THE PRIMAL RULE OF WINNING: DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH THE CONTENDER. Three months shy of her eighteenth birthday, Ness is forced to return to Colorado. Even though it's been six years, and the wolves of her all-male pack don't recognize her, she recognizes them. People who shun others because of their gender are hard to forget. Especially Liam Kolane - son of Heath, the crudest and cruelest Alpha to have ruled the Boulder Pack. Liam is as handsome as he is infuriating, as kind as he is punishing, and he makes Ness's traitorous heart race, which isn't good. After all, he's a Kolane. Like father like son, right? When Heath dies, Liam vies to become the new Alpha and no one dares challenge him. Except Ness. Thus begins a treacherous game. The rules: winner takes all... including loser's life.
Chapter 1 1
The astringent tang of ammonia and glass cleaner stung my nose, but I powered through the smell, rubbing the glass table until it reflected the modern high-rise across the street. Six years ago, I could barely be in the same room as a spritz of Windex, but distance had dimmed my acute sense of smell.
Stretching my stiff neck from side to side, I moved away from the table to pack the cleaning supplies and roll them out of the conference room.
"Evelyn, I'm done!" When I spotted a dyed-black mane, I released my cart and draped my forearms over the top of the cubicle's laminated wood siding. "Want help out here?"
"No. I'm done, too, querida." The bright silk scarf knotted around Evelyn's hair tonight made my throat constrict.
Mom had owned few things of value-her wedding band embedded with diamond chips that I wore on a leather cord around my neck, and the designer scarf Evelyn never parted with since Mom had gifted it to her. I was by no means jealous that Evelyn had gotten it. If anyone deserved such a beautiful present, it was the woman who'd taken care of us since our arrival in Los Angeles six years ago.
Our neighborhood was, to put it nicely, rough, which meant I was to open the door to no one. When Evelyn knocked two days after we had moved in, I stared at her through the peephole and told her to go away. She did, but then she returned.
The next time she came, she slipped me a folded piece of stationery on which she'd scribbled her name and unit number. When Mom got home from a job interview and saw the paper I'd left out on our dining table, she shot up the stairs like a bullet, racing past the poorly rendered violet boob graffiti that graced the concrete stairwell, and then pounded on Evelyn's door to demand what interest she had in an eleven-year-old girl.
Turned out, Evelyn just wanted to help. Mom had flown back down, a blur of red cheeks and crazed eyes, yelling that we didn't need anyone's charity...that we were fine!
We weren't fine.
Thankfully, Evelyn remained persistent and returned again, placating my mother with dishes suited for a crowd and clothing that had been gathering dust in the back of her closet. Naïvely, I'd determined Evelyn was a hoarder with terrible math skills.
Evelyn unplugged the vacuum, then limped back to it and toed the knob that wound up the cord. It coiled into the belly of the apparatus as quick as a prairie rattlesnake. Before she could bend over, I grabbed the handle and heaved it onto her cart. Together, we walked our carts back to the janitorial closet, Evelyn gritting her teeth the entire way. Although she never complained, her right shoulder had been bothering her for some time now. Coupled with her constant limp caused by the stray bullet that had hit her calf two decades ago, Evelyn had slowed down considerably.
"I made your favorite tacos, but do not feel obliged to eat with me, querida. If you have a date-"
"Nope. No date." I hadn't gone on one since Mom passed away.
At first, I stayed away from boys because depression was eating me whole, but then paying rent and bills overtook my life, and I picked up as many hours of cleaning jobs as I could find. Some days, the commuting wore me down more than the actual workload and chemical odors. I found no solace in rolling on buses through gray city blocks, leaning away from passengers who smelled like the lunch they'd put away hours before or the perspiration they'd accrued during the day.
Tonight, at least, Evelyn sat next to me, large-knuckled fingers clasped in her lap, chin dipped into her neck, lids closed in rest. A couple seconds before we reached our bus stop, I gently rubbed her forearm and murmured, "We're home."
She startled awake. Hooking her arm through mine for support, we got off the bus. The deep-blue streets were not especially busy at this hour. The regulars were out, though-the army vet with the thick aura of liquor fumes, talking to his runt of a dog that perpetually bared his fangs at me; the two sex workers sporting torn fishnets and caked-on drugstore makeup, who reeked of sweaty vinyl; and the hooded men sought out in equal measure by the police and their twitchy customers.
Except for the dog, they were all pleasant enough.
One of the hooded dealers whistled at me. "When you gonna give me some sugar, Ness?"
Months ago, I'd stupidly worn my name pinned to my chick-yellow cleaning uniform.
Smile tugging at the corner of my lips, I flipped him off, which had his two associates snickering. Every night I passed by them, they'd either whistle or make kissy noises, and every night I'd show them what I thought of their subtle advances.
One night, one of them hadn't been on the corner, and I worried the cops had nailed him, but Suzie the prostitute assured me the boy's pops had gotten out of jail and come to collect his son to start a new life.
Sometimes I wished someone would whisk me away to start a new life, too.
As we stepped into the dirty cement cube we called home, I pushed away thoughts of desertion and told Evelyn, "I'll be up in a minute."
The elevator was out of order...again, so she started her slow ascent to her second-floor unit, the menthol salve she rubbed into her sore joints wafting over the tang of fresh urine. Her shoulder wasn't the only thing that worried me. Her bad leg, too, seemed to be causing her pain.
Once I heard her keys jangle over the shouting match of my next-door neighbors and the cartoons blaring from Mrs. Fletcher's place, I walked toward my apartment and pulled out my keys, but then I froze in the middle of the hallway.
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