Page 89 of Queen of Diamonds

“This is about a scent match,” he said coolly. “The moment they find out, they’ll strip every choice from us—from you.”

I almost dropped the knife as he spoke words he could have pulled from my own heart.

“What are you saying?”

“I want you to choose us because you want us. My pack. My family.”

His family?

The way he said that was like nothing I’d ever heard before—not from Alphas like him.

“You want…?” I frowned, the words so foreign to me it was hard to process them. “What?”

“Let us court you before anyone learns. If you don’t want us, we’ll never tell.”

The knife slipped further as I tried to find a lie in his pretty blue eyes, but even his scent, a beautiful winter forest, was serene, as if saying these words was a weight off his chest.

“Why would you do that?”

The Brotherhood were the underdogs in the brewing discord, and my family was known for honouring fate. For him, this was an opportunity like no other.

“I love my pack, but we were chosen for each other—they were chosen for me. I don’t want that happening again.” He tilted his head. “You’re the last choice we get to make. I want you to fall for us first.”

I blinked, still struggling to process what his words meant. “A scent match means it’s already been decided,” I said. And besides, who would be mad enough to reject a scent match?

“I don’t see it that way.” Zed grinned. “If you could walk away, doesn’t that make the choice all the more… powerful?”

And Zed had kept his word.

For four months, the Maverick pack met me in secret. And the freedom they’d offered me was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

It had been the sweetest time of my life. Where I learned to slip from my father’s careful watch and tumble into their arms. Knight had taken me on dates to the movies like we were just normal people, with popcorn and jump scares. I’d found a gift in the garden, a set of earrings, each a delicate crown with a diamond stud. Once, I’d got away for the day, and we’d driven to the Grand Canyon and stayed so long my father almost sent out a search. As things became more dangerous, they became all the more exciting. Kyan had visited me, knocking on my balcony with flowers like something from a movie, so I’d learned how to sneak into their home and surprise them in their rooms.

I’d fallen harder for them than I ever thought possible.

I’d fallen for them in a little bubble of paradise, a courting of my dreams, without my parents’ oversight, without the world knowing.

32

GLADE

I’d never caught up quicker to my reality than I did when my eyes opened in this locked room. I’d had years to prepare, years of false starts. The scent of roses was the first thing in my senses every time I woke, even if, for every other time, it had faded.

All, so that this time, when I opened my eyes and the roses were real, I could breathe. So that I could find the courage to push myself up and look around at the room with dark wallpaper, a standing mirror in the corner, and a vacant red velvet armchair beside a fireplace.

So I could hold the tears in, one shaky breath at a time, as if a numb blanket of snow settled over my mind.

This was the fate always destined to find me, and in a way it was a painful relief.

All those nightmares had been for something.

I waited, seated on the edge of the bed, hands clasped in my lap. Finally, when too many minutes passed in foreboding silence, and the door opened, I held my head high and faced the monster who had caught up to me at last.

Ace Maverick was everything I remembered.

A few years had added sharper angles to his lean face. He was twenty-seven now. Far too young to have the power he had, or the know-how to wield it the way he did, but Ace wasn’t anyone’s idea of normal.

Not by any metric.

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