Forbidden Alpha Read online

  “You’re right. I do not have the authority to make those decisions. I apologize for taking action without consulting you and your staff first. However—”

  I waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “I should remind you I am close friends with several members of the Inter-Magickal Council. They would be very interested to hear about how you’re misrepresenting yourself as a full-blood Gypsy and performing faulty magick. In fact, I would be hard pressed not to bring charges against you for fraud and conspiracy to commit treason against the pack.”

  My stomach churned at the mention of the IMC. The Inter-Magickal Council and I were not on good terms. I suppose it could have something to do with the fact that my father was a wanted felon. Or it could have been the nine months I spent roaming around with an Underland gang. Either way, the council seemed to be waiting for me to follow in my father's footsteps or at least tip them off to where he might be hiding. There was little chance of either happening as far as I was concerned, especially now that I had Yasmine to look after.

  “None of that is my fault,” I said. “You can't bring these charges to the IMC. They will use it as an excuse to strip my powers, regardless of whether or not there’s any truth behind your claims.”

  “All I know is the match you made between Marci and Jarret might have been in error. The magick you performed in the Bandhati Sacrament might not have worked. As a result, my daughter-in-law might have conceived a potentially illegitimate heir, which you know is considered treason.”

  Warren tossed two airline tickets on the coffee table. “You will fix this or I will make sure everyone in the supernatural community believes you’re a fraud. True or not, you will never practice magick again.”

  Without waiting for my response, he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  I chucked a pillow at the door. “I hate that man,” I growled as the beaded tassels clanked against the wood. Knowing Warren could hear my tantrum from the hall only made it worse.

  Yasmine picked up the two tickets and shrugged. “At least they're first class,” she said. “You better get packing.”

  Chapter 2

  I had to pry our behinds out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn in order to arrive at the private airstrip where the chartered jet was waiting. I should have been smiling. I didn’t have to foot the bill for the unexpected trip. But when Yasmine declared I was “beyond cranky,” I shot her a dirty look over the brim of my caramel macchiato. The steam from the paper cup rolled over my cheeks and tickled my nose before it fogged the lenses of the Ray-Ban sunglasses I hid behind. I wouldn’t be remotely happy until my body cooed in the rich bitterness of caramel and caffeine.

  Yasmine plopped down beside me, a pair of pink earbuds pumping hypnotic beats from her iPhone. My Blackberry didn’t come with a decent mp3 player, so I was left to sit in silence and contemplate whether I could fall back asleep. It was wishful thinking. With the caffeine racing through my system, I was certain it would be hours before I crashed.

  Glory to the gods, the flight was quick and we were touching down at LAX sooner than expected. Our chartered plane landed on a lesser-used runway a mile away from the main terminals. It was convenient if you were a celebrity trying to stay away from the paparazzi and rabid fans. Nine times out of ten, you still had to go through the main terminals to board connecting flights. It made me wonder why Warren couldn’t have chartered us a plane for the full trip. Was he just being cheap, or was the service not offered? Knowing the wolf, he probably flew the overseas portion and ran the rest of the way home in his furry form. I snickered at the thought.

  A Jets for Hire employee greeted us on the tarmac in a black Lincoln Town Car with severely tinted windows. He escorted us to a semi-private entrance, where we were screened by security with other high-profile guests and given updated boarding passes.

  The one bright side about being upgraded—I knew my luggage wasn’t going to get lost. The underpaid baggage handler followed us through each checkpoint—our bags stacked high on a luggage cart—until we reached our departure gate. I watched as he shuffled into the elevator, wheeled the cart outside and added our bags to the mountain of suitcases waiting to be loaded.

  I was mindlessly counting the bags when someone nudged me on the shoulder. “I hope you chose sweet over salty,” I said, expecting to see Yasmine when I turned around.

  I was wrong. It was Ethan Taylor, my ex-fiancé.

  For most women, running into an ex was a little jarring, but not the end of the world. It was bound to happen sooner or later, especially if you were living in the same city. But Ethan and I were different. We dated decades ago in New York City during the awkward demise of seventies disco and the prelude to eighties pop. I was young and foolish for thinking I could have a normal and healthy relationship with a human. It was a bad idea. When I came to my senses, I called off the wedding and moved across the country. I hadn’t seen or heard from the guy since.

  Now here he was, grinning back at me, clearly enjoying my bewilderment.

  He should have been nearing retirement, but like me, Ethan looked as if he’d hardly aged a day. His skin was smooth and wrinkle free. His thick chestnut hair had just a smattering of grey, and his body was still fit and trim.

  Ethan pulled me into a tight hug. Even through his cotton T-shirt, the coolness of his skin made me shiver. I could practically taste the death of his aura. It clung to my skin as he pulled away. I struggled to wrap my mind around what I was seeing, what my magick was telling me. Ethan, my Ethan, had gone vampire.

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” he said.

  My head started to hurt as I attempted to piece together a decent greeting in return.

  “You look amazing, as always,” he continued as his gaze roamed over me.

  “You… you are…”

  He laughed, which only unnerved me more. “Yes,” he said. “Shortly after you broke my heart, I found myself miserable and alone in Miami. I guess you could say I had the unfortunate luck of running into an elder vamp who seduced me into crossing over.”

  I noted the sarcasm in his tone. “I’m sorry,” I said and then stumbled into a chair beside the window before my legs gave out. “I thought you were…”

  “Dead?” he finished.

  “No,” I said honestly. “Married with kids… maybe a few grandbabies or something. You were supposed to have a normal life.”

  “Is that why you left me? So I could have a normal life?”

  I sighed and closed my eyes, not wanting to see the painful reminder of the man whose heart I broke all those years ago. I’d loved him once, more than I cared to admit. He was my haven. My sanctuary in a world of chaos. A breath of fresh air in the suffocating magickal underworld I was chained to. When everything with my dead mother and felon father became too much, Ethan was my saving grace.

  Despite all odds, Ethan managed to worm his way into my heart. A piece of me died when I gave him up. But I did it to protect him from the evils of my world, from people like my father and my father’s ever-growing list of enemies. In the end, it hadn’t mattered. The supernatural still managed to claim him.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized, sensing my guilt. “That was a little direct, even for me.”

  I didn’t bother to open my eyes. I wanted him to go away and take his mountain of unresolved emotional issues with him.

  Maybe this was all a bad dream. In a few minutes, I’d wake up on the plane beside Yasmine and life would be normal again. Okay, so maybe not normal, but as normal as a Gypsy could expect. I forced my eyes open just as Ethan crouched down beside me. Nope. No dream. I was still in this bloody airport with my stupid ex confronting me about the demise of our relationship.

  “How is this possible?” I muttered.

  “You want me to explain the birds and the bees of vampire conception?”

  “No. I mean how are you standing here, in daylight, waiting to board a plane?” It didn’t make any sense. In fact, as far as I knew, it was impossible for a vampire to roam around during the day. Maybe I was dreaming after all.

  Ethan took up a hard plastic seat beside me. I watched as his hand slipped into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol. “This is the stuff of the gods,” he said.

  I frowned. “Over-the-counter meds?”

  “A few months ago, I came across an extremely gifted alchemist who is on a mission to shake up the magickal community.” He twisted off the cap and revealed something that clearly wasn’t an OTC painkiller. “This is one of his concoctions. It allows vampires to become temporarily immune to daylight.”

  My heart began to drum a little faster in my chest. The Inter-Magickal Council did not look favorably on unauthorized magick that enhanced or degraded the powers of other supernaturals. Four hundred years ago, the practice of olio magick led to the demise of a dozen supernatural races and caused an international war. Gypsies were one of the largest casualties, targeted because of our ability to identify compatible mates across species and create new breeds of magick.

  With the amount of prejudice my own family name carried, even the hint of Ethan involved with something so controversial left me queasy.

  “Isn’t that illegal?” I asked, even though I already knew it was.

  “Trust me. The aftereffects are punishment enough. The older the vamp, the quicker it wears off. Once your time is up, you’re completely dead to the world for two to three times longer than the stupid elixir lasts, daylight or not. Besides, it only lasts a few hours.”

  I stared back at him, still trying to fathom how he could justify his illegal activities. “Are you insane?”

  He smiled. “Getting the chance to see you was completely worth it.”

  Oh. My. God. I really was living the nightmare from hell. As
if I didn’t have enough problems to deal with, now I had a rebellious vamp consuming illegal magick stalking me.

  “If the Inter-Magickal Council finds out about this, you are screwed, and trust me; the last thing in the world I need right now is to be on the IMC’s radar.”

  “Don’t be so paranoid. No one is going to find out.” He placed his hand on my thigh. It was supposed to be comforting, but it made the macchiato for breakfast seem like a very stupid idea. I wondered if I would have time to brush my teeth if I threw up in the airport.

  “Could you back up a little?” My voice was breathy and weak, though I was certain he heard me perfectly. Ethan stood and took a step back, leaning casually against the glass window I’d been staring out of before he nearly gave me a heart attack. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, each of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “Chai,” Ethan called out. His tone was almost as hard as the look in his eyes. “I’m going to be straight here. When I found out what you were, the secret you kept from me throughout our entire relationship, I was pissed. A part of me seriously wanted to rip out your throat and dump your body in the Grand Canyon.”

  I gasped, but Ethan continued as if there wasn’t anything menacing in his words.

  “That was years ago. I realized I was less angry with you than the fact that you didn’t trust me with your secret. You never even gave us a fighting chance. Anyway, I started questioning what might have been if you knew I’d crossed over. What would our life together be like if we didn’t have any secrets? What if we were both in this as equals, two supernaturals in love?”

  His words gnawed at my insides. He might have been freed with his crossing over to become a vampire, but I was still ensnarled in a world of half-truths and double lives. I tried not to think of the half-truths I was telling Yasmine. It wasn’t the same. I was keeping secrets to protect her. Of course, I’d kept secrets to protect Ethan too, and look how well that turned out. I told the voice in my head to shut up.

  Ethan continued. “I never really thought I’d see you again until that ‘Forty Under Forty’ article came out.”

  I knew the article. Time Magazine profiled forty CEOs of Fortune 500 companies that were under forty years of age. Technically, it had been just shy of twenty years since I’d celebrated my fortieth birthday. But humans put too much trust in physical appearance and the date of birth on my ID, which was doctored to make me thirty-two. The photographer had a field day at the photo shoot, playing up my good looks and flirty style. “I mean, how can you be in the business of love without a little sex appeal?” he’d cooed.

  The photo I’d least expected—me practically topless in a Hugo Boss miniskirt, Victoria’s Secret bra, and blood-red Louboutin heels—wound up on the cover. Thankfully, the manila folder I’d been holding left at least a little to the imagination. The photo itself made me a recognizable name in the male-dominated business circles. There were times I was still getting used to that.

  My insides were knotted tighter than a rusted metal coil as I thought of Ethan picking up a copy of the magazine from the newsstand. How would I have felt randomly stumbling upon him bare chested on the cover of GQ?

  His voice pulled me back to the present.

  “I saw that photo and it was like nothing had changed. I spent years hating you, and suddenly, I had to get you back in my life. I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it without freaking you out.”

  “Wait a minute?” I cut in. “Please tell me this meeting is a coincidence, right? You didn’t plan to ambush me in an airport.”

  “No. Well, not intentionally. I’ve been trying to get a meeting with you all week, but the receptionist kept telling me you were unavailable. I waited in the office lobby for nearly eight hours before I learned you weren’t even in the city.”

  “Fine. You discovered I was out of town. That still doesn’t explain how you could have known I was coming back early or flying through LAX, unless…” I knew the answer before he said it. Warren Reynard was coming back to bite me in the ass for a second time in less than twenty-four hours.

  Ethan started to take a step forward and then thought better of it. “I mentioned I was trying to track you down, and Warren informed me he was going to personally retrieve you from your beach-side vacation. He might have mentioned I should secure a seat on a flight from L.A. to San Francisco.”

  The P.A. system buzzed to life, and a frazzled flight attendant made the first call for flight 1428 to San Francisco.

  Ethan reached into his wallet and pulled out his boarding pass. “First class?” he asked, and I nodded.

  “I need to wait for my assistant before I board. We’re seated together.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’m going to go ahead, but I’ll see you on board.”

  I watched Ethan fiddle with his Blackberry as he boarded, and I wondered if it was too late to switch to a different flight. Once he boarded, I could accidentally miss this flight and go standby. Of course, that might mean taking coach instead of first class, but it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?

  “Who was that?” Yasmine asked, rushing over to my side with a box of pastries. I’d been so absorbed by Ethan that I hadn’t noticed her studying the two of us from a few feet away.

  “No one.”

  I took the box from her so I could peek inside. Two cheese croissants and a slice of pound cake. Sugar, fat, and grease: the staples of any American airport. Luckily for me, it was the perfect distraction. I picked at the pastries for another fifteen minutes until Yasmine pointed out the stewardess was eyeing us as she announced last call.

  With much disdain, I boarded the plane, only to stop dead in my tracks when I realized the two remaining seats in first class were not in the same row. Panicked, I glanced down at my ticket, which read 3A. I glanced up again, and Ethan waved back at me. He was in the aisle seat beside mine. I turned around to face Yasmine. “I thought we were seated together.”

  She glanced down at her ticket and frowned. “I guess not.” She held the ticket out in front of me. “6D,” she said and handed me my laptop. “Have fun.”

  If her name hadn’t been on the ticket, I would have bet money she swapped seats with Ethan to do a little matchmaking of her own. But that was crazy. This wasn’t a conspiracy to bring down Chai. At least not yet.

  Chapter 3

  “Don’t be mad,” Ethan said as the two of us got settled. “It was the only way I could guarantee we’d see each other.”

  “I’m not mad, Ethan.”

  Okay, so that was a big fat lie. And I knew Ethan wasn’t buying it. “I just don’t understand what you want from me. What are you expecting to get out of this conversation?”

  The flight attendant chose that exact moment to greet us with warm Wet-Naps and take our drink orders. Ethan ordered Jim Beam, and I requested white wine. The sun was barely up, and already I was in desperate need of alcohol, anything to ease the tension building inside me.

  “I don’t see the point in ordering a drink you can’t have,” I said as he lifted the glass to his mouth and inhaled the strong whiskey aroma.

  “What can I say? Old habits die hard.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or cynical, but Ethan Taylor was definitely one habit I wasn’t going to pick up again.

  I took a sip of my own drink, wishing I’d fought to keep Yasmine at my side. This was going to be an impossible flight. I had so many questions swirling around in my head it actually left me a little dizzy. I debated which one should come first and settled on the most direct.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want, Ethan, so I can enjoy some fraction of my trip home?”

  “Ah, yes. That’s the easy part. I want to be a client.”

  “Excuse me?” I blinked several times in succession.

  “A client… someone who pays for your renowned matchmaking services.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m twelve. I know what a client is.”

  “Well, you seemed to be having trouble.”

  “I’m having trouble understanding why you would want to hire me, of all people, to be your matchmaker.”

  “Why not?” Ethan rubbed a finger around the lip of the glass without dropping his gaze from mine.