The Alpha’s Gift: Bad Alpha Dads
The Immortals
Monica La Porta
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2018 by Monica La Porta
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
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To Roberto.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Max parked his yellow Lambo in the garage of the Wild Ride Nightclub. He popped a mint into his mouth and exhaled the cold aroma slowly, savoring the bite. It was two o’clock in the morning and his night had just started.
Chuckling at the memory of his last heated encounter, he looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror and smiled. The brunette had left a small hickey on his throat, and the skin on his back still tingled from her long nails. Her screams of pleasure had almost given them away as he slammed into her in the dark, back corridor of True, one of the many clubs that were his hunting ground in Seattle. His dragon had growled the entire time, enhancing his pleasure.
Life was truly wonderful for a billionaire alpha shifter.
His cellphone rang. He checked the caller ID with a frown. It was his penthouse’s doorman.
“Hugo, what’s the matter?” Max asked, leaning against the black leather seat. Boy, that woman had scratched her way through his back well and good, and the pain had only excited him more. He grew hard at the mere thought of her long, black nails curved in a come-hither gesture—
His doorman’s voice interrupted his pleasant wandering. “Mr. Prize, I apologize for calling you this late at night—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Mr. Prize, you should come back home,” the man said in a rush.
“I’m kind of busy right now.” Or he would be soon. Max had every intention to make his statement a certainty the moment he entered the nightclub.
In fact, he remembered two blondes in their late twenties frequenting the club for the last two or three months. They were forever giving him not-so-subtle glances from the opposite end of the bar. Tonight, early morning, whatever, he had in mind to take them both back to one of the hotels he owned in the city for some fun. His dragon paced in his mind, anticipating the celebratory flight Max always indulged in after a night of pleasure. It was a good thing he lived in Seattle where an almost perennial blanket of clouds hid his dragon from mortal eyes.
“I apologize again, sir, but a situation has arisen that needs your immediate attention.” Hugo’s voice was somehow covered by what sounded like a wail of some sort.
“What’s happening?” Max’s thoughts went immediately to the most probable scenario. A woman had found her way to his penthouse and was now threatening to make a scene if Max didn’t show up.
“You’ve received a package…” The man’s voice trailed at the end, drowned by the most infernal ruckus Max had ever heard.
“What in the name of all that’s holy is in there?” Had Hugo brought a feral cat to work?
“The package’s content, I’m afraid,” Hugo said. “Please, Mr. Prize, hurry. I’ve already taken the liberty to call Mr. Wilson, and Jack Bosch is here with me.”
Max’s frown deepened as he swore in several languages. If Hugo had called Wilson Saints, Max’s dragon-shifter best friend and PR specialist, whatever the situation was at his penthouse, it needed professional handling.
With a last, disappointed look at the club’s elevators, Max fired up his sports car, shifted into reverse and let the Lambo’s roar fill the silent garage.
1
Nothing spoiled Max’s fun like having to drive back to his penthouse when the schedule for the night should’ve involved a threesome with a duo of blondes who had been eye-fucking him forever.
“This better be a life-or-death kind of situation,” Max barked at Hugo as soon as he exited his private elevator and found the doorman looking expectantly at him from the center of his foyer.
Jack, Max’s security detail chief, stood behind Hugo, his eyes cutting down to the floor before looking back at his employer.
“I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Hugo said, his hands wrenching the hem of his black and silver uniform jacket.
The man stepped aside, and for a moment, Max wasn’t sure what he was looking at. “I have no time for games—” he started saying before he followed Jack’s lowering gaze and found himself staring at a plastic contraption—like one of those carriers for kids, not that he had ever seen one up close—sitting at his security detail’s feet. A flannel blanket in a shade of pink that hurt the eye covered the contents beneath.
“What is that?” Max’s frustration only grew when neither his doorman nor Jack provided him with an answer. His dragon, who had paced like a rabid animal until a moment ago, stilled. A strange and yet familiar scent hit his nostrils, raising the hair on his arms. “What the fuck is in there?” he growled.
Jack stepped forward, assuming a defensive pose as if Max were a threat against whatever was in that carrier.
“Move, or I’ll make you.” Max walked the gap between him and his soon-to-be-ex security detail.
Then something moved inside the hideous plastic box, the blanket fell to the side and the smallest hand Max had ever seen popped out from the gray edge. He tilted his head, wondering if he was hallucinating when a loud sound transformed the quiet of his penthouse into a bedlam.
“Do something!” Max jumped back several steps and pointed at the wailing thing as the blanket slid to the ground, revealing that the little hand was attached to a little arm, and up higher were a miniature neck and an equally small face. A face that was becoming increasingly redder as the little monster screamed her lungs away.
“Take it away!” Max yelled, competing with the banshee, and failing to be heard over the horrendous cacophony. “Take it away, right now!” He pointed at the floor and then at the elevator to make his order crystal clear.
Jack gave him a shocked look, while Hugo shook his head, eyes bright and lower lip trembling as if Max had just said something horrible.
Before such a blatant display of betrayal, Max stomped toward the carrier, only to find both his now ex-employees erecting a wall before the pint-sized monster.
“Move!” Max commanded.
The elevator’s door opened, and the monster stopped crying. In the blessed moment of silence that followed, a voice resonated inside the foyer.
“The baby girl stays,” Wilson said, strolling out of the elevator and into the foyer. Dressed in a pinstripe, charcoal gray Armani suit, he stopped in front of Max and pushed his frameless glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Max opened his hand to the side, pointing at the thing ruining the polished beauty of his Italian marble tiles. “That—” He couldn’t even say the word baby. “That isn’t going to stay in this apartment a moment longer. I have no idea how it arrived here—” He turned to Hugo. “How did that happen?”
“A private courier came with a huge pack; he said it was a special delivery for you and left. I ran after him but then I heard a strange noise coming from the cardboard box—” Hugo answered. “I thought it was some pet, but when I lifted the lid, there was this beautiful baby inside.”
“And you thought that bringing it up to my penthouse was a good idea how?” Max’s voice rumbled throughout the high-ceilinged room, triggering the baby’s wailing again.
“Please, don’t shout,” Hugo said. “You’re scaring her.”
“Now I’m the bad one here. Unbelievable—” Max could only keep his temper in check for so long before he would let his dragon out. Although, confusingly, his usually fiery beast wasn’t clawing at his mental cage as expected of him. He clenched and unclenched his fists before speaking again, and this time, he lowered his voice to a more civilized tone. “Why didn’t you do the right thing and call the police?”
“I told him not to,” Jack interceded, but immediately lowered his eyes.
There must be a raging and very contagious flu in the air that rendered mad all the people in his employment. There was no other explanation for the series of idiotic responses Max was receiving.
“And why would you tell him not to call the police?” Max maintained his calm and enunciated word by word as if he were talking to a bunch of five-year-olds.
“Because of the gift tag we found in the box,” Jack answered, this time raising his eyes long enough to cut a fleeting glance toward the cardboard box.
Hugo scurried to the corner, and after rummaging inside the pack, he retrieved one of those fancy tags usually attached to Christmas gifts. He handed the tag to Max and stepped back.
Max eyed the ornate piece that was laser cut and of good quality. Shaped like a flying dragon, it looked like a custom job, and it said: A Gift for the Alpha.
“We called Mr. Saints as soon as we read the tag because we didn’t know what to do,” Jack finished.
“And you did the right thing,” Wilson said. “What were you going to say to the mortal police when they asked you why a baby ended up at your doorstep with a note mentioning an alpha?”
“They could have called Seattle Shifter PD.” Max brought his hand to his jaw, his fingers caressing the dark stubble. He shaved twice a day, but never managed to completely remove his five o’ clock shadow.
“She’s too little. Until we find her mother, it’s hard to say if she’s fully supernatural.” Wilson gave Max a pointed look.
Supernaturals—or paranormals as the Europeans liked to be called because they thought it was more politically correct—lived among the mortals without humans being the wiser. A secret organization called the Immortal Council had controllers everywhere, making sure the existence of the supers was kept hidden. In the United States, there was a strong movement brewing against the Immortal Council’s strict laws, but the times weren’t right to come out, yet.
“My niece looked like a mortal baby until she was three and shifted for the first time,” Wilson said.
The red haze slowly dissipated from Max’s vision. “Okay, I can see the merit in not involving the official authorities. What I don’t see is why this baby should remain here.” He had said the repugnant word and survived unscathed.
“It’s temporary. Just for tonight and maybe tomorrow. As soon as we find her mother, you’ll be free. But before we do, you need to keep a low profile.” Wilson answered him in the same patronizing tone Max had used a moment earlier. “Remember Mrs. Catalani, the disgruntled ex-employee that is suing you?”
Max raised his brow and didn’t answer.
“Imagine if the tabloids catch even the mere whiff of this—” Wilson pointed his chin at the baby, who had thankfully stopped crying. “Your image will be compromised beyond repair and we’ll never find a sympathetic jury ever again. Louise Dortmund will use this baby to hammer the last nail to your coffin.”
Max’s blood ran cold at the mention of the she-dragon, Louise Dortmund, his ex-friend and currently the lawyer defending Mrs. Catalani’s interests. Louise had been out for blood, his, for the longest time, and would use anything at her disposal to make Max pay for having refused her so many years ago. The woman could hold a grudge like no other.
Wilson shrugged. “Do you like your lifestyle?”
This time, Max didn’t bother raising his eyebrow, but gave his friend the bird.
“I guess the answer is yes, so pay attention to what I’m going to say next.” Wilson waited for Max to acknowledge him before adding, “We need to find a nanny, someone we can trust to keep her mouth shut—”
“A nanny?” Max couldn’t help but throw up a bit in his mouth at the mere thought. “In my penthouse?”
“Yes, in your penthouse.”
“With the baby?”
“Of course with the baby.” Wilson opened his hands to the side in frustration. “What are we playing, Clue?”
“This is a bachelor den, not a nursery!” Max’s ire burned rapidly, and it would reach the explosive stage soon.
The baby wailed once again. Hugo and Jack sent Max reproachful glances, and Wilson stared at him with censure.
“Do something to make it stop,” Max said.
“You could start lowering your voice,” Wilson bit back.
And that was the reason women weren’t allowed in his penthouse; they instigated violence in otherwise reasonable men.
2
“Why can’t the baby stay somewhere else, with this nanny?” Max asked, again. He tried his best not to snarl, but the level of testosterone in the foyer had saturated the air, and he could barely see past the red spots in front of his eyes. “In Seattle alone, I own five different hotels.”
“Because we can’t trust anyone, and as I said, it’s only for a limited time. The more people we involve in this mess, the higher the chances someone is going to sell your little secret—” Wilson cut a glance down at the carrier “—to the highest bidder. Imagine how much Mrs. Catalani’s lawyer is going to pay for a story that depicts you as a bastard who would get rid of his daughter without second thoughts.”
“My daughter?” Max wondered if they were all playing an elaborate prank on him, the kind of stunt that would see them immediately fired. “What are you even talking about?” He pinched the bridge of his nose before he started screaming again. “This can’t be mine because I always, always, with no exception, wear a fucking condom. A monstrously super-sized, industrial grade rubber to keep all my swimmers contained. There’s no way that—” he pointed at the now-cooing baby “—could’ve happened.”
Max liked to fuck around, quite literally, but would never have unprotected sex. Never. Abandoned when he was a newborn, he had vowed only to have kids when it was the right time and not a moment before. When he finally had children, they would be loved and cherished, and he would raise them as any doting father should.
“I know, but accidents happen all the time,” Wilson said, looking at the baby again.
“Does she have rabies?” Max asked, staring at the white foam forming at the little monster’s mouth.
“It’s quite normal, sir,” Hugo said. “Babies do that.”
“Another reason to avoid having one of them here.” Max’s sensitive nostrils caught
a whiff of a foul aroma that seemed to arise from the carrier. “Hell, no!”
Strangely enough, Max’s dragon remained quiet in his head, whereas he was about to blow a gasket.
Hugo had the good sense to pick up the carrier and scurry out of sight.
“No accidents.” Max stubbornly stared at his friend, who dared to shrug.
“They happen,” Wilson repeated. “To the best of us.”
“Not to me, they don’t.” Massaging his temple, Max wished a looming headache away, but the throbbing pain had only started, and he knew it.
“Then you won’t have any problem donating a drop of blood for a DNA test.” Wilson’s lips curved into one of those odious smiles he reserved for those rare times when he won an argument against Max.
“I was going to suggest it myself to shut you up once and for all.” Max smiled back, white teeth glistening in a way that was more predatory than reassuring.
Wilson played with his phone for a moment before raising his eyes. “I’ve scheduled an appointment with a private lab, first thing in the morning, so we can move on quickly.”
Hugo came back into the foyer, looking like he had seen a ghost. “The baby needs to be changed,” he proclaimed.
“And?” Max stared back at him.
“And we don’t have any diapers handy—” Hugo’s face was becoming an unbecoming shade of rotten-egg-green.
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