“You shouldn’t have lied to me.” She scrambled farther from me and sat up on her knees in the middle of the bed. “You promised me you were going to help the residents of Creekview. And that you were going to get rid of Pines. But he’s still there!” She yelled. “He’s still hurting them, and you’ve done nothing. Now, he killed Charlotte Rowe.”
“You would’ve known that was bullshit if you simply asked me,” I replied. “Pines was suspended from his position, pending an investigation a damn week ago, as a result of my doing.” I slapped my chest with my palm for emphasis.
Her eyelids lowered, shielding her gaze from me. Soon enough, though, her eyes snapped upward, back on me. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“I’ve never betrayed you.”
“Oh, right. Like when you told me you were a private investigator.”
I cursed underneath my breath. She had me there.
“Or when you lied and said I was your mate.”
I peered sharply at her. “I never lied about that.” What would possess her even to think something like that?
“That’s not what you told your cousins? Not once did you tell them I was your mate. You practically denied me right in my face.” Her tongue was sharp, but it was the pain wrapped around the words she threw at me that pierced my heart.
“Fuck,” I ran my hand through my hair. The memory of Reese sitting out on the back porch talking to Henry about all of the rejection she’d encountered in her life hit me like a ton of bricks.
I squeezed my eyes shut and balled my fists. “You are my mate.”
“I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say.”
“You are my damned mate!” I opened my eyes. “By Mother Moon herself, I would lie down and take my last breath before lying about that. I wasn’t…” I paused to think about how much of the truth I wanted to divulge. Everything I had done had been in service to protect her, but that backfired on me. My mate had gotten herself into even more trouble because of me.
Because I failed to be honest with her.
“Reese.” I stepped closer and took her hands into mine.
She snatched them away from me, and dammit if my cock didn’t pulse against the zipper of my jeans. My wolf growled, wanting me to make her submit through her screams as she came until she passed out.
Soon, I told my wolf to calm him down.
I retook her hands, more firmly this time. “Look at me,” I demanded. When she did, the fiery anger burning in her eyes was plain to see. “I didn’t claim you as my mate in front of my cousins because I didn’t think it was safe.”
She sucked her teeth and tried to pull away.
“Listen to me.” I pushed out a breath. “Intermarriage between humans and shifters was outlawed half a century ago.”
“By who?” she asked.
“The Alliance.”
“And who are they?” She looked me directly in the eye with a disbelieving expression on her beautiful face.
“The Alliance is a council of all different kinds of shifters and other supernatural beings. It was formed two centuries ago to preserve our way of life. The responsibility of the Alliance is to ensure the continued growth of our population and peace among the different groups. But most of all, it aids in defending our kind against our biggest threat.”
She leveled a look at me. “Humans.”
I nodded. “Humans in this country and other parts of the world almost completely wiped out our colonies and packs. They were considered the number one threat to us. As a result, the Alliance mandated that marriage between shifters and humans would have to be approved by them first.”
She squinted. “But aren’t you cousins with Savannah’s husband and his brothers? They’re humans.”
I nodded. “We’re distant cousins. Their great-grandmother married one of our pack. He wasn’t an alpha, so their children weren’t born shifters. And they married years before the mandate was in place.”
“Humans and shifters aren’t allowed to mate at all?”
“The Alliance has approved of some intermarriages, but it’s been years. And they did so only when the marriage would benefit the Alliance. Tiger shifters almost completely died out but were saved when intermarriages were allowed. But that’s not so much the case with werewolves. We’re plentiful and not in danger of extinction anymore.”
