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  Once we were back in Alec's room with the lights turned down low I finally looked down at the ring and gasped. It wasn't just a ring, it was jewelry perfection. An almost obscenely huge trilliant cut diamond looked up at me from a white setting that I was pretty sure was platinum. The setting cradled the triangular diamond so that none of the sharp corners were exposed but left the large face and most of the edges out where the light could get to them.

  There was no questioning the beauty of the ring, but I also got a surprising sense of history as I looked at it. It was shiny and new-looking, but it felt old.

  "Alec, where did you get this ring?"

  "It was my great-great-grandmother's on my dad's side of the family. There are four or five rings that have been in the family for centuries and out of all of them this is the one that I thought best suited you. Mom has one of the others and Rachel has had a third ring picked since she was seven."

  It was too much. I'd been in shock up until now, but the longer I thought about it, the more I became convinced that it was too much. Alec stopped me as I tried to pull it off of my finger.

  "Adri, this ring is yours now, unless you're telling me that you don't want to marry me."

  "No, I still want to marry you, but I can't wear this. Not only is it an heirloom, it's got to be worth some serious money. What is this diamond, like seven carats?"

  Alec shook his head, still holding my hand so that I couldn't pull the diamond off of my finger.

  "It's something like four and a half carats, Adri. The setting is platinum and if you disregard the history bit of things, you could buy one like it for less than fifty thousand bucks. It's a really, really nice stone, but on the scale of really excessive jewelry it's only about a six or a seven considering that you'll make many, many times this each year from your trust fund. Trust me, we've got much more expensive rings in the family, I purposefully chose a more sedate option for you."

  Logically I knew he was right. I was ridiculously rich now. The fact that I hadn't earned any of it didn't make the money any less real. It just seemed so crazy. I'd spent weeks despising all of the really rich girls at my school in New York and now I was one of them. I would have said that nothing would have made that worthwhile, but I was realizing that there was one thing that could make me willing to enter into a world that I knew I was profoundly unprepared for.

  I debated between a couple of different responses for a few seconds and then looked up and met Alec's gaze. "There's nothing I can do to convince you to buy me a cheaper ring with a normal-sized diamond?"

  "I'm sorry, Adri. I know that you're not exactly comfortable with the idea of marrying a billionaire, but honestly this ring is almost too restrained. You need a visible symbol that you're mine. The girls who are going to be coming through here need to be able to see that I value you, that I'm invested in you. Money doesn't prove that, but if you've got a thousand-dollar ring some of them will automatically assume that I'm not taking our engagement seriously. The fact that the ring has been in my family for so long will go a long ways towards offsetting the fact that it's not nearly as expensive as you might otherwise have expected to receive."

  Every time I thought I had a handle on what it was really going to mean to be with Alec he threw me for another loop like this. I didn't like his conclusion but I couldn't argue with his logic.

  "Okay, I'll wear it, but only on one condition."

  "Name it and if I can reasonably do it for you then I will, Adri. You know that."

  I took a deep breath and then nodded. "I don't want a long engagement, Alec. If we're going to go through all of the craziness that I suspect is headed full speed towards us, then I want to do it as man and wife."

  I didn't realize I'd looked away from Alec again until he tipped my chin back up so that he could see my face.

  "Are you sure? That is moving really fast. It means that we've got to get your mom to buy off on the idea, that or we'll have to proceed with getting you emancipated. I'm okay with that, I just don't want you to rush into anything."

  I nodded. "I'm sure. A month, two at the outside and then I want us to be married. I don't want to risk something happening before I get a chance to marry you. I'd thought about us before now, but it wasn't until you proposed tonight that I realized that not only is it exactly what I want, there's no reason to wait any longer than I have to."

  Alec turned my hand over so that we could both see the ring. "There was more than one reason that I picked this particular ring for you, Adri. The setting shields the points, protecting them, but more importantly stopping them from cutting the wearer or others up. That is what you do for me. You take the most dangerous parts of me and help stop me from doing things that can't be undone."

  I started to tear up, but Alec wasn't done. "If you want to get married sooner rather than later then that can happen. It's going to mean a lot of work, but we can hire a wedding planner or two, and Rachel will positively be in heaven at the thought of being able to help you organize everything."

  "Wait, you didn't say anything about a big wedding, Alec. I was thinking of a really small ceremony."

  Alec's sigh was eloquent and I suddenly realized that he would have preferred a smaller event as well. "I know, but I'm afraid that, given all of the recent changes, we're not going to be able to have what we want in that area. I'm...well, I'm more than just another pack leader. The things I said in Chicago more or less put every wolf in North America on notice that I was choosing to pursue my family's inheritance. I knew it was going to lead to these kinds of problems down the road, but I couldn't come up with any other route that gave me a chance at stopping the Coun'hij."

  My knees weren't able to sustain my weight anymore. I dropped down so that I was sitting on the edge of Alec's bed. "So I'm not just marrying Alec Graves, the billionaire, I'm marrying Alec Graves, the future king of the shape shifters."

  "I'm afraid so. That means there is a certain level of pomp and ceremony expected for these kinds of occasions. It might be smart to set the wedding date out far enough that you'll have a chance to get used to the idea before the actual day arrives, but I'll do whatever you want. Just understand that once we start down a path there is going to be a lot of inertia. We can't just change our plans at the drop of a hat, not when invitations will be sent out to every pack alpha and half a dozen governors and state senators."

  Once again it was hard to get the words out, but even as he'd been painting what was for me a pretty bleak picture, I'd still known what my answer would be. Alec was worth all of that other craziness.

  "I understand but I still want to go forward, both with getting married to you, and with the ceremony happening soon."

  Alec kissed my forehead and then wrapped his arms around me. "Okay, we'll tell the pack first thing tomorrow and then start the process. Donovan will probably kick and scream at the impropriety of it all, but we'll make the wedding happen in the next month or two."

  "I guess I'd better get busy planning then. A month isn't very long to work with when you're planning the gala event of the year."

  Chapter 5

  Alec Graves

  Graves Estate

  Sanctuary, Utah

  Adri had spent the night in her own bed, much to her frustration, but I'd insisted. We were still under the threat of sudden death, but we'd made it this far without doing anything inappropriate and I wasn't going to continue to run the risk, especially not if our wedding was less than two months away.

  Most of the time Adri seemed to think that my control was unlimited, but it was more finite than I liked to admit. My beast seemed to have decided that Adri was the one for me, and he didn't operate under the same set of rules.

  In addition to keeping us both virtuous for the next two months, sleeping in separate beds meant that I could come and go without worrying about waking Adri up. As much as I would have liked to just lie in bed listening to her breathe, I already knew that things were going to get more hectic over the coming months.

&
nbsp; It wouldn't be light outside for another hour or two still, but I'd already gotten what sleep I needed, and was now zipping around corners on my R1. I couldn't afford to have someone follow me, so I'd left the motorcycle's headlights off. There was just enough light from the moon for my eyes to see the road. I wouldn't have tried triple digit speeds under these conditions, but I could see well enough that the trip only took an extra ten minutes over what it usually did.

  I stabled my bike in the usual place, waited fifteen minutes to make sure that I wasn't being followed, and then made the hike to Mallory's cabin. Mallory must have heard me coming because she answered the door within seconds of my knock.

  "Alec, I'm glad you came back. I...I'm sorry for what I said last time you were here."

  Three weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to accept her apology, but I'd worked through a lot of things since then. I gave her a gentle hug as I stepped into her tiny cabin.

  "It's okay, Mallory. To whatever extent you did anything wrong, I forgive you. I'm sorry too. You weren't entirely wrong, I was just focusing on the wrong pieces of advice. You were right, I needed to man up and deal with the situation, I was just too conflicted at the time to do it."

  Mallory gave me a slow, appraising look and then nodded. "You're not conflicted anymore though, are you?"

  "No. On the one side I had you and Donovan telling me that I needed to avoid repeating my father's mistakes regardless of the cost, but something inside of me agreed more than I wanted to admit with what Adri had said. I know that you and Donovan have had to deal with all the fallout from my dad's fight with Agony, but I think that he ultimately made the right decision. Maybe he should have made different decisions leading up to the fight, but once he was there and faced with letting Agony kill Donovan I think he made exactly the right decision."

  I'd never seen Mallory cry, but her eyes were suspiciously bright now. She nodded her head and then cleared her throat.

  "I've had a lot of time on my hands to think about things since we last talked. I...well, I think you've got something there. Kaleb fighting Agony didn't have to be the end of everything. If I hadn't jumped into the fight then Agony would have just killed your father and left. That's all he really wanted, but I couldn't imagine a future without your father."

  We shared a few seconds of silence and then she looked back up at me. "What's happened since I saw you last?"

  I couldn't help chuckling. Not at her expense, but at the difficulty of encapsulating the last few weeks into a few pithy sentences.

  "Things got bad with the dispossessed. The pack pretty much started to implode and we got an offer of alliance from the Tucson pack."

  Agony had savaged Mallory's body, but there wasn't anything wrong with her mind. I could already see her trying to fit the new bits of information in with everything else she knew.

  "You accepted the offer of alliance and having Jaclyn on our side has solved the problems with the challengers from the dispossessed."

  "No, I finally manifested my power in full. We were in Chicago picking up Jasmin and Isaac who'd both been injured in a fight with a werewolf. Agony was there and I fought him to save Jasmin and Isaac. I planned on dying but at the very end of the fight my power came completely awake and I brought everyone in the room to their knees. Before the night was over, I killed Agony and half of the enforcers he brought with him."

  If Mallory hadn't already been sitting down she probably would have fallen over. As it was she reached for the arms of her chair with both hands in an effort to steady herself.

  "You've done it then. A gift like that, able to operate at distance, makes you nearly unstoppable. The dispossessed will leave you alone and every pack within two hundred miles will be looking for some kind of alliance."

  I nodded, happy to see Mallory's expression of relief. "We've already got representatives from five different packs here and four of them are looking for some kind of marriage out of the bargain but last night I proposed to Adri."

  "She's back then?"

  "Yes, she's back and she accepted. We'll be married in a month or two."

  "You're giving up a powerful bargaining chip by marrying her instead of binding one of the other packs more tightly to you."

  My beast wanted to take exception to her words but I knew she was just doing what she thought was her duty.

  "If the last few months have taught me nothing else, they've taught me that there isn't any halfway on doing the right thing. I was willing to entertain the idea of a political marriage when I thought Adri didn't want me, but not now. Walking away from her and marrying someone I don't love would be wrong on every level. I've realized that being true to myself helps the pack. When I start putting what I perceive as the good of the pack in front of doing what's right then it's a short road to even greater problems."

  Mallory knew she was skating up to the very edge, that the Alec that had stormed out of her cabin weeks ago wouldn't take kindly to any more interfering, but in her own way she was just as committed to doing the right thing as I was.

  "What about the Ja'tell bond? I'm fond of Adri, but aren't you worried about what the Ja'tell bond will do to her?"

  The new me smiled at her concern rather than raging at her. "Adri is stronger than I ever gave her credit for. She hasn't shown any of the signs of addiction and I've come to realize that I should never bet against Adri. She knows what she wants and I'm not going to try and tell her that we shouldn't be together anymore."

  Mallory met my eyes for several seconds and then looked down in submission. "I'll advise, Alec, but I won't do any more than that. I've learned my lesson. I knew it years ago when I worked with your father, but I'd forgotten it in the intervening years. You are the one who ultimately has to live with your decisions so they are yours to make."

  "Thanks, Mallory. That means a lot, but I hope you're happy for us as well, not just resigned to the fact that we'll get married."

  "I am happy for the two of you. I guess I'm just cautious after all of these years. I can't see a happy development without worrying about all of the ways that it could go bad."

  I let the silence grow for nearly a minute as Mallory worked through the demons from her past. When she finally leaned back in her chair she'd regained a measure of her calm.

  "Alec, can I try to read your power? It's possible that there is something there I can tell you that will help."

  "That's part of why I came. I wondered if you'd be able to see it without all of the usual rigmarole now that it is fully active."

  Mallory shrugged. "With very powerful or very active abilities I can often see them without coming into contact with the hybrid who has them, but occasionally a power that is more subtle isn't readable without physical contact. Yours sounds like it is something that you have to consciously trigger so it's not necessarily surprising that I haven't been able to get a read on it yet."

  I was halfway to her chair when her words hit me. "No, that doesn't sound right. My power is almost always active. It's been doing a kind of low-level drain on everyone around me for weeks. We were half convinced that Rachel was being attacked by some new member of the Coun'hij because she was too tired to get out of bed most days. It's only recently that I've managed to mostly shut it off."

  "Are you draining me now?"

  "No, but it's taking a real effort. It's like walking around with my hand clenched all of the time. As long as I keep it top of mind I remember to keep the power from pulling at everyone's energy but as soon as I stop thinking about it my mental 'fist' relaxes and I start draining people a little again."

  Mallory was intrigued now. Before she'd been exiled to this cabin she'd made a study of every living hybrid she'd been able to get her hands on. In a very real sense she was the world's best expert on the abilities manifested by a small subset of the hybrids among our people.

  "That is interesting. Come here and let me take a look at you and then we'll go from there."

  I knelt in front of her chair and then waited as
she placed a hand on either side of my face. As the minutes passed perspiration started to bead Mallory's forehead, and her grip tightened, but I didn't interrupt her. When she finally let go of me and slumped back into her chair it was obvious that she wasn't satisfied with the results of her scan.

  "What did you see?"

  "Nothing. No, not quite nothing, but not what I'd hoped. Your power is active, you've got the same increase in your overall energy level that I usually see when a hybrid finally manifests a power, but I can't get in close enough to get a good look at what you do. My mental probes keep disintegrating as soon as I send them in. I tried making them more powerful, but I still got only impressions of things rather than anything solid."

  "I'll take impressions at this point. I know next to nothing so even an impression is a step up."

  Mallory seemed to debate for a couple of seconds and then she shook her head. "Go ahead and activate your power on me first and then we'll talk. Start small and then you can work up."

  I nodded and then relaxed my grip on my power. Only a trickle at first, but then wider and wider until Mallory started a boneless slide out of her chair. I caught her and then shut my ability back down as I helped her back into her chair.

  Mallory sat there for several seconds, considering what had just happened. "Interesting. What else can you tell me? You've used it several times by now, have you gotten any impressions as you've done so?"

  I shrugged. "Not much definitive. I can target where I draw from rather than just dropping everyone around me, but sometimes if I try and take in too much at once it sort of wobbles. I got the feeling last time that the power I'm pulling from everyone is going somewhere and that there was only so much power that I could pull in before that reservoir would fill up."

  Mallory started absently tapping the arm of her chair. "That is potentially problematic. If it's true it would mean that you'd want to husband the use of your power to make sure that you always had the ability to absorb however much power you needed to."