CHAPTER ONEAdriana
“You’ve ruined me, you bitch!”
“That’s enough, Parquo. Let’s go,” the security guard told him.
“I’m not going anywhere without a piece of her,” he spat.
Adriana stood her ground. It wasn’t the first time someone had been unhappy about one of her articles. Since she’d come to work at Transformation Magazine three years ago, she’d exposed dozens of shifters for their dark deeds. Alexander Parquo was as corrupt as they came, a fact she had not expected when she signed up to do an expose on his multi-national security firm. Of course, she’d expected just some shady dealings, just not outright unlawful activities.
She could have ignored what she’d discovered during her investigation, but what was the point of being an investigative journalist if you hid the things you uncovered as a matter of convenience to yourself or others? After several discussions with her editor, they’d printed a story about a man who was widely viewed as a philanthropist but was secretly laundering money and running sweatshops in an overseas hell that she had personally visited.
They had been prepared for his backlash, but her heart stopped as she saw him begin to shift. He was beyond just being a bit angry; he intended to do actual harm to her. He was an Alpha, and a powerful one from what she knew of him. She was a Beta and no match for his might, but she wasn’t about to stand there and be ripped apart by him. She grimaced as her clothes shredded and her bones broke apart, reforming in their wolf configuration, her brown eyes fading into a bright yellow glare as she watched him do the same.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the security guard shifting too, but he was late. He hadn’t reacted quickly enough. Parquo would be fully wolf in seconds, as was she, but the guard would lag behind, unable to help until it was perhaps too late. She squared off against Parquo right there in the middle of the conference room in which he had cornered her after forcing his way past the receptionist.
The sound of her heart beating in her chest felt like a drum—a cadence of fear. She lowered her head in determination. He was easily twice her size and all muscle, spittle dripping off his snout as he growled at her. It wasn’t a warning, as he fully intended to come at her. It was a war cry. As he began charging toward her, she felt her fear dissipate into anger. He saw her as weak, easily dispatched for exposing him, but it was he who was the coward.
All thoughts fell aside, pure survival mode taking over as she lunged forward, meeting him in the middle of the room. He went for her throat, but she flattened herself, sliding across the cool tile floor beneath him and sinking her teeth into one of his back legs, forcing him off-center so that he lost his balance and thudded heavily against the floor. He let out an involuntary howl of pain but was quickly back on his feet, turning toward her with a snarl.
She prepared for his attack, knowing he wouldn’t be short-sided enough to let her attack him again. She’d hurt him. She could see the blood dripping down his hind leg and onto the white tiles below, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He pounced, shoving her backward, sending her leg over tail against the back wall. He wouldn’t kill her. That’s not what wolves like him did. He would hurt her in a way that would do far more lasting damage. She would become an example of why you don’t fuck with Alexander Parquo.
Still, she would fight it. She would fight him. Adriana Guerrero might be a woman. She might be a Beta. What she wasn’t was a victim. No matter what he did to her. She was no one’s victim.
Fuck that.
She gathered herself, rising to her feet and squaring off against him again. His eyes were a dark green, an unnatural color for the wolves in their area. It told her one more thing she hadn’t known about him: he was a liar about his heritage. Wherever he was from, it wasn’t any of the local packs. Another mystery, but one she might never be able to solve after this was over.
He twisted his mouth into a snarl and began walking toward her, not eager to give her another opportunity to take advantage of her diminutive stature. She met his gaze, weighing her options, but it was wasted energy. Suddenly, he was flying backward, grabbed by the tail, and slung toward the opposite wall by a black and silver wolf. The room filled with growls and the snapping of bones as they fought, and she had to resist the urge to jump in and demand her pound of flesh.