Chapter 9

BLAKE

I woke up to what seemed to be a dream. Lacey was in my arms, snoring cutely against my chest. She was my mate. Was this even real? The beast inside me roared in triumph. She was mine. At the same time, my heart soared with happiness.

There was only one thing that dampened my mood this morning. It was Friday, which meant I had to leave her and Emilia to go meet with Fisher. After pursuing him for months, I was so close to my goal. Yet, I didn't give a shit about the coffee company one bit if it meant I had to be away from my family.

Over breakfast, Lacey seemed to sense my unease. "This is the moment you've been waiting for. You'll never forgive yourself if you don't go for it and do your best."

She nudged Emilia with her elbow. "Besides, we girls are going to Santa's village and see the reindeer, today. We'll still be here waiting for you when you come back from work."

Emilia nodded. "I'm going to meet all the elves and ride on the reindeer," she announced around a mouthful of pancakes.

I chuckled. "Well, maybe you can feed the reindeer. I don't think they'll like you riding on them."

Lacey was right. I had to do this. This company had to grow to the next level in order to last into the next generation. It was for my family's sake. I had to remember why I was doing this.

When I walked into the private club to Huxley and Cain's table, Fisher almost leaped out of his seat. His face was twisted in surprise, and fear. Not only did he not know I was coming, but he was also afraid of me for some reason.

After some small talk and shooting the shit over our drinks, Cain and Huxley made an excuse to leave the table. I was finally all alone with Fisher.

There was no use pretending or beating around the bush. I cut straight to the chase. "You and both know why I am here. Neither of us is going to leave this table until you agree to sell the company to me."

The old man threw back his head and downed his entire glass of whiskey in a single gulp. "I can't do that, Wulfthorn."

I growled and banged my fist on the table. "Why the fuck not? How much is Unibrod offering you for the company?"

He scoffed. "Not enough."

"Then why won't you hear me out?"

Fisher sighed. His tired eyes looked down at the table and at that moment, every decade of his age was written in the lines of his face. "Unibrod is threatening me with a secret that's supposed to be buried and dead. My daughter is engaged to Senator Norton's son. I can't let this come out. It would destroy my family."

I frowned. It all made sense now. Fisher was being blackmailed.

"If I get Unibrod off of your back, will you agree to sell to me?"

Fisher paused. "Then we can talk business. I'm sure you know how they work. After all, they are your kind too, Wulfthorn."

I nodded. Unibrod was run by the Nightblood wolf pack. Based out of London, the tentacles of their syndicate ran deep and wide all over the world, aided by their ties to the Russian mob and the vampire clans. If I tried to take them on, I was potentially bringing on the wrath of multiple powers.

"I'll handle it."

After my meeting with Fisher, I decided to head back home. While Pete, my driver, weaved through the mountainous roads leading back to Paradise Peaks, I called Reeve.

"Hey. Fisher's willing to sell if we take down Unibrod. He's being blackmailed."

"Are you going to go ahead?" Reeve asked.

"Yes."

He paused. For a moment, I didn't know if my business partner was going to go along with this. He knew full well the risks of what I was proposing.

Reeve let out a long sigh. "Only a multinational take down. No big deal. I'll keep an eye out for the Nightbloods and figure something out."

I paused, unsure if I should tell him. Reeve was like a brother to me. Though we were not related, we shared a bond that rivaled that created by blood.

"Dude, what's up?"

"I'm mated," I blurted out.

"How?" Reeve asked. His tone was incredulous. "Is it the nanny?"

My silence revealed the answer.

Reeve laughed. "Ha! I knew it. You've been weird for weeks once she showed up. Congrats, dude."

"Thanks, Reeve. I owe you."

A beeping tone on the phone interrupted our call. I looked at the phone and frowned. It was Mark, my other driver, who was supposed to be bringing Emilia and Lacey home from the reindeer farm by now.

"I have to take this call."

"Sir, there was an accident. Someone ran our car off the road. Miss Emilia and Miss Lacey--"

My heart plummeted. No...

At that moment, my car drove through a tunnel, disconnecting the call.

"Fuck!" I screamed. As soon as we emerged from the tunnel, I called him back.

"Where are you? Are they okay?"

"Yes. They're shaken, but nobody's hurt."

I tapped on Pete's shoulder. He nodded and signaled that he was going to pull into the trailhead parking lot coming up. Immediately, I put the phone on speakerphone.

"Where are you?" I repeated.

"Pinenut Pass, just beyond the ski resort."

My driver swung into the parking lot and spun the car around with a loud screech of tires. We had just driven past the junction to Pinenut Pass.

"Stay there and keep them safe," I commanded. "I'm on my way."

I opened the door and jumped out of my car before it came to a full stop. My girls were sitting on a rock next to the side of the road. Lacey held Emilia in her arms, rocking her as she cried. Their car had crashed into a large pine tree. The front was crushed into the tree trunk and the rear was damaged too.

Rushing over to my family, I ran my hands over Lacey and Emilia, checking them for any injuries. Lacey had a cut on her forehead that was already swelling. I brushed my thumb across her temple. The trail of blood from the cut had dried and crusted already. At last, I was satisfied with my examination and pulled them tightly into my arms.

"I could have lost you," I whispered. My voice shook as I spoke. "Both of you."

"We're okay," Lacey murmured. "Mark handled the car like a pro. We got out unscathed."

"What happened?"

"A black car followed us from the farm. Mark noticed them and tried to shake them off, but then they rammed into us. Thank God this stretch of the road wasn't next to a cliff."

It still wasn't safe, I thought. We were sitting ducks on the side of the road. I had to get them home. Lifting Emilia in one arm, I helped Lacey to her feet with my other. We walked over to my car and I ushered them into the back seat.

While I had tended to my girls, Pete had helped Mark to the front passenger seat of the car. Mark was walking with a limp and he cradled his left arm to his chest with his right one.

"How are you?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he mumbled.

Pete shared a look with me that indicated he disagreed. I nodded. "Go to the hospital. All of them need to be checked out."

Mark grabbed my arm. "Boss, whoever followed us was a pro."

It was almost midnight by the time Lacey, Emilia, and Mark were cleared by the doctors. Mark had suffered two cracked ribs and a broken arm from the impact. He refused an overnight stay at the hospital for monitoring and insisted that he only needed to go to his hotel room to sleep it off. Lacey suffered a minor cut from the glass shattering and scraping her forehead. Thankfully, neither she nor Emilia were seriously injured.

As soon as we stepped into the lobby, the front desk staff handed me an express mail envelope. It was addressed to me at the hotel. Strange, but not important at the moment. The only thing I had to concern myself with was getting Lacey and Emilia home.

Lacey was given ibuprofen for any pain resulting from the crash. I was on orders from the doctors to watch both of them for any signs of concussion.

Once they were in bed and I was alone, I opened the envelope. It was a simple typed letter with two sentences.

Stay away from Fisher. Next time, your family will be at the bottom of a ravine.

I crushed the letter in my fist. It was the fucking Nightblood wolves. It had to be. I had been so distracted with tailing Fisher that I had not considered that Unibrod's lackeys were following us the entire time we were in Paradise Peaks. I had slipped up and it almost cost Lacey and Emilia their lives.

And Fisher wasn't my only distraction, a voice in my head whispered. As much as I loved Lacey, she was still a human. A weak point that would be easily exploited by my enemies. Unlike a she-wolf, Lacey was completely defenseless. This was what I had always feared. At that moment, I knew what I had to do.

I let out an anguished cry and went to the mini bar. Not caring about anything else, I drank straight from the bottle of vodka.

"Blake?" Lacey's soft voice pierced through the fog of anguish in my head.

She came up behind me and touched my shoulder. I shook her off and put distance between us.

I paced the room before I stopped and stared out the window. "We have to talk, Lacey." The words flowed out of my mouth despite my wolf screaming and clawing at my insides. "We've been moving too fast. I think we should take a break."

"What do you mean?"

I didn't need to turn around to know her chin was quivering as she spoke. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience. Unable to control what was happening, I watched the scene play out like it was a movie.

I took another swig of liquor for courage. "It was a mistake." My mind flashed back to Lacey sitting on the side of the road with the wreckage of the accident behind her. "We were never going to work out. You were hired to be the nanny. Your only job is to take care of my niece, not jump into my bed."

"Is that all you have to say?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat as the bitter words flowed out. "I think that concludes our meeting."

"You're such an ass." She stormed back to her room.

I waited until she slammed the door behind her before I threw the bottle across the room. It exploded against the wall and rained a thousand shards of glass onto the floor, just like my heart.

For the rest of the week, Lacey avoided me like the plague, only acknowledging my existence when prompted by Emilia. Her attention was focused solely on my niece. Even through her hurt, she was a professional. It was exactly what I asked her to do, but the coldness in her eyes every time she looked at me cut like glass.

We were like ghosts inhabiting the same apartment. What was supposed to be a joyous holiday was now laced with bitterness.

Since Unibrod's men were still out there, I didn't allow Lacey or Emilia to leave the hotel suite. Not even the hotel common areas downstairs were safe.

Emilia was starting to act up from being cooped up. She was regressing and today, it took Lacey two hours to convince her to eat her breakfast. I looked over at the shimmering Christmas tree and wondered what happened to our happy little family that was too short-lived.

My phone vibrated and lit up. It was Reeve.

"What is it?"

"Is that how you greet your newest favorite person?" Reeve teased.

I scoffed. "Who says that's you?"

"I will be very soon. Call down to the front desk and buzz me up, dude."

I tapped on the intercom unit on the wall and ordered the front desk to give Reeve the code to our floor.

What was he going on about now and why was he here in Paradise Peaks? But I was eager for a distraction from the silence of the apartment.

The elevator dinged before the doors opened and Reeve stepped out. He walked into my office and closed the door behind him.

Wordlessly, he grabbed the TV remote and flipped through the channels until the stock exchange floor popped up. One of the female talking heads flashed onto the screen.

"We have some breaking news. Unibrod Corporation stock has just been halted." The anchor paused as she listened to her earpiece. "Sources say there has been a raid by the authorities. All Unibrod facilities in the United States are to be shut down pending investigation."

I was stunned. "Did you have something to do with this?"

Reeve flashed a cocky grin. "What? Like it was hard? It didn't even take me two days to hack into Ulf Nightblood's computer." The joy in Reeve's voice was unmistakable. Like myself, he was stifled by the rules and laws we now had to abide by and itched to return to his unlawful origins. "The Nightbloods have skirted laws and regulations in every country they have operated in. It was only a matter of time before someone, ahem , ratted them out to the feds."

This was it. The moment we had been waiting for. We finally had leverage over the Nightbloods to make them back off, both from Fisher and from my family. I should have been ecstatic. So why was I numb?

Reeve glanced at me expectantly. The grin on his face slowly vanished. He waved his hand back and forth in front of my face. "Hello? Dude, what's wrong with you?"

"I ended it with Lacey," I mumbled.

He stared at me before punching me on the shoulder. "That's stupid, even for a doughhead like you."

I shrugged him off. "She's human, Reeve. You know what that means. Nightblood put a hit on her."

"Yeah, so what? Do you know how rare a true mate match is? Some of us go our entire lives without finding our mate, and here you are, pissing it all away because she's not a pure-blooded female wolf."

"That's not what I mean," I protested. "You know I hate that type of thinking. I'm nothing like my parents."

Reeve cut me off. "No? You still sound like them at the moment. We live dangerous lives, and now you've left her completely defenseless. If you want to keep her safe, then tell her the truth about our kind. Show her our world and prepare her for the threats. You know there's no backing out of a mating claim. You are the only one who can defend her now." Reeve paused his rant and let out a long breath. "Look, she's your mate. Nothing else matters."

He was right. Of course, Reeve was always right. "I have to talk to her."

"Damn, right you do. Go get your woman."

I exited the office to find the kitchen was empty. Emilia was in her room by herself, coloring with Mr. Snuffles.

"Emilia, where's Lacey?"

She shrugged. "Out."

My stomach dropped. Something was wrong. "Did she say where she was going?"

Emilia shook her head.

Fuck.

Reeve came in and sat down at the kids' play table where Emilia was coloring. "Go find her, Blake. I'll watch the kid."

Faster than I thought possible, I went downstairs and raced through the lobby. I called both of my drivers, but neither of them knew where Lacey was. That meant she was traveling by foot. The only places close enough to the hotel were the shopping area in town, and the lake near the hotel.

Suddenly, a searing pain twisted my gut. I doubled over. It was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. A sense of foreboding overcame my entire body.

"Lacey," I whispered. It was the mate bond. She was in trouble.

Relying on my wolf's connection with my mate, I ran toward the woods by the lake. The tops of the trees swayed softly in the wind, obscuring what was happening down on the ground.

It was too hard to track her this way. My human form dulled my senses and would only slow me down. Reeve's words echoed in my mind. I had to tell her the truth about what I was.

Triggering the change, I howled as muscles twisted and bones snapped as they changed shape. With sharp claws, I ripped at my clothes, tearing what wasn't already destroyed by the shift.

Soon, all the colors in front of me took on a new dimension. Smells and sounds were magnified a hundred times, to the point of being overwhelming. I dropped onto all fours as the shift completed its course.

Running toward the trees, I sniffed the air for her scent. It was faint, blown away by the wind, but I smelled her. My paws pounded on the dirt, as I let my nose and the mate bond guide me through the forest. With only the speed and agility of a wolf, I dashed between the trees and up the mountain. Finally, I spotted them. Lacey was sprawled on the ground, shivering in the snow with a large gray wolf on top of her.

Lacey's cries of fear made my vision turn red. I pounced on his back, knocking him away from her. At that moment, there were no more thoughts in my mind. I was pure anger and rage. All I wanted was his blood flowing down my throat as I ripped his neck out.

The wolf rolled from under me, jumping into the air to avoid the swipe of my claws.

I kicked at him with my hind legs, landing a satisfying blow. He flew into a nearby tree, his bones cracking from the impact. The wolf recovered and lunged at me again. This time, I was prepared. Aiming high, my claws tore through his side.

He fell in a heap on the ground. I landed on top of him, biting down on his throat and landing the final blow. Blood flowed from his torn neck like a bright red fountain.

The gray wolf gurgled one last time before the life faded from his eyes.

It was over. The chill of the winter wind blowing on my blood-soaked face replaced the heat of battle. I glanced up from my vanquished enemy to find Lacey looking at me with fear in her eyes.

As the last of the rage subsided, I shifted back into my human form.

At that moment, I realized what I looked like. I was a monster. An inhuman beast. Crouched there on the dirt and snow, I was too afraid to look up at her. I didn't want to see the disgust on her face now that she knew what I really was.

"Blake," she said softly. She kneeled down next to me and traced her fingers down the ridge of my brow, and down along my cheek, getting the wolf's blood all over her hands. Her touch was reverent.

I held my breath until she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in for a kiss. My mate's acceptance of me, wolf and man, was like a healing balm on my tortured soul.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, my voice cracking. I ran my hands down her body. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "He didn't have time to do anything."

"I almost lost you."

"Shh," Lacey silenced me with a finger on my lips. "You saved me. We can talk later."

I carried her through the forest and back to the hotel. We went in through the employee entrance. The hotel was used to dealing with high-powered guests and looking the other way. They were not going to gossip about the naked blood-covered billionaire who stumbled in from the snow.

Once we were upstairs, Lacey and Reeve worked as a team to distract Emilia and shield her from my frightful state. After I cleaned myself up, Reeve went home, and I spent a quiet night at home, snuggled together on the sofa with my girls in my arms as we watched The Lion King. Bending my head, I placed a kiss on top of Lacey's head. I was never going to let her go again.

As long as I was alive, I was going to protect them, even if it cost me my life.