Chapter 1
Throw the Dice
In my experience, private casino back rooms were plush, quiet oases, well stocked with top-shelf liquor, with absurdly attractive staff on call to cater to my every whim. Chairs so comfortable you could sleep in them, or even fuck on them—the staff really would cater to my every whim.
I shifted in my seat, plastic armrests creaking, trying to find an angle for my ass that didn’t squish it against unyieldingly flat metal.
My mouth had gone so dry I’d have killed for even a lukewarm glass of nasty Vegas tap water.
My poker rooms had always been stocked with chilled Alpine mineral water.
New experiences were highly overrated.
Fuck this. All I’d done was mind my own business, doing my best to keep from getting crushed in between my overachiever little brother’s single-minded drive to rule our family company with an iron fist and my parents’ obsession with maintaining the perfect image of a wealthy, high-profile pack full of vigorous alphas. I’d simply wanted to be left alone to drink, fuck, and spend my time—and money—as I pleased.
My father’s lies had put an end to that.
Cut off. My trust broken and used to pay off debts, not all of them even mine.
Well, to be fair, many of them were mine. But that had been what the credit cards werefor, damn it.
I’d been left with nowhere to turn but the Morrigan casino, where I’d still had a line of credit and VIP status—at least until they’d apparently figured out, belatedly, that my situation had changed. Counting cards came as naturally to me as breathing. I should’ve been able to get ahead.
Fuck. An attempted deep breath that didn’t go all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, and I had to stop brooding. It certainly wouldn’t help me in here.
The metal table in front of me gleamed dully in the flickering light of the tube fluorescents overhead. Plain gray walls when I turned my head. Like a prison, or a police interrogation room.
At least they hadn’t tied me up. Maybe they didn’t have any restraints that would’ve held an alpha werewolf, or maybe they just knew they didn’t have a good justification to treat me that way, the fuckers. They’d given me the suite and credit at the tables voluntarily. All I’d done was walk in the door.
The room didn’t have a clock, and they’d taken my phone and my watch along with my other personal effects. Illegally, I was pretty sure, and I was going to have their asses for that…once I had the chance.
But it felt like hours since I’d given up shouting and banging on the door—whichwasstrong enough to hold an alpha werewolf, it turned out. Maybe that explained the lack of restraints. I’d picked up the chair, meaning to beat it against the door too, but then set it down again. Where would I sit if I broke it? The dusty concrete floor? In jeans worth more than a month’s paycheck for one of those fucking asshole goons who’d pulled me away from the cashier’s window on the casino floor and taken me back here? Yeah, no.
Why hadn’t I resisted them, caused a scene? I was cursing myself for that now, but at the time, I’d assumed a supervisor would be attending to my needs personally, somewhere more private, and had sent security to escort me safely to a back office.
And so they had, in a manner of speaking.
More endless time dragged past, and I tried again to find a comfortable position in this miserable excuse for a chair.
Finally, footsteps and voices filtered in from the hallway. One voice stood out, deep and commanding. A little involuntary shiver went down my spine. That didn’t sound like some security peon with delusions of grandeur.
At least they’d finally realized I deserved the attention of someone with authority. Because anyone that voice belonged to had authority, I had no doubt of that.
The door opened, and three men stepped in. My nose twitched. My werewolf senses, the part of me that interpreted the presence of magic via instinct and smell and something I could almost taste on the air, went on high alert.
Most of the magic was coming from the shorter man on the left, a freaky-looking guy with a handsome face that was way too smooth and expressionless. A warlock, maybe, because I couldn’t really place his scent, and he certainly wasn’t a shifter.
And I immediately dismissed the second man. He had the trying-to-look-expensive-and-failing necktie beloved of middle management everywhere, and a faux-brass nametag with the casino logo on it. No one important wore a nametag.
But the third guy. Once my gaze caught on him, it stuck.
Everything about him screamed alpha, from his height and broad-shouldered build to his very faintly glowing eyes, and everything in between. And he had that presence. You couldn’t fake it.
My father had tried to fake it for decades.
I’d been shocked when the truth came out. That he’d been using a shaman’s magic to imitate an alpha’s traits, covering up what he saw as his shame, and projecting all of his insecurities onto his sons.
Shocked. But not surprised at all. Because he’d never quite had it, that intangible quality that marked a shifter with the enhanced magic of an alpha. And with a couple of months since the revelation to brood over it, I’d thought of a lot of clues I really shouldn’t have missed, like the way he’d always seemed to hate me despite how proud he pretended to be of his alpha son.
