Well… okay, that didn’t sound like something I wanted to happen. But for some reason, that tingling sensation returned. And now, I knew it wasn’t disgust.
“I can smell your want,” he said through gritted teeth.
Warmth flushed over my face. It was a long, awkward, and very silent walk back to the gently sloped hill outside the habitat, where Astrid and Frey were still waiting with the quilt Amanda had abandoned when she ran to Ronan instead of Lorcan.
Amanda… I could only wonder where she’d gotten off to at this point.
Irritation began to replace the "not disgust" I’d been feeling ever since Wild… did what he did.
Anyway…
“It’s not my fault you’re struggling with your wolf,” I pointed out as we neared the hill. “I was trying to protect —”
"It wasn’t your fault," Sea cut me off with a sharp correction.
I shook my head at him. "What does that even mean?"
He stopped walking just before we reached Astrid and Frey. "It means diplomacy is over. From now on, you will follow my commands without question."
Defiance flared inside me. "Or what?"
Sea stepped closer, the beast inside him vibrating with menace as he growled, "Or I lose my head, and the beast takes over."
He grabbed my arm and handed me over to Astrid and Frey like a child being sent home for misbehaving.
I was surprised when Astrid returned the next morning while we were eating breakfast, bringing news of Amanda — apparently at Sea’s request.
“My brother wants you all to know that Amanda is still in heat but is being well and happily attended to by her mates.”
“Mates?” Priscilla, who’d finally had her first full night of sleep since Amanda left, still had dark circles under her eyes.
“So, it’s true? She’s been ruthlessly claimed by not one, but two of those beasts?” she asked Astrid as if she thought the story I’d told the other kidnapped she-wolves last night was just a spooky tale.
“If by ruthlessly, you mean happily over and over again, then yes,”Astrid replied without a trace of shame or outrage. “Ooh, what kind of bread is this? It smells delicious!”
That’s how Astrid ended up taking a couple of the soft, floury morning rolls — or “baps,” as Fiona called them — with her before asking, “Hey, Banríon, want to walk me to the habitat door?”
I took her up on her invitation, mostly because I had nothing else to do now that I’d so utterly lost both the battle to save Amanda and to escape our prison.
Also, I wanted to collect some intel on how she got in here. I noticed she wore the same blouse and jeans combo as the day before, along with a delicate analog watch that couldn’t be used for anything but to tell time.
“How did you get in here?” I asked her right before we reached the place in the glass where the door always opened.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “I was warned not to answer any more of your questions. According to Wild, you’ve too clever of a head to be trusted.”
He said that about me?
I preened — before flashing back to the sight of his head between my legs outside of the stone circle. My belly tightened.
“Anyhow, this is for you.”
Astrid’s voice tore me out of the memory that, despite Amanda’s heat smell having dissipated, I couldn’t stop having for some reason. Over and over again.
I looked down to find her holding out a cream-colored envelope, elegant as a prop in a Bridgerton episode and sealed in ocean-blue wax.
I took the letter from her hand. It was way heavier than the ones we occasionally received from my oldest sister, Leora, who’d been wolf-mated when I was still a kid — and she was only sixteen. AndMairinuawas written across the front in the kind of elegant cursive that could also feature in an episode ofBridgerton.
“What’s this?”
