Johanna, who never jokes, only gazes at me. “Your appearance, while a delight for me, did not exactly create jubilation in all quarters. I thought Connor got over it in time. Apparently I was wrong.”
I think about that as the fire dwindles and the pack, seemingly chastened in all directions, heads back to their own private dens.
Down in Ty’s den, I’m not surprised when he hauls me to him the moment we cross the threshold. I wrap my legs around his waist as he slams me against the nearest wall, and then everything is a blistering rush of heat and need.
His mouth is on mine, a kiss of fury and fear, need and wild passion. Between us, he frees his cock and pushes in deep. He waits for my body to adjust around him, then he pulls me back away from the wall and holds me in place with his feet spread wide and a hard palm on each of my ass cheeks.
Then he does what he wants.
He makes me come again and again. My head is thrown back and my arms are looped around his neck, and I completely surrender myself to this vivid display of the emotions I know he doesn’t want to show any other way.
The emotions I know he won’t admit are eating him alive.
When he finally comes, it’s scalding hot and goes on forever.
He carries me into the bedroom and we tumble down onto the bed together, a tangle of not entirely removed clothing and quivering limbs. We are little more than sweat and panting, holding on to each other for dear life.
The specter of Connor’s betrayal is wrapped all around us. It’s like a smell that tells us both entirely too much and can’t be banished, no matter how many breaths we take.
I don’t say anything. I hold him and listen to him breathe as his big body presses me into his soft bed. Eventually, he flips over and lies there beside me, staring up at the uneven curve of his ceiling.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him.
“It is,” he replies immediately. “He was my VP for one hundred years, Maddox. Who’s fault is it if not mine?”
“His. It is entirely and only his fault.”
“But here’s the thing,” Ty says quietly, here in this cocoon of ours in the dark. Here where no one can hear us. Where no one but me will listen. “How can I trust my judgment after this? Why should I ask anyone else to trust it? I had no idea. What kind of king am I if I had no idea that the man I trusted the most was sharpening knives to stick in my back all the while?”
He doesn’t speak again, though eventually exhaustion takes him down and he sleeps. I don’t. I lie there in the dark, wondering why this part feels like a bigger betrayal than I think it would have if it had been directed only at me.
I was creeped out by someone stalking me, targeting me. I was sick over the idea that someone was using my work to hurt the pack. But the fact that Connor made Ty doubt himself? It makes me feel incandescent with sheer fury. It makes me wish we could bring the old man back from the ashpit so I could take a turn at his throat.
When the next day dawns, my eyes are gritty and I still don’t know how to handle it.
I move around the den. I go into the kitchen and make myself breakfast in the hopes that protein might make that burning fury inside me ebb a little bit.
When I hear people muttering about last night, about how they never liked Connor anyway and blah blah blah, I can’t help myself. I turn on them, staring them down across a wide countertop in the den kitchen.
“How fascinating,” I say, with a certain scathing politeness. “Did you know?”
It’s a mated pair I’ve never thought about one way or the other. Now I’m fairly sure that I will root against them until the end of time. They both flinch a little, as if having all of my attention on them like this is alarming.Polarizing, even.
I sure hope it is.
“Um,” says the male.
“Because if you did know that Connor was a traitor to this pack all this time and you kept that information to yourself, what does that make you?” I ask in a voice that would make a razor feel dull by comparison.
The male looks as if I’ve struck him. The female bursts into tears.
I feel ... not as bad about that as I probably should. I make myself a huge plate of food and eat it standing there at the counter with a face that could make children cry. Or so I assume. No one comes near enough to me to find out.
I can hear Ty barking out orders as he puts wolves through their paces up above. He sounds as friendly as I feel.
I decide that no good can possibly come of me sitting around and snapping at everyone, so I go and take an extremely long bath in the hot pool tucked away in the very back of Ty’s den. It’s a natural pool fed by the hot spring that the rest of the pack can access from the outside and downstream a bit.
Here it’s private. It’s only Ty’s. That makes it mine too and I float there, trying to get that stomach-hollowing feeling of betrayal to ease its grip on me. Trying not to hear the stunned fury in Ty’s voice.
