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Chapter One

Nina

Ihave been driving up this mountain for twenty minutes and the road is getting worse.

Gravel. Mud. Switchbacks tight enough that I’m steering Mara’s borrowed Subaru with both hands and my jaw clenched, rain sheeting across the windshield, Douglas firs pressing in so close the branches scrape the passenger side. No guardrails. No signs. No indication that anyone has driven this road in the last decade except for the tire tracks ahead of me, perfectly centered.

Mara told me the lodge was “secluded.”

Mara also told me the pay was excellent and the work was straightforward and her exact words were “he’s a little difficult,” and I should have asked more questions about all of those things. But I was between jobs and my savings account was starting to look like a countdown and when your best friend says a reclusive billionaire needs a property manager, you say yes and Google the address later. The formal offer turned out to describe something else entirely: modernize the estate’s finances. Mara’s grasp of job titles is approximately as reliable as her grasp of the word “secluded.”

The address was not helpful. The GPS gave up six miles ago.

I come around the last switchback and the trees open and I slow the car.

The lodge is three stories of dark timber and stone set against the mountain. Enormous windows. A slate roof disappearing into the low clouds. A porch that wraps the whole front face with hand-hewn railings and iron lanterns already lit against the gray afternoon. Smoke rising from a chimney. Everything around it is forest and mist and silence.

I stare at it through the rain on the windshield.

Mara failed to mention this part. Or maybe she mentioned it and I wasn’t listening because I was too busy asking about the salary.

I park next to a black SUV that looks like it’s never been muddy, which is a feat on this road. I check my reflection. Hair pulled back. The good blouse. Laptop bag, folder of questions about the estate’s financial systems. Mara described them as “ancient.” She used the same word for my new employer—“an ancient gold dragon,” delivered in the hushed voice she uses for true crime podcasts—and I assumed she was being dramatic about both. Mara has been dramatic about everything since she mated Cage. Last week she called me because he built her a bookshelf without being asked and she cried about it for ten minutes.

I love her. She is unhinged.

Rain mists against my face as I walk to the front door. Washington rain. The kind that doesn’t fall so much as hang in the air, getting into everything, making the whole world smell like wet pine and cold stone.

I ring the bell.

I wait. Long enough that I consider ringing again, decide against it, reconsider, and then the door opens and every thought I’ve ever had leaves my head.

He is wearing a three-piece suit.

On a mountain. In the rain. Charcoal, perfectly fitted, with a white shirt and no tie. He looks like the kind of man who has never in his life owned a pair of sweatpants. Silver-blond hair. Pale eyes. A face with the kind of bone structure that makes you forget what you were about to say. Tall. Muscular but lean.

“Miss Lake.”

His voice is low and precise, and there’s something underneath the accent I can’t locate. Not British. Not anything I recognize.

“Mr. Lowe. Hi. It’s good to—”

“Come in.”

He steps back. Not far enough. I have to angle past him through the doorway, and when I do I catch his scent and something in my body goes very still.

Old leather. Aged whiskey, warm and dark.

My omega responds. Not the way Mara described her first meeting with Cage, all collapsing knees and white-knuckle steering and visions on a highway. This is quieter. More insidious. A low pull in my belly. A flush of warmth across my chest that has nothing to do with the fire I can see burning in the massive stone hearth ahead of me. And underneath the warmth, something unfamiliar: my omega waking up, like she’s been asleep for twenty-seven years and someone just kicked the door in.

I have been around alphas my entire adult life. I have worked for them, argued with them, gone on two truly forgettable coffee dates with them. My omega registered every one of them the way you register elevator music. Present. Ignorable. Faintly annoying.

This is not elevator music. This is a fire alarm.

I file that observation away and focus on the lodge, because the lodge is extraordinary. Two-story ceilings. Exposed timber beams. A stone fireplace big enough to stand upright in. Hardwood floors with rugs that look handwoven and old and probably cost more than every piece of furniture I have ever owned combined. Leather furniture. Built-in bookshelves covering an entire wall, floor to ceiling, completely full. Oil paintings in heavy frames. A staircase curving to the second floor in dark wood and iron.

Rain on the windows. Fire in the hearth. The whole place smells like cedar and woodsmoke and old books, and him.

“Your room is on the second floor,” he says behind me. “East wing. Your office is adjacent. Both have been prepared.”