Chapter 1

I'm lyingnaked in the middle of my study as the sun creeps across the floor. The hand-dyed wool rug beneath me smells like wolf, and I gingerly lift my head.

Shards of glass litter the hardwood floor, glistening like diamonds in the sunlight. Books are scattered everywhere — some of them tented with their pages splayed and bent on the rug. Others are in shreds.

Spiderweb cracks span the dark screen of my laptop, which has been ripped cleanly from the lower half. The acrid stench of alcohol stings my nostrils, and my eyes go to the Waterford crystal decanters that now lie in pieces by the liquor cart.

Pressing my palms to the rug, I gingerly push myself into a seated position. I wince as glass cuts into my naked flesh, looking down to extract one particularly large piece from the center of my stomach.

The skin starts to heal almost immediately — a perk of my shifter blood. Unfortunately, scabs are already beginning to form over some of the smaller shards, and the new skin itches like crazy.

A cold draft whips over me, and I start to shiver. There's a fist-sized hole in the center pane of the window in the corner, and the events of the previous night come flooding back.

My company's stock tanking as I ousted yet another department head. The speculation among financial news talking heads that I'm mentally unfit. The cries for me to resign as CEO.

The study door creaks, and I snap my head around — my wolf instantly on high alert.

I relax as Beckett comes into view, his dark brows knitting together as he surveys the damage. He's dressed in a crisp charcoal suit, and his hair is cut military-short. The polished package does a good job of hiding the powerful beast underneath.

"I guess you've seen the news," Beckett rumbles, his frown deepening as he takes in the busted flatscreen mounted over the fireplace and the crumpled mess of glass and papers littering nearly every surface.

He takes a deep breath and bends down to pick up the keyboard of my ruined laptop. "I hope you backed up your files."

I don't answer him. I just continue to stare at the broken window, where a few cold flurries blow in on the breeze.

"You can't keep doing this," Beckett grumbles.

"Destroying my study?" I rasp. "Believe me, I know." My nostrils flare in self-disgust as I take in the wreckage. "It's getting expensive."

"You know that's not what I meant." Beckett's voice is low and harsh — completely devoid of his usual dry humor. "You can't keep isolating yourself. Every wolf needs a pack, and your pack needs its alpha."

Beckett's words are laced with double meaning. Every day I keep myself shut off from the world, I'm also hurting them.

"I can do without the lecture," I snap, suddenly annoyed.

Beckett is a wolf shifter like me and my head of security. He's also the only person in the world I trust, but right now, I wish he'd leave me alone.

"I don't enjoy lecturing you."

"Could have fooled me."

"I'm worried, Dimitri. Just look at yourself. This isn't fucking sustainable."

I let out a growl and narrow my eyes, glaring out the broken window. The sun is rising over the mountain, which is blanketed in a fresh layer of snow.

I originally bought this chalet because it came with its own private gondola, but I haven't skied or snowboarded all year. These days, I just come to Aspen to escape the suffocating demands of my life.

The cryptocurrency exchange platform I founded in my early twenties once had a market cap of over a hundred billion dollars. But ever since I learned that my co-founder was trying to get me ousted as CEO, I've been firing anyone who was loyal to Rhys and running my company into the ground.

The fact that Rhys was my pack brother and second in command made his betrayal sting even worse. It's why I haven't been able to look the rest of my pack in the eye since — why I haven't been to a meeting in months.

It's why I've sequestered myself in this house and laid off my staff.

Deep down, I know Beckett's right. I can't stay here forever, and I can't continue to shut out my pack. The months of isolation have already driven my animal to the brink. It's made my wolf edgy and volatile — a dangerous combination for a shifter.

"You need to deal with the mess you've made," Beckett continues, crossing his arms over his chest as if I'm a disobedient child, not his alpha.

I drag in a deep breath and let it out through my nose. "I don't know how."

"You have an IQ of one fifty-two," he replies. "Figure. It. Out."

"And what if I don't want to?"

"It's not about you," Beckett snaps. "It's about the five thousand employees who count on you for a paycheck and the thousands more who've invested their hard-earned money in you."

"They've invested in my company, Beckett. Not me."

"That's where you're wrong."

I sigh. The crippling loss of energy is another side effect of starving my wolf of any human or shifter contact. I'm just so sick of caring what happens to my company's stock, my employees, my pack.

Beckett must sense my unspoken defeat, because he crosses the room in four quick strides and hauls me off the rug by my armpits.

"The fuck —"

My head of security grunts as he heaves me over one beefy shoulder. Beckett's an ex-Navy SEAL who has shifter strength on his side, but I'm a goddamned alpha.

I punch him squarely in the spine with enough force to cripple a linebacker. Beckett goes down, but then he gets me in a headlock and drags me out of the study.

I sucker punch him in the abs, but it's like punching a brick wall. He hauls me up the stairs with relatively little effort, nearly taking my head off in the process.

Before I know what's happening, he's tossing me inside the glass-enclosed shower. My back hits the smooth tile wall, and he turns on the tap.

An angry howl tears out of me as cold water pummels my skin, which itches like hell from the pieces of glass still embedded beneath the surface.

"Take a shower. You reek," Beckett snarls, glaring at me with a mixture of brotherly concern and violent satisfaction. "Get dressed, and get your ass downstairs in twenty. You have a press conference at ten."