrangement had run its course and that he was getting clingy.
It was the dinners, the questions about where I went at night and the way he had started weaving the concept of mates into everyday conversation. I had been battling with myself for a week, torn between ending it before it got too messy and disregarding his blatant hints to retain my weekly sexual release schedule, and now here was the decision, arranged on the sheets in front of me, and delivered.
Naomi saw me first and she made a sound and scrambled upright, clutching the sheet to her chest, and beside her, Julian turned, looking confused for a moment before he spotted me.
His face paled alarmingly before he scrambled up, haphazardly pulling on the crinkled pants which were on the floor.
"Aisling, what are you….you…this isn't….." he stammered, guilt clouding his handsome, chiseled face.
"...What it looks like? Come on, Julian, don't be that guy. Let's just cleanly go our separate ways. No need to make a big deal out of this. I have no hard feelings."
I interrupted calmly, subtly annoyed that the booty call I'd come for wouldn't be happening after all.
"No! No. This isn't a thing. We were just drunk; it didn't mean anything," he explained frantically, approaching me even as I backed away from the thick smell of sex and pheromones. "You know I love you."
Naomi's voice was gutted and trembling with tears. "Julian!"
My limit for drama was already reached at this point and I had no desire to watch it go down any further. "Okay… let's bring it back down a notch now. I'm going to go and you two deal with whatever is going on between you; I hope we can still do business together like adults," I said, crossing to the dresser and picking up the lipstick I'd kept there; the only thing of mine in his house, before I turned to go.
I hoped it would be that simple and that I could walk out then, and that neither of them would hear from me for a while, but before I reached the door, I felt Julian's strong grip on my arm.
"No, Aisling, don't do this. It was a mistake. Don't go," he begged frantically, eyes red and his grip tightening on my wrist.
"Let go of me, Julian." I was stunned by his sudden aggression and tried to instinctively snatch my hand back from his, but before I could, I felt the shift in the atmosphere as a powerful smell of mint pheromones poured out of his body, thickening the air and surrounding me like a sharp prison of thorns.
It had been years since I had been near an alpha who released deliberately.
Most of them knew better; a deliberate release was considered an act of aggression in every pack with any sense of law, and the punishment for it was severe, especially when it was aimed at the mother of the alpha and a member of the Riven Ruling Council, even if Julian had no idea who I was.
He knew the law as well as I did but he was doing it anyway because in his panic, his toxic alpha traits had probably whispered that it was the only tool he had left, and that if he flooded the room with what he was, my body would obey him before my mind could catch up.
He had miscalculated.
I had worn a silver suppressor ring since I was fifteen, when I started the research that would eventually become The Cure; and while it mostly kept my wolf at bay, it also worked as a barrier between me and everyone else's pheromones, which was the only thing that kept me functional when I operated and worked with so many alphas and had to spend hours in the lab without my own heat interrupting my work.
So many years later, my body had learned to distrust any alpha's chemical signal as an intruder, so the moment the pheromones hit me, my system revolted, my stomach turned and my vision swam.
And underneath it all, a cold, furious annoyance rose up in me, clearing my head in an instant. I turned and hit him as hard as I could, my fist connecting with his jaw hard enough to rock his head back, and I heard Naomi scream as Julian's body crumpled straight to the ground.
I didn't wait for him to recover before quickly walking out of the room and closing the door behind me.
The apartment was one of the fancier buildings in town and the walls were thick, but it was still a building filled with shifters so a commotion would attract some attention, and I noticed someone down the hall had already opened their door to check.
I knew immediately that if I stayed one more second, my face would be attached to this scene by morning.
The council and the elders would find out, and Riven, which had barely tolerated the Alpha Dowager's quiet life behind her title for years, would suddenly remember that she was a woman who could cause a scandal and had done so before; the alliances would stall and my son Torin would have to answer for me.
Despite the dizziness and the nausea, I pushed myself down the stairs and though I don't remember getting to the street, I remember the cold, the sound of my high heels against the pavement and the feel of my hand braced against the wall at one point because the nausea had doubled.
A familiar car was idling at the curb; there were few of its kind in Riven, and I felt relieved as I pulled the door open and climbed into the seat, grateful that my driver Elias had lingered longer than usual and I was able to catch him here.
"The seaside villa," I managed to say with my teeth clenched, the gland on my neck throbbing as the lingering bitter minty smell of Julian's alpha pheromones fought to sink into my skin and to subdue and dominate mine.
The pain of holding back was still excruciating despite the fact that I was already so far away from Julian, and a familiar feeling of bitterness and anger filled my mind as tears filled my eyes.
Why the hell had I gotten so comfortable with Julian that I would walk around without proper protection?
The man behind the wheel didn't answer, which was typical of Elias and which I appreciated, and I watched the street slide past the window while my body burned itself clean.
Fifteen minutes later, the car stopped at the seaside area, and I stumbled out of the car before it had fully shut down.
I unceremoniously kicked off my shoes at the edge of the sand and struggled to push myself straight into the sea, dress and all, and I didn't stop walking until I was at a deep end; deep enough that I could sink myself under.
