Delilah snorts. “Oh, Sandy, you mean the fat pig turned luna!” she laughs condescendingly, and I frown.
I didn’t remember her being so mean. Unless I just wasn’t paying attention.
“Exactly!” The blonde rolls her eyes, stepping forward with a deliberate clink of her heeled boot on the paved floor. “She onlythinksshe’s the luna, but I bet Alpha Elias is only using her.”
Narrowing my eyes to hide the dread slithering down my spine, I gulp, not knowing how to dismiss that claim when that’s been my own suspicion from the get-go. But all I’ve witnessed since then is the alpha’s kindness and care toward me, so I cling to it.
“Did you forget that the alpha and I participated in an official ceremony?” I argue measuredly, raising a brow despite the anxiety skittering through me.
Delilah scoffs and steps in. “It’s all a cover-up. We all know you’re the reason why the demon dog is after our pack.”
“Yeah, you’re the bad omen, Aurora Sinclair,” the one named Sandy adds with a scoff. “That’s probably why the alpha is using you. He’s gonna get rid of you and save us all.”
I take a deep, calculated breath, my eyes flicking over Delilah’s shoulder at the surroundings of the market, not wanting to make a scene. But the two women have already stirred my nerves enough. It takes mustering up every ounce of courage to say, “The alpha isn’t using me.”
Hardly believing that myself, the two she-wolves roar with laughter, their eyes glowing with mockery.
“Of course he is!”
“How else would you explain the alpha of this pack being mated to a loser like you?!” Sandy bellows, taking another step forward to prod my chest with a finger. “That’s all you are, Aurora. A fat loser! You’re nothing!”
“Hey! What’s going on here?!” a stern male voice roars from behind me, followed by marching footsteps drawing closer.
Sandy and Delilah exchange distressed looks, then fall back and plaster smiles on their faces.
“Oh, Alpha Brooks!” Sandy sweetly chimes. “We were just greeting Alpha Elias’s Luna.”
“That’s not what it looked like,” Brooks grunts as he steps beside me, his tall figure blocking out the faint morning sunlight. “I heard enough. Get out of here. And leave Aurora alone.”
Without hesitation, the women spin on their heels and rush off, disappearing behind the vinyl sheet covering the side of the fruit stall.
Relief washes over me, prompting me to turn and politely dip my head.
“Thank you, Alpha Brooks. You didn’t need to—”
Just as I’m about to say that I could have easily handled the she-wolves myself—a lie, but Brooks doesn’t need to know that—he lifts a dismissive hand in front of my face.
“Save it, Aurora. I didn’t need to do anything, I know.” He turns disdainful, cold gray eyes on me, grimacing as if he regrets his actions. “I was only doing it for Elias.” One corner of his lips peels back in a sinister, derisive smirk. ”I agree with everyone else. It’s not like you’ve proven yourself worthy of being this pack’s luna.”
“What the hell is going on here?!” another frighteningly powerful voice roars from the side, drawing my attention toward it with both its intensity and familiarity.
My eyes widen with shock when I see Elias stomping forward, eyes taking on a menacingly dark glint, his fists curled at his sides. He doesn’t look at me, his glare fixed on his subordinate until he’s close enough to grab the man by his collar and shove him against the steel pole of the stall’s frame.
I shriek in surprise as I witness the tense showdown between the alphas.
“I told you not to lay a finger on Aurora…” Elias growls in Brooks’s face.
What would have repulsed me strangely ignites a fire buried deep within my being. Witnessing Elias’s possessivenessdoes something to stir my insides, the same way they were stirred the first time my heat emerged.
Why am I suddenly turned on by Elias’s actions? His display of possessiveness over me is thrilling, and I find myself wanting him as much as I did the first time he kissed me.
The only trouble is that this is a misunderstanding—one I should step between, but I’m too caught up in imagining all the ways I want the leading alpha of the pack.
As sweat beads on my forehead and I break out in a feverish heat, the alpha appears as if he’s ready to break Brooks.
Oh, no…
I need to act fast, if I can fight through the raging hormones rendering me immobile.
