After Three Years as a Deranged Alpha’s Sedative, I Faked My Death Chapter 01
“Would you ever fall in love with a sedative?”
Adrian Black, heir to both the Alpha position of New York’s most powerful pack and the Black financial empire, poured half a bottle of Lafite over my head in front of all his friends.
I wiped the wine from my face and smiled at him with more devotion than a well-trained hound, even offering him a tissue.
“Of course not!”
I was not angry in the slightest, because just ten minutes earlier, his mother had transferred the final three million dollars into my account on one condition: I had to disappear from Adrian’s world for good.
I had taken the money, so I would keep my end of the deal, leave, and never bother him again.
That very night, I staged a car accident that supposedly sent me plunging into the river, then took the money and moved to another city to enjoy my single life.
But three years later, on a hurricane night, someone kicked my door to pieces.
The Alpha heir who had once considered everyone beneath him stormed into my room.
…
At the end of a mountain road in the Hudson Valley, a black Aston Martin had crashed into the guardrail, acrid white smoke pouring from beneath the hood.
More than a dozen supercars had stopped nearby, while a group of young heirs who normally treated everyone else like dirt hid behind their car doors, barely daring to breathe.
“Get lost!”
With a hoarse roar, Adrian hurled his phone out the window, smashing a roadside lamp.
Glass fragments rained down on me.
Adrian kicked open the driver’s door, his forehead covered in blood.
His eyes blazed with the scarlet glow that appeared only when a werewolf lost control, and his scent of fir and tobacco turned sharp and chaotic as crushing Alpha pressure swept through the air, making everyone nearby struggle to breathe.
The next second, he snatched a crowbar from beneath the seat and brought it down on the hood again and again.
He was having another rage episode.
“Erin, get over there,” Noah urged under his breath, his dyed-blond hair flashing as he kept motioning toward Adrian.
“If he keeps this up, he’s going to hurt himself!”
I drew a deep breath and quickly calculated the bill in my head.
Calming an out-of-control Alpha came with a base fee of one hundred thousand dollars.
Entering his attack range added another two hundred thousand dollars in hazard pay.
Any actual injury meant at least five hundred thousand dollars in compensation.
Once the numbers were clear, I forced Oscar-worthy tears into my eyes and threw myself at him.
“Adrian, stop. I can’t stand watching you hurt yourself.”
I forced my way into the range of his crushing Alpha pressure and wrapped both arms around his waist.
Every muscle in his body locked tight as he spun around and seized me by the throat, his grip tightening as if he meant to snap my neck.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto mine, his urge to attack overwhelming the last of his reason.
“Erin Carter, are you trying to die?”
He leaned closer, barely containing his fury, and his breath carried the metallic scent of blood.
“If hitting me will make you feel better, then do it.”
I lifted my chin and let my tears fall onto the back of his hand, keeping my voice at the perfect level of trembling fragility.
“As long as you’re okay, I’ll do anything.”
Under his crushing pressure, my faint white-tea scent spilled into the air against my will, gradually covering his violent, chaotic scent.
Adrian stared at me for ten full seconds as the scarlet glow in his eyes slowly faded and the Alpha pressure weighing down the air began to ease.
Then he released me without warning and flung me to the ground as if I were worthless trash.
“Pathetic.”
He sneered, tossed the crowbar aside, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, and lit it.
“Get in the car and drive me home.”