"Silver." I growl. "Want to tell me why the hell you have this girl prisoner in her own home?"

I hear Silver scoff down the line, the noise making my blood boil. "She's not a prisoner, Axel. They are there for her protection. To save her from lowlife pond scum like you." I crunch the radio in my hand.

"What? So, she can end up in the hands of a bunch of shitheads likeyou?"

The guards shuffle on the spot, exchanging worried glances, their hands hovering over their weapons.

I'd like to see them try to use them. I'll have them flat out and cold before they've left their holsters.

"You can't get away with this, Silver," I snarl.

"I'm not trying to get away with anything. Get your head out of your own ass, Axel. If the girl doesn't want to see you, that's not my problem."

Oh, she is going to want to see me. Because telling me I can't have the thing I want is one sure fire way to make me want it more.

This girl just became a million times more attractive. Especially now I know Pack Boston's sniffing around too.

It makes me all the more determined.

I am going to go all out and woo the fucking panties off this girl. They think they can steal her from under my nose? No fucking way.

"Let me tell you something, motherfucker," I growl down the radio, "this girl is going to be mine. She's going to be Pack York's before the month's out. In fact, we'll have her laid out in our nest, rutting her hard through her heat as she moans our names in a matter of days."

"No fucking way, Axel. This one's ours. I had to peel the little thing off me last night."

I crunch the radio so hard in my hand it splinters and sparks and fizzles dead.

Yeah, we'll see about that.

Forget screwing Pack Boston over with our real estate deal. This time I'm going to show them there's only one real pack in town. Only one pack every omega is desperate to join. They think they can win her over? Good luck to them.

I smile.

I always win my battles.

7

Bea

"You know who he is, right?"Courtney says, as she closes the door behind the slightly bewildered security guard.

I shrug, examining the packets of drugs the doctor has handed to me. "I told you. I'm not interested in men right now." Certainly, not super-hot ones with eyes that make my knees shake. "I need to concentrate on pulling myself together. And now I have this added complication I need to navigate." I hold up all the pills, wondering how I'm ever going to remember to take them all.

"But he's Axel York. Head of Pack York!"

I shrug a second time. But when I look up from the pills, Courtney, Aunt Julia and the doctor are all staring at me.

"What?"

"He's a very, very eligible bachelor," Aunt Julia says.

"I'm not in the market for a bachelor right now," I remind them.

"His pack owns half the city. They're like super rich. I'm talking private jets, yachts, villas – the lot." Courtney disappears into her bedroom and returns with an armful of gossip magazines that she dumps on the sofa beside me. "How do you not know who they are?"

"Because the only magazine I've read for the last 26 years has been theNaw Creek Mercury." And some wedding magazines but I don't want to think about that.

"Every unattached omega in the city – and some mated ones too probably – wants to lay their hands on those men."