The Gala

The Blackwood Foundation gala was exactly the kind of event I'd never attend as a guest.

Crystal chandeliers dripping light across marble floors. Women in gowns I couldn't have afforded with a year of tips. Men in suits so perfectly tailored they looked like they'd been born in them.

I was here with a tray of champagne and a smile that was starting to hurt.

"Keep moving, Cruz." My manager, a woman named Janet who always smelled like menthol cigarettes, nudged me toward the main ballroom. "The CEO just arrived. Look sharp."

The CEO.

Rafe Vance.

I'd seen his picture in the event briefing, dark hair, silver-grey eyes, a face built for trouble. Youngest billionaire in the city, ran a foundation that funded conservation efforts, hospitals, educational programs.

Also, apparently, the kind of man who made everyone in the room go quiet when he walked in.

I felt it before I saw him.

A ripple through the crowd. Conversations pausing. Heads turning.

He entered through the main doors, flanked by two men who moved like bodyguards, all sharp eyes and controlled tension. But no one was looking at them.

They were looking at him.

I should have kept walking.

Should have weaved through the crowd, offered my champagne, stayed invisible like every good server learns to do.

Instead, I stopped.

And he looked at me.

The world went silent.

Not figuratively. The sound dropped out of the world. The clink of glasses, the murmur of conversation, the string quartet in the corner, all of it vanished into a ringing emptiness.

His eyes locked onto mine across thirty feet of marble floor and I couldn't move. My lungs seized. A fissure split through my ribs, sharp and sudden, like a bone snapping clean.

He went rigid.

His pupils blew wide, grey irises swallowed by black, and he whispered a word I didn't understand.

"Mate."

I dropped my tray.

Champagne glasses shattered against marble. Liquid splattered across a woman's designer heels. Someone gasped.

I didn't care.

I turned and ran.

The service corridor was supposed to be empty.

I burst through the door, chest heaving, pulse wild in my throat, mind screaming that something was wrong, that what I'd just felt wasn't possible, that I needed to get out of here right now,

"Stop."

His voice. Right behind me.

I spun.

He stood in the corridor doorway, blocking the only exit. This close, he was bigger than he'd looked across the ballroom. Taller. Broader. Taking up space like he owned it.

Taking up space like he owned everything.

"I don't know what just happened." My voice came out shaky. "But I'm leaving now. Please move."

"No."

"Then I'll scream."

"You won't." He stepped closer. "Something just happened. Something neither of us expected. And you're going to let me explain."

"No."

"Yes." Another step. His eyes, were they lighter now? Almost silver? "Because I can see the questions in your face. I can feel them through the..." He stopped. Visibly collected himself. "You're scared. You have every right to be. But running won't help."

"Watch me."

I darted left.

He caught me.

One moment I was moving, the next his hand was around my wrist and my back was against the wall and he was there, everywhere, his scent filling my lungs. Rain-soaked pine and woodsmoke and something underneath, feral, territorial, that made my blood hum.

"Let me go."

"I will. I swear I will." His voice was rough. Strained. "But first you need to know what you are."

"What I am?"

"My mate." The word seemed to hurt him. "The first human mate in three hundred years."

I stared at him.

"You're insane."

"I wish I were." He released my wrist. Stepped back. Put distance between us that my body immediately tried to close. "What you felt when our eyes met. That crack in your chest. That pull."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're lying." A muscle jumped beneath his left eye. "I can hear your heartbeat. It's racing. Not from fear, from the bond. From fighting it."

"There's no bond. I don't even know you."

"The bond doesn't care." He ran a hand through his hair. The controlled CEO from the ballroom was cracking, something wild showing through the polish. "It doesn't ask permission. It just... snaps into place. And once it does..."

Screaming from the ballroom.

Glass breaking.

His head snapped toward the door.

"No." The word was barely human. "Not now."

"What's happening?"

He didn't answer. He grabbed my hand, heat raced up my arm from the contact, and pulled me deeper into the corridor.

"We're leaving."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"You are." He looked back at me, and his eyes were glowing. Actually glowing, silver-gold like nothing I'd ever seen. "Because the people who just crashed that gala came for you. And I am not letting them have you."

Another scream. Closer this time.

And then I heard the howling.