Prologue - Pink Snowflakes
-Caz-
With a deep inhale, my nose filled with the scent of frosty, fresh air. I took in the quiet night around me, grateful to have slipped away from the crowded ballroom of drunken politicians, lusty socialites, and money-hungry lawyers.
Fuck. Guess I was bound to become one of those lawyers someday. It was the family business, after all.
I had been glued to my father’s side all night, while my stepmother floated among the guests, conversing with the best and the worst of them, that delicate smile plastered on her face.
I had to give it to her; she handled this lifestyle much better than my mother did.
“Casimir,” my father startled me out of my thoughts as he joined me. The pungent smell of cigarettes filled the air, and I knew he must’ve snuck out here to smoke away from his wife.
“I’m sure you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all, but it’ll start to feel more instinctual to you,” my father said as we both watched the dazzling gold light spill from the wide windows of his grand ballroom.
Only the type of people my father fraternized with still built houses with fucking ballrooms in the floor plan.
“How has life been at Olympus? And at my branch in Seattle, are they still treating you well?” he asked conversationally.
Olympus was one of the country’s top supernatural schools and just as difficult to get into as any Ivy League school. It was only with my father’s help that the board even considered my application in the first place.
“School is good. I’m glad it’s my last year, though. I’m ready to get out of the Pacific Northwest and back home. Back to DC,” I said with a casual shrug. He glanced at me questioningly, and I knew what he really wanted to hear. “And your Seattle branch is great; I haven’t had any issues. I’ve learned a lot while clerking there.”
With a smug tone, he nodded as he said, “Good. They knew who you were, but I told them not to go easy on you. You won’t become a good attorney if you can’t handle pressure.”
What he meant was that I wouldn’t live up to the family name if I couldn’t handle the demands and pressure that come with being an attorney, the kind of attorney my family had bred for centuries.
He wanted to know whether I could handle BigLaw without cracking under pressure or bringing shame to the family name.
Even if I didn’t actually have the family name.
“You’ve come a long way since your sophomore year of college,” he continued. “I had always wanted you in my life, but I honored your mother’s request that I keep you away from my family’s business. She was never one for this lifestyle, as you know.”
There was no disdain in his voice as he spoke. A year ago, he’d already explained that he’d always loved and respected my mother, even if she wasn’t suited to his lifestyle. He held no ill will toward her, and looking back, I couldn’t remember my mother ever saying anything negative about him.
In all honesty, mentions of my father rarely came up in my youth. I think my mom was waiting for me to ask about him or inquire about his whereabouts, but I hadn’t really cared to ask.
I had her and my two best friends. I had a happy, normal life. I earned good grades and was a respected athlete and student. But now, just four years since I held my mother’s hand while she breathed her last breath, I found myself in the one place I’d never dreamed of being.
The lavish Harrington estate during their annual Holiday Gala.
Still felt strange about how natural this lifestyle was to me. Guess that would be the Harrington blood running through my veins.
“I’m proud of you, son,” my father said abruptly. “You’ll do great things for our family.”
With a decisive nod, my father stubbed out his cigarette and made his way back to the packed ballroom. The scent of heavy, expensive perfume tainted the air, and I could hear the loud cackling of vapid socialites as they tried to flirt their way into marriage proposals for their simple-minded daughters.
I’d already had several women slip me contact details in my pockets when they thought others weren’t looking.
Some were for themselves and some for their daughters.
And some for both.
It was disgusting, but I had just given them a tight-lipped smile before sidestepping them to move on to the next cluster of vultures.
I wasn’t ready to step back into that mess anytime soon. But I would have to eventually.
It was because of my father that Jacen managed to be chosen for the Supernatural Investigative Forces, otherwise known as “SIF,” intensive summer training course. And Korey was allowed access to the most deranged minds of supernaturals in our country, with unlimited access to interview and study them as he continued working toward his doctorate in psychiatry.
And that I wouldn’t have to worry about money while maintaining good college grades. Instead, I was clerking at the nation’s most elite law firm while attending the world’s top law school for our kind.
I wasn’t here for greed like most of these people, or to claim a family name that was never meant to be mine.
No, I was here for my soon-to-be pack brothers and me. I had half a year of law school left before I’d move back to DC, where Jacen would be starting as a New Agent Trainee for SIF and Korey would be finishing his last years of college at one of the elite supernatural universities in DC.
This was for them just as much as it was for me. A better life for us all. A chance to live our dreams and make the most of what this world had to offer us.
Just as I was working up the nerve to head back into the ballroom, I took a deep breath. Instead of inhaling the frosty scent of winter in the cool night air, my wolf senses caught the intoxicating scent of pink pepper and wisteria.
All the hair on my body stood at attention, as did my cock, which was no longer flaccid. Instead, my entire body suddenly felt alive for the first time.
I felt as if I’d been struck by lightning while I free-fell into space.
Energy coursed beneath my skin as my heart soared higher than the clouds. My alpha wolf perked up as something ancient and ethereal called to him from the depths of our souls.
Mate.
A high-pitched feminine scream ripped through the silent air, coming from somewhere within the hedge maze my stepmother had designed for her gardens. Without missing a beat, I ran toward the sound, terrified that it came from my mate and that something horrible was happening to her.
I heard shouting from behind me, coming from the direction of my father’s house, but I ignored it as I dove into the first opening of the hedge maze I could find. The feminine scream was no longer audible in the night, so I had no idea which direction to head.
Yet a powerful howl suddenly split the silent night, and shivers ran down my spine as my wolf raised his head, yearning to howl back to his mate.
I jogged through the maze, rounding hedges only to hit a dead end, then turned back and headed in a new direction.
When I finally came to a stop in what seemed like the center of the maze, large snowflakes had begun to fall serenely as I panted heavily into the night, taking deep breaths to steady my racing heart.
Her scent was strongest here, so I knew she was close.
I’d never been much of a romantic, but I spun around to take in my surroundings, curious whether she’d see this meeting spot as fortuitous as I did or frown at the dead flower bushes that supposedly made a gorgeous garden in the spring.
There was a towering iron gate that would usually be hidden among the scrub and flowering blooms, but the dead vines wrapped around it couldn’t hide it in the wintertime.
The gate creaked loudly in the night as I pushed the heavy wrought-iron gate, only to find a secluded secret garden tucked away from the center of the maze.
A towering fountain stood at the center, carved from marble and inlaid with bold mosaic colors that must sparkle in the sunlight as the water flowed. It was off this time of year, understandably so, judging by the heavy snowfall that had already begun to accumulate on the fountain’s bridge.
I found a bench tucked in the corner that wasn’t surrounded by dead foliage, given that it was positioned under a Black Crape Myrtle tree.
At the sound of the gate creaking open, I swung around, still on my feet, to see one of the most beautiful creatures ever prowl over the dead vines as it entered the secret garden. With hair whiter than snow clinging to her wet fur and startling, crystal-blue eyes, I felt myself freeze as my gaze collided with hers.
My mate.
I barely had time to acknowledge my curiosity about discovering her in wolf form before she bounded toward me and leaped high into the air.
Time seemed to stand still for a few moments as her teeth sank into my flesh and I felt my heartstrings tug from my body as she marked me, binding our souls together and making me hers for all eternity.
Then life sped up again, and just as my back collided with the cold, hard earth beneath her dense weight, our souls collided and merged into one being. A single yet powerful spirit of energy, split between the shells of two mortal forms.
I didn’t have time to register the amount of blood spilling from the brutalized wound in my neck, nor was I even consciously aware of the pool of my life essence forming around my still body.
Instead, I was in awe. Utter, complete euphoria as I felt myself come alive for the very first time in my life.
But that was short-lived as panic began to take hold of me.
Panic... and fear.
I began to gasp for air, yet choked on the cold winter frost that burned my lungs with each deep inhale. It wasn’t until I managed to slow my breathing that I realized it wasn’t even my own panic and terror I was feeling.
It was my mate’s.
She was still on top of me, still in her wolf form, but she’d released her bite from my neck and was frantically licking the wound, whining pitifully.
With a shaky hand, I reached up and began stroking the soft fur on her head, attempting to calm her down. I couldn’t speak since blood was now flooding my throat, and it was taking everything I had to remain conscious for as long as possible.
My sole focus and concern was my mate. My beautiful, precious mate, whose name I didn’t even know, or what she looked like in her human form.
But none of that mattered.
I felt her terror as she watched and desperately tried to staunch my blood flow with her tongue. I shuddered at the self-hatred she felt knowing she was the sole cause of my predicament.
And I almost cried aloud at the heartbreaking agony she felt as she watched my life slowly fade before her eyes, knowing I was in pain yet unable to help me.
I couldn’t speak... but I was able to communicate with her mentally.
“It’s okay, mate. It’s going to be okay,” I tried to soothe her through our newly formed telepathic link. It would’ve startled me that our bond was already so powerful that our wolf’s gifts were beginning to manifest so quickly, but I couldn’t spare any time to think about anything but her in that moment.
I began coughing up blood, barely turning my head before choking on it. Her weight lifted from my body, and it felt as if my own limbs had been torn from me. I wanted to cry out for her, begging her to touch me so our connection wouldn’t be broken. Would never be broken.
Yet I barely managed to open my eyes when a shot blasted through the night, and I felt rather than heard my mate’s terrified whine as her heavy body collapsed onto the unyielding ground nearby.
As painful as it was, no pain would ever amount to the pure agony of not seeing my mate one last time.
With a muffled groan, I managed to turn my head the other way before my fading eyes met my mate’s crystal-blue gaze.
Agony ripped through my chest at the lifelessness in her as my eyes fell upon her unseeing stare. She was in her human form now, facedown and naked upon the snow-covered ground. But my vision was wavering, and only two details seemed to pierce the darkness engulfing me.
Pink.
And snowflakes.
A perfect, large snowflake had settled on one of her long lashes before the darkness took hold and ripped me from my other half.
It ripped us apart before we even had the chance to experience togetherness.
“I’ll find you in the afterlife, snowflake,” I thought desperately down the link, even though no signs of life could be felt on her end. “I’ll find you there and keep you. We won’t ever be separated again, love. Not for all eternity.”
