Frank straightened out slowly, leaving my catatonic uncle to stare at his tan loafers. Finding out his son was a traitor would haunt him for a longtime.
Why did you do it, Everest? Why did you make me fight Liam? Were you hoping I would die or were you hoping he would?I yearned to get answers because a part of me couldn’t believe the boy I’d grown up with could backstab me and his pack soguilelessly.
I tried to make out August’s hissed whisper to Frank, but the lively banter in the glass and stone room drowned out my friend’s deep timbre. Unable to leave well-enough alone, I strode through the small clusters of men chugging celebratory beers, uncrossed my arms, and poked August in the bicep. He didn’t brush away my finger, but he squeezed his eyes shut amoment.
“What the hell, August? What did I do to you thatmerited—”
He opened his eyes, and the force of his gaze made me stoptalking.
Frank sighed. “I was worried it hadhappened.”
“Thatwhathad happened?” I asked, scowling atAugust.
“Both of you, follow me.” Frank started toward the back of thebuilding.
Neither August nor Imoved.
“Now,” Franksaid.
August lowered hiseyes.
“I don’t understand,” Isaid.
“I don’t either, Ness.” August’s voice was infinitesimally softer, which wasn’t to say soft. It was still as strained as the cream-colored Henley on hisback.
“What do you mean, you don’t understand?” I kept my voice low. “You’re the one who snubbed me. Not the other wayaround.”
“Ness, now.” Frank’s voice brooked noargument.
Stomach writhing with nerves, I started across the room that had fallen way too quiet. Lucas and Matt stared at me as I passed by them, and then they stared at August, who was a step behindme.
Ness?I felt Liam’s voice inside my head, looked for him through the fence of enormous male bodies. He wasn’t hard to spot. It wasn’t so much that he was taller than all the others—he wasn’t—but because he emitted something the others didn’t, this intractable pull . . . anAlphaness.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him as August went aroundme.
Liam’s eyes had shifted to amber, as though the wolf in him was trying to surface. He was protective and possessive of the people he liked. Since he’d climbed onto my balcony and we’d shared our first kiss, I’d become one of thosepeople.
I pasted on a smile to reassure him that everything was all right. But was anything all right? Why did Frank want to talk to me? And why was August acting like someone had wronged him? He hadn’t coveted the title of Alpha, so it couldn’t be jealousy. Before he’d left Boulder, he’d even urged me not to fight Liam forit.
I walked toward one of the two small rooms in the back of the building. August was already inside. As I treaded past him, he shut the door, then planted his boot against the wood and leanedback.
I dropped down onto the black leather couch, folded one leg over the other, and laced my fingers around my knee, which had started bobbing with crackling anticipation. “Why did you need to see the both ofus?”
Frank removed a wicker chair from a short stack and propped it on the stone floor. The chair groaned as he took a seat. He looked from August to me and then back at August, who’d crossed his arms, tendons pinching underneath his burnished skin. He’d never disclosed the location of where he’d been stationed these past few weeks, but I suspected he’d acquired his deeper-brown hue somewhere in the Middle East. Few regions were as contentious. Well, besides Colorado. Our state was chock-full of contention thanks to feudingpacks.
At the elder’s sigh, my stomach cramped again. Maybe it wasn’t hunger. Maybe itwasstress. Stress brought on by August’s strangebehavior.
“Your abdomen is spasming, isn’t it, Ness?” Frankasked.
Blinking at Frank, I whipped my hand off my middle and clasped myknee.
“It’snormal.”
“Normal?” Icroaked.
“A symptom of what you’vecontracted.”
“What I’ve contracted? What have Icontracted?”
