What would that be like? To be setting the rules everyone else had to follow, even if you didn’t want to be?
After we were both done eating, Reed rose from his chair, then gestured for me to do the same.
“Harris, you’ve already met Daniel, Emma, and Sarah,” he said, pointing at each of them in turn. He turned to the loveseat where the twins were sitting side by side, both of them studiously ignoring Daniel, seeming to look anywhere butdirectly at him. “And you’ve met Lee. And this is his brother, Hunter.”
Lee beamed at me. Hunter gave me a salute with his index finger, his mouth full of food.
I nodded back at both of them. It was remarkable how identical Hunter was to his twin. If their shirts weren’t different colors—Lee in blue and Hunter in green—I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.
“And this is Lacey, who you met in passing,” Reed said, pointing to the blonde woman on the couch beside Daniel.
“Right,” Lacey said shortly, turning to give me a hard look that was borderline furious. I could tell she wanted to say more but couldn’t make herself do it. Her eyes narrowed at me in open dislike. “Welcome.”
“Be nice,” Daniel said quietly, shooting her a look. “Everything is fine. Harris is cool.”
“He’s human,” Lacey muttered. But when she glanced at Daniel, she sighed and nodded. “I’ll behave.”
But I could still see the tension in her, the way her spine was ramrod straight.
She was protective of Daniel, I noted. Even though he wasn’t a wolf.
Interesting.
“And this is Oliver,” Reed added, pointing to the man who had been reading at the table when we’d first come in. I hadn’t noticed before, but he must have gotten up to give us the table to ourselves and had then eaten his meal standing at the far end of the room.
“Hello,” Oliver said mildly, peering at me with open curiosity.
“Everyone, this is Harris.” Reed took in a deep breath. “My mate.”
The entire room went quiet. Every single pair of eyes was trained on me.
“Ha! I knew it,” Lee said, breaking the silence.
But Lacey shot to her feet, turning to face Reed. “You might’ve forgotten, but there’s a monster on the loose. And while you’ve been playing house with yourmate, we could have been hunting it.”
“Not until we know more about it,” Emma said firmly, shooting a look at Reed first before her gaze settled on Lacey. “We’ve been digging through our records, and based on what we know about it, we’ve got it narrowed down to three or four possible creatures. We just need to—”
“Jeremy wouldn’t have permitted it to live.”
Reed’s entire body stiffened as though Lacey had slapped him across the face.
“Jeremy isn’t alpha,” Reed said dangerously. “And neither are you.”
The sudden tension was palpable.
“This creature is capable of paralyzing its prey—including werewolves,” I said, before I even realized I was going to speak. “And Reed is trying to keep us all alive. That means being smart about this.” I met Lacey’s gaze. “Do you have a problem with that?”
She snorted, her eyes flashing with venom. But I watched the fight drain out of her as I stared her down.
“Well, it’s a good thingyou’vegot a backbone,” Lacey said, her gaze flicking from me to Reed and then back again. The implication was pretty clear: one of us needed to.
A flash of instinctive anger tore through me. Rationally, it made very little sense. This was pack business. And I wasn’t one of them.
But Reed belonged to me. He was mine. And I might not have technically been part of their pack, but I was a part ofhispack. And nothing could have been simpler than that singular truth.
“I’ve gotten enough to eat,” Lacey said flatly. “And I’m leaving now.”
She raised her eyebrows at Reed as if daring him to challenge her.
