I hadn’t believed she could possibly look angrier. I was wrong.
“Excuse me?” she hissed. “Did I go out there and break a promise to someone? Did I go back on my word like you did?”
I winced. My wolf let out a sad whine at the rebuke, but I managed to maintain my composure.
“No, but you put yourself in danger, June. You can’t survive a fight with Eugenia when you can’t shift. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Maybe, but since you told the entire pack that I’m your mate, I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Yes, youdid, goddamn it,” I growled, clenching my fists. “You could have listened to me. You could have rejected the challenge and let me and Rainier fix things behind the scenes.”
“Right,” she said with mock sincerity. “And then the whole pack knows I’m a coward and that I backed down from a rightful challenge. They’d never have respected me after that. Ihadto say yes. Though, I was so fucking pissed at you, none of that mattered. I just wanted to punchsomething.”
“Well, you aren’t fighting her,” I said. “I won’t allow it.”
“You won’tallowit?” She glared at me. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the alpha,” I snapped. “This is my pack, and you’re my mate. This is final.”
“Well, I’m not officially part of this pack yet,” June said, “I’m my own person, and I say I am fighting her.”
I growled with frustration. “You can’t do this,” I said, then muttered under my breath, “Naphele wouldneverhave been this reckless?—”
“I am not Naphele! I’d appreciate it if you stop comparing me to her.”
My anger slipped, cascading deep into my chest, where it reformed as surprise, shame, and fear. “June, I didn’t?—”
“We’re done here. What I said is final. If you want to talk to Naphele that damn badly, go sit in your room and stare at her painting.”
With that, she stormed off, slamming the door to the bunkhouse behind her, leaving me alone outside. All the energy flooded out of me. Had I ever made a mistake this bad? I didn’t think so.
Covering my face with my hands, I stood there, trying towilltime to go backward. Ten minutes. That’s all I needed. Ten minutes ago, things were great. Now they’d all fallen apart. Even after a hundred years, you could still screw everything up in the blink of an eye.
37
JUNIPER
Sleep wouldn’t come. I threw myself into bed before nine o’clock, and by one in the morning, I’d done little more than toss and turn. I lay awake for hours more, staring out the window at the night sky outside, wondering how I was going to win a fight against Eugenia, and also how to figure out what was going on between me and Levi.
He had some sort of hang-up about his last mate. Naphele. Her namekeptpopping up. He was obsessed with her. Keeping that painting in his cabin for damn near a century should have been the first sign. Then he’d taken me toherfavorite place and been sullen and upset that I hadn’t loved it like she had. Then he’d had the audacity to bring her up while we were fighting? Saying I wasn’t howshewould have been? It pissed me off.
When sleep finally did come, it was fitful and filled with dreams about a woman I didn’t know and would never know. A woman who still had the man I’d grown to love in the palm of her hand even though she was dead.
The lack of sleep and stress had put me in a bad mood, so I skipped breakfast and headed to the open clearing on the other side of Hidden Grove. I spotted one of the men patrolling in the woods just beyond as I started jogging in place to warm up.
If I was going to fight Eugenia, I’d need to practice what little I knew. Since she was the challenger, it was her prerogative to designate the time and day for the fight. She could ask for it at any time. Hell, she could say she wanted to fight this afternoon. I had to be as ready as I could be.
Beatrice and I had done a few months of a kickboxing cardio class a couple years ago. Though it had been designed to burn calories rather than to learn toactuallyfight, it along with what Levi had taught me was pretty much all I had.
Thinking about Levi sent another wave of anger through me, and I began shadow boxing. Imagining Levi’s face when I punched and Eugenia’s when I kicked gave me some catharsis, but after a half hour of that, my melancholy returned. I didn’twantto hurt Levi. Not really. But what he’d done had hurt, and I wasn’t sure I could easily forgive him.
Deep down, I realized he’d had a good reason for what he did. The problem was that the reason only made sense in his own head. A hundred years of living as a wolf and only interacting with people when necessary had probably stunted his ability to see things from other people’s perspectives. I could see that, but it didn’t make things any more difficult to accept.
“How’s it going?”
I whirled around to see Linnea walking toward me, holding a bundle of cloth.
“Fine,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. Thankfully, it was an unseasonably warm morning.
