APEX

Ch. 1: The Situation

She stared at me with her clear green eyes and then looked to the side. "You want to back off a bit? You smell worse than you look."

That was a lie disguised as a joke. She might be more nervous than she was letting on. "I like where I'm standing. You, however, are free to move."

"I was here first."

"You really weren't. This is my building and my elevator. What are you even doing here? You're a long way from Crown land."

"I was called here by my mother."

"Your mother?"

Calla nodded. "She should already be in the conference room. With your father."

The thought of those two in the same room was almost as strange as Calla and I being in this elevator together. "I don't suppose you know what the hell this is about."

"Nope." She flicked her hair off her shoulder. The motion strained the top button of her blouse and, imagining it coming undone, I fought the urge to rip away the button, and all the buttons below it.

She could have moved—I'd given her that opening—but she chose to remain close enough that I might as well have been standing right under a cherry tree, delicate pink petals raining down on me. My body continued to buzz, from my full moon hangover or Calla's proximity, I could no longer tell.

Without turning away, I reached behind me towards the elevator's control panel attempting to locate the stop button. No one would notice if we were a few minutes late.

"What are you doing?" she asked. Her voice sounded airier than it had before. Aroused? Apprehensive? She was either thinking what I'm thinking, or she was afraid I was trying to halt our progress long enough to murder her.

Just as I'd found the right button, the doors dinged and opened.

Regrettable...but probably for the best. No one was as off limits as the daughter of Crown's recently deceased Alpha. I chalked it up to the fact that I'd let myself become affected by her due to lack of sleep and forgotten hours fogginess.

Calla stepped around me and out of the elevator. "You coming?"

A few wide strides and I'd gotten ahead of her. "I'll show you the way."

As predicted, my father and Calla's mother were already present, along with my brothers, Aamon and Liam, and several members of Crown's security force. Sitting opposite Calla, I nodded to my family.

"Nice of you to join us," my father said, his tone unamused. I'd gotten here as soon as I could but clearly, as his Alpha and heir presumptive, I'd been expected sooner.

My father turned then to the Crown contingent. "Simone, Miss Bardot, I'm honored you could both join us, especially in light of the situation."

The situation? I looked at my brothers. Liam shrugged and Aamom mouthed, "not a clue."

"We better fill them in, Gerald," Simone said.

"Right." My father clicked his remote and a still image of a dark alleyway came up on the conference room screen. "What I'm about to show you speaks for itself."

He pressed his remote again and the image came to life. In it, a group of three humans—a man and two women—began walking in the direction of the camera. They laughed at a joke one of them made and then the woman on the left stopped to tie her shoe. As she crouched down, a flash of gray appeared from the left of the screen, running into the man, and pushing him out of view. My father paused the video just as the woman tying her shoe began to scream.

"That's the CCTV footage." He typed something onto his keyboard and a new video loaded. "Here's the footage one of the humans took. It picks up about ten seconds after what I just showed you."