“Poor Maya.”

“I heard her father’s business was failing, so he sold her off to old man Carter.”

“Makes sense. Why else would she get engaged to Ezra Carter, of all people?”

“I heard he’s impotent.”

“Impotent? I was made to believe he’s infertile!”

Mircea Quartz pushed the gossip out his other ear as he took a big gulp of his whiskey. He would have preferred coffee to nurse the headache pounding his temples, but his father would roast him alive if he got caught teetotaling during cocktail hour.

“I went up to Derek and Maya earlier,” declared Greta, one of Mircea’s bad choices. “His pheromones are so weak!”

“Oh, come on,” Mircea snapped. “I don’t know how you can smell him over the stench of all these swollen egos and the pheromones everyone’s bleeding.”

Greta wrinkled an arrogant nose. “It was an opinion,” she hit back. “What’s your problem?”

“Yeah, I thought you’d enjoy the conversation,” piped one of Mircea’s friends. “Since it’s a Carter we’re talking about.”

Of course they’d expect Mericot’s so-called Prince to carry forward that stupid feud. The city of Mericot housed some of the richest, most powerful people in the country – in some cases, the world. The Quartz family, owner of global conglomerate giant QuartzCorp, sat at the very top of this power-pyramid and refrained from socializing with the Carters, who came in second. The two families had hated each other since the two names had begun to mean something. Mircea would rather maintain a friendly rivalry, but the draconian patriarchs of both families had no hobby other than showing each other up.

“Why should I enjoy insulting Ezra?” Mircea asked. “I don’t even know the guy!”

“Okay! What crawled up your ass?!”

“Lemaile,” supplied Aley, Mircea’s best friend. “How is it doing, by the way?”

Mircea twitched. This had to be the hundredth time he had been asked that question. If Lemaile had not been such a sore spot for him, he wouldn’t have minded answering. But now, he was on the verge of blowing his top. “There’s one Hail Mary of a proposal in the works,” he replied shortly. “If it goes through, the company should be able to limp into the next quarter.”

“Hence your arrival straight from the office?”

“Precisely. Instead of wasting time here, I should be working on the proposal, or firing somebody, or beating my head against my desk, or murdering my brother-”

“Oh my God, there you are!”

Peace, it seemed, was still evading him. Lyra, his girlfriend (he couldn’t remember why), snatched his glass away, pushed into Aley’s hands and dragged him to the middle of the ballroom. “Dance with me,” she demanded.

“We did. For almost forty-five minutes.”

“Well, we’re dancing again, then.”

It was less tiring to just give in, and he needed to save his energy for an all-nighter. As he suspected, however, Lyra wasn’t remotely interested in the dance itself. Her eyes were on everyone except him, and she seemed to be trying to prove something to her spectators as she tried to make out with him between every move.

“By the way, baby, how big is your yacht?”

Ah, he should have realized it earlier. The woman always had an ulterior motive behind every gesture. It wasn’t all that uncommon in his world of Alphas constantly struggling for power, so he didn’t question her. “Two hundred feet,” he answered.

“That works!”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s my sister Marie’s birthday this Sunday. I was thinking we could throw her a party on the yacht. She thinks she’s all that, buying that little fishing boat of a yacht. Her expression when she sees – what’s the thing’s name again?”

Ho, no. There were few things Mircea hated more than being used as a trophy. He felt like he was about to bust a vein in his temple. “Aurea, and she’s not available for any party.”

His livid expression alone was enough to draw curious looks. Lyra looked around in alarm and forced him into twirling across the floor in a wide arc, away from eavesdroppers. “Don’t make a scene,” she hissed into his ear. “Why can’t I borrow the yacht?”

“Because she needs a licensed skipper on board. That’s me, and I told you long ago that I am not going to be able to go anywhere this month.”

“Then get another skipper!”

“Absolutely not. I’m still paying her off.”

“Come on, please?” Lyra ran a finger up Mircea’s thigh, making no attempt at subtlety. “I’ve already invited everybody. If you leave me alone this weekend, who knows who might snatch me away?”

That was the last straw. If she thought he would pant after her like a hungry dog, she was dead wrong. “There will be no snatching,” he snarled, slapping her hand away. “As of now-”

Every thought in Mircea’s brain scattered. Large windows with stone lattices looked out into the garden outside, and as Mircea passed one of them, he happened to take in a lungful of the most incredible scent he had ever smelled. Instantly, he felt like he never wanted to breathe out again.

His jaw dropped open. Of their own volition, his eyes swung across the entire room looking for the source of that scent. The tension leaked out of his shoulders. His whole body relaxed, his grip on Lyra loosening, his jaw unclenching, his breathing becoming a little easier. It certainly didn’t make him feel like everything would be okay – but he found himself thinking clearer without that exhausting anxiety clouding his brain.

“Mircea? Mircea! Damn it, hey!”

A light slap brought him back to reality. Lyra was scowling up at him, self-conscious and awkward, holding his hands to her body. “What the hell is wrong with you?!” she snapped.

“We’re over,” he responded, sounding rather out of breath. “Right here, right now.” Pushing Lyra’s hands away, he stepped back.

“What?! You can’t just-”

He turned towards the exit. “Find your own ride home!” he called out behind himself and fled.

Ah, that felt so good. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he lowered his head and kept walking. He had no idea where he was going – as long as it was away, he didn’t care. Now that there was some distance between him and the annoying crowd inside, his mind snapped back to the sword hanging over his head – Lemaile.

Lemaile was his childhood dream, a construction company he had started as a teenager. A small startup catering to micro-scale businesses, it had splashed onto the international scene before he had turned twenty-five. The company had just moved into a brand-new commercial high rise when his father had forced him to hand the company over to his wayward brother Zachary in an attempt to force him to toe the line.

The vengeful Zachary, however, had deliberately driven the company into the dust, turning what should have been QuartzCorp’s biggest money-maker into its worst nightmare. It was only then that old man Quartz had pushed the wrecked enterprise back into an already overworked Mircea’s hands to fix.

“I said, stay right there!”

Mircea jumped a foot into the air. A breathtaking hallway stretched before him, vintage lamps throwing light onto a high vaulted ceiling covered in 17th-century frescoes. The most delicate lattice he had ever seen ran down the length of the corridor, dividing it in half. And on the other side was the silhouette of another person – a smaller, slighter silhouette, and the source of that mind-blowing scent.

Mircea didn’t know why, but he raised his hands in the air. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t come here for you.”

“You’ve been following me this whole time!”

So it was a man. “Oh! I just...I was thinking hard and…followed my nose, I guess.”

“Then follow it back to where you came from.”

“No. I mean, can I stay here with you? Please?”

What the hell was he saying? The man whose company people lined up for was now begging for the company of a total stranger!

“Why?” asked said stranger, drawing closer.

“Your scent-”

“Nope, no, absolutely not. You can leave.”

“Wait! Please! Hear me out, your scent – it makes me happy!”

There was a surprised intake of breath from the other side. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, honestly.” With a tired sigh, Mircea sat down on the floor.

“Don’t move.”

Mircea saw the stranger’s form walk away from him without a sound. “Barefoot, huh,” he muttered. “He’s not a Carter, and he probably isn’t a guest…does he work here?”

The lights went out. Mircea shot to his feet and pulled out his phone, only to have the stranger’s voice stop him. “Put it away,” he said. “No lights.”

“What is going-”

His whole world shifted as that scent flooded his nostrils and cool, smooth-skinned arms linked themselves behind his neck. Oh my God, he gasped to himself, utterly starstruck. His legendary smoothness went up in smoke. “Hold me,” said the mysterious man.

Completely bewitched, Mircea complied. His arms wound around a slender frame, every line and curve arranged as if for his arms alone. His hair stood on end the moment they touched, and a little huff of startled pleasure escaped his throat. Soft, fragrant hair tickled his chin. “You’re tall for an omega,” he remarked.

Faint music from the ballroom floated down the hall. Slowly, cautiously, they began to sway in a small square, quite a difference from the grandiose performance Mircea had been putting up before. In fact, Mircea was a little uncomfortable with how simple and informal their dance was. But as the seconds ticked by, he found that he enjoyed this strange experience – no spectators, no expectations, no light, no idea who his partner was – just him and another person with their thoughts and the total darkness, free to be who they wanted to be.

“So…my scent,” the stranger reminded him. “Explain.”

“It’s hard to. Um…my life’s work is about to go up in smoke. I haven’t slept in two days, and I have a headache I can barely see through. Even so, when I smelled your scent, I felt happy. It’s as simple as that.”

“No, it’s complicated.” The stranger laid his head on Mircea’s chest. Mircea’s heart flipped.

“Aren’t there things you draw happiness from without knowing why?”

A thoughtful silence followed. “Whales,” came the answer.

Unable to help himself, he lowered his head a little and inhaled deeply. “Are you seriously sniffing me?” the man asked.

“I’m addicted,” Mircea admitted. “Oh, I wish I could bottle this fragrance and take it with me. I have such a horrible time ahead-”

“Are you about to go broke or something?”

“Not at all. In fact, it would make no difference to my career or reputation if this company shuts down. But…but. I built that company from nothing. It’s not a product of QuartzCorp – it’s mine. And I’m about to lose it because of a fight I have nothing to do with. It’s so stupid, being this sentimental when I have so many other ventures under my wing-”

“I understand. It’s your life’s dream, Mircea Quartz. What does your position in life have to do with it? You will never put more heart, effort or sacrifice into anything else. When all that goes down the drain, it hurts.”

A huge weight suddenly lifted off Mircea’s shoulders. This stranger wasn’t the first person he had talked about his worries with, but his power-hungry peers couldn’t understand why he was clinging to a sinking boat. And now that he had found sympathy in the most unexpected of places, he could say the one thing he had been unable to admit since the Lemaile nightmare began. “I’m scared.”

“That’s good. If you spend all your energy denying it, how will you put your all into saving your dream?”

Mircea chuckled. “You are amazing, you know that?” he told him, tightening his arms around the smaller man.

“You think so?”

“I was thinking this was the last place in all of Providence where I should be. I was cursing every moment I spent here. We’ve spent all of five minutes together, and now I can’t be gladder I came, because it means I can be right here, right now, with you.”

The mysterious man shuffled closer, pressing their bodies together. One hand slid up Mircea’s neck into his hair. “Then I’m glad I came too,” he whispered into his ear.

Mircea gasped a little as delicious shivers rocked him from top to toe. “Why did you come?” he asked, suddenly curious.

“I came to see you. Prince Quartz at the Carter estate of all places…I got curious. I wanted to see what you were like.”

“You needn’t have taken such a risk for that, you know. There’s hundreds of Alphas in there. There’s plenty of stuff about me on the internet. And I’m in a few magazines, you know, and I appeared in a couple of shows-”

“No. I would have done that if I wanted to know what the world paints you to be. I am curious about the Mircea Quartz of now – just the man named Mircea, who is sitting with his back against mine.”

“And what did you find out?”

“That his hair is black, not brown…he likes flowers…his waltz is average at best…he doesn’t indulge in baseless gossip, he knows the worth of a dream…and he can speak his heart better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Mircea’s cheeks burned hotter and hotter with every word. He’d held his cool before some very famous people, but he couldn’t believe how flustered this man could make him. “They dyed it brown for an event years ago,” was all he could mumble. “It became a hit, so they made me keep it that way.” For the first time since he graduated elementary school, he pouted. “I don’t like it.”

“Then grow it out.” The stranger tugged on a few strands to emphasize his point.

“If I grow my hair out…will you meet me face-to-face?”

The stranger laughed in disbelief. “That makes no sense,” he said. “Besides, I-”

The estate’s old chapel housed a giant bell that now began to ring, signaling ten o’clock. All of a sudden, Mircea was roughly shoved away. “Shit!” the man swore. “I’ve stayed too long!”

“Wait! At least tell me your name!”

“No! Nobody can ever know we were together. Promise me you won’t tell anyone about me!”

“But why-”

“Promise me, Mircea!”

Hearing his name from the stranger’s mouth did it. “I promise,” he swooned. “And thank you!”

There was no response. Between the gongs, Mircea could hear the faint thud of the stranger’s feet as he tore down the corridor.

“This isn’t goodbye!” he called over the deafening sound of the bell. “I don’t want this to be the end, you hear me? We will meet again!”