Page 10 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

The room goes quiet enough that I can hear the boy breathing down the hall. “That child was contracted to me before he existed.” I take a step toward her. “He belongs to me.”

Her mouth sets in a hard line, and her voice comes back steady, despite the fact that I am towering over her.

“You can’t buy a child, Mr. Vance. He’s not a thing that gets delivered to your building. That boy is my sister’s blood, and he is legally mine.”

“Your sister entered a screened medical program under an identity that wasn’t hers, which is fraud in every jurisdiction I operate in. Then she took my money and vanished with my son.”

She’s across the carpet and up in my face before I’ve finished, near enough for me to feel the heat coming off her skin, one finger up between us. “Don’t you dare talk about my sister that way.”

A human being has just put herself six inches from an alpha with her hand up, and my wolf comes up under my ribs fast enough to gray out the edges of the room. For some reason, though, he’s reluctant to hurt her.

She’s nothing remarkable. I’ve seen beauties from every pack. And yet there is something in her eyes, a spark that holds my attention.

She hasn’t moved. She’s breathing hard, glaring up at me from under all that hair, and she has no idea at all what she’s standing in front of.

“He looks like me,” I point out. “You’ve seen it.”

I have no intention of leaving my child here. I don’t even have to argue with her, but I’m still standing here.

She doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes go to the closed bedroom door and stay there a while. “He looks almost exactly like you,” she admits, and she has to swallow twice to get the sentence out. “But there are thousands of men with black hair and gray eyes walking around this city. I’m not agreeing to a single thing until there’s a test.”

“Then we’ll do a test. It won’t change the result.” I fix my tie. “The boy is mine, and he’s coming with me.”

“Over my dead body.” There’s that spark again, this fire that has my wolf sitting up in interest.

“That’s the second unwise thing you’ve said tonight.”

“I know people.” She squares up, all five foot five of her. “People in high places, and if you even try to take my son, I can make things very uncomfortable for you. So like I said, over my dead body.”

I have her by the throat and against the wall in half a second. I’m not squeezing because my wolf has gotten agitated by the sudden attack. It wants me to let her go. I shove it down.

Ariela’s pulse hammers against my fingers. She’s up on her toes with both hands wrapped around my forearm, and every breath she takes is coming faster than the one before. Her scent comes up at me, and heat drops straight through my body. It’s been ten years since anything did that to me, and it’s happening with my hand around a woman’s throat.

“That can be arranged,” I tell her, and my voice is just as calm.

What I don’t account for is her right hand, which comes off my arm, finding the table beside her and bringing a lamp around into the side of my skull. The base breaks. Ceramic comes down over my shoulder and across the carpet. The noise of it fills the whole apartment.

When I don’t so much as flinch, she gapes up at me. “Is your head made of cement?”

Then her eyes drop to the pieces around my shoes, and a dismayed expression crosses her features. “Oh, shit. That was my favorite lamp. Now look what you’ve done!”

“Me?”

She’s glaring up at me over a broken lamp with my hand still on her throat. This woman is either the stupidest human female alive or the bravest.

“You’d better let me go,” she snaps at me. “Luca could walk out here any second, and I’m not having him see me pinned to a wall.”

She drives her knee up at me. I catch it in my free hand and hold it where it is.

“You want me to break this one?”

“It’s already broken.” She doesn’t blink. “The surgeon didn’t put it back together right. Break it and maybe I get a second try with somebody who’ll do the job better.”

She has no ounce of fear in her. My wolf’s intrigue just grows.

A bare foot comes down on the boards in the hall behind her, and I hear it half a second before she does.

“Mommy?”