It was better than the constant thunderstorm I'd grown up in.
The water always disappeared right before it hit the ground, but I had no idea where it went when it did. The spellcasters had probably designed an extra spell to take care of that when they realized they couldn’t stop it altogether yet.
"You should hide out for a while," Jonah said. "You could manage everything with the cafes from my apartment. Callum wouldn't find you there."
"He's not going to come after me," I said, not entirely sure it was true.
And if he did decide to come after me, what good would hiding do? He literally held part of my soul. I was sure he could track me with it… because he had done it precisely twelve times in the five years since we made the deal.
"Why would he do this?" Jonah gestured toward the screen of my laptop.
"I don't know. The man's an enigma." I went back to my spreadsheets. "No reason to stress about it. He's going to do what he wants. It’s not like we could stop him if we wanted to."
"Kat, he just publicly announced you as hisfiancée." Jonah gestured toward the screen again, a bit violently. As the beta I had never wanted, it was technically his job to protect me. Considering we were only a pack of two, and I’d been trying to get rid of him for years, it really was just a technicality.
"He's probably just posturing," I said.
"Was he posturing when he spent heat with youtwelve times? You know he must have a spy in your cafe to even find out you were approaching it."
I pressed my lips together.
Didn't really have a good answer to that.
I hadn't heard from Callum for exactly one-hundred-twenty-three days after I drove myself home from the nightclub. The day before I went into my next heat, a box had appeared on my doorstep.
There were a dozen red roses in it, resting on top of a blue silk bralette and a pair of matching shorts that were far too delicate for anything but sleep and sex. Someone had enchanted both pieces of clothing to smell like the king.
He must’ve known how much scent meant to werewolves, if he'd gone to the trouble of paying a spellcaster to enchant them.
There was a note on top that had a date and time on it.
6 PM, tomorrow.
The message he hadn’t included was pretty obvious. Someone had told him I was going into heat, and he wanted to spend it with me.
I hadn’t been looking forward to suffering it alone, so I met him at the door in the lingerie.
He’d taken one long look at me, stepped inside, kissed me once, and spent the rest of the time worshipping my body with his hands and mouth.
He was good at that, to say the least.
He left as soon as my heat ended, once again.
It became a pattern after that. I didn’t see or hear from Callum unless I was going into heat, which was when I’d get a bouquet of roses, a new set of lingerie, and a visit from arguably the most attractive and cruel man in Rumor.
I probably shouldn’t have told Jonah about it, but I did. He waslivid. Not out of possessiveness. Jonah wasn't possessive of me in the slightest. He was pissed because he couldn't protect me from Callum.
Wolf packs were always run by an alpha, who was always female. Her beta was always male, and his role was to protect her.
The alpha and beta ended up mated more often than not, but that obviously wasn't going to happen between us. Our history of almost being in-laws was too strong, and even if I’d had time for sex outside of heat, I really hadn’t been attracted to anyone but Callum since I was with him that first night.
That was probably a bad thing, but unfortunately, true.
Should I have been terrified that the man known for torture sent me roses and lingerie two to three times a year, and spent hours going down on me the day afterward?
Absolutely.
I wasn’t, though.
