Alpha Of Glass And Gold

Aurora:

“I, Alpha Levi Kingston, reject you, Aurora Anderson, as my chosen mate by the Moon Goddess.”

Morning light spilled through the tall windows, gold and clean, catching the edge of the silk sheet tangled around my legs. The air smelled faintly of coffee and the salt that clung to Seattle mornings as I get out of bed in search of my clothes with the sheets wrapped around me.

For half a second I actually laugh.

Levi stood near the balcony doors, still in the tux shirt from last night, collar open, sleeves rolled. His tie hung loose around his neck like a memory he hadn’t decided to keep.

“I, Alpha Levi Kingston, reject you, Aurora Anderson, as my chosen mate by the Moon Goddess.”

He repeated, standing there in sunlight, saying something that sounds like a myth he doesn’t believe in.

“Wait... what?”

Then the air turns heavy. A bolt of fire tears through my chest, bright enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I reach for the bedpost, but my knees give out before I can find it.

Levi catches me. I feel the tremor in them before I even see the gold flaring in his blue eyes. For one wild heartbeat there’s something between us, an invisible thread, humming and then it snaps.

The pain hits like static, running all the way to my heart. The shock of it knocks the air out of me.

“Levi… what did you..”

He pulls back as if my touch burns. His jaw locks; his voice goes cold, measured, rehearsed.

“I reject you,” he says again, softer but sharper. “You are not my mate.”

The words land like shrapnel. The sunlight turns cruel. I can taste metal, blood, maybe heartbreak and somewhere behind my ribs something caves in.

He looks at me once more, gold flickering back to blue, then turns away.

The smell of coffee lingers. The sheets still hold his warmth. The evidence of last night still lingered, And I stand there, trying to remember how to breathe in a world that suddenly doesn’t have him in it.

A white-hot current races down my spine again.

The pain keeps blooming, sharper, louder. He looks at me and the last think I remember before everything goes dark is him rushing to catch me. The gold in his eyes returning.

One day earlier:

“Absolutely not, Warren,” I say, dropping the memo on his desk hard enough to rattle his mug.

My editor leans back in his chair, gray curls glowing under fluorescent lights. “You’re going,” he says, too calm to argue with. “Kingston Foundation Gala. Big donors, bigger egos. Try not to insult anyone until dessert.”

“Warren, I cover corruption and money-laundering, not champagne fountains.”

“Exactly. Corruption wears suits and drinks Dom Pérignon. You’ll blend right in.”

I groan. “You realize the company budget barely covers caffeine?”

He slides an envelope toward me. “Use it. Buy a dress. Or rent one. Pretend to like humanity for a few hours.”

“Why me?”

“Because you ask the questions people are too polite to ask, and because you need to leave this office before your soul turns into a spreadsheet.”

He’s impossible to fight. Warren’s been my mentor since my first internship. The kind of man who lectures you on ethics and then secretly pays your cab fare home. I sigh, pick up the envelope.

“Fine. But when security throws me out for asking about offshore accounts, you’re posting my bail.”

“I’ll expense it,” he says, smiling into his coffee.

By the time I reach my desk, Maggie Bishop is already perched on it like a sparkly crow, swinging a garment bag.