Kole immediately gets to his feet and reaches for me as feeling slowly returns to my body. Just as I’m trying to pull away from him, the stadium blurs around me like a maelstrom. Kole stops outside of the stadium, setting me down as a gust of wind slams into me, sending a shiver right down to my bones.
“Get on,” Kole orders, positioning himself on a sleek black motorcycle.
“Why can’t we just take the car?” I motion to the one Thane and I rode in earlier.
“Because you’re with me, and I like motorcycles. Now, get on.”
“Where’s my helmet?” I cross my arms and lean into my hip. I may have submitted to Thane, but not his brother. “I’m not going anywhere on that thing unless I have a helmet.”
Kole leans back, tilting his head down at me. “Look, my brother marked you, which means you’re my responsibility too. If you die on my watch, he’ll kill me.” He pats the seat behind him. “I’ll go slow.”
Another hit of icy wind sends me climbing onto the bike. I wasn’t going to win this battle anyway, and standing there out of spite seems a little pointless. I awkwardly shift behind him, looking for something to hold onto when Kole pulls both of my hands around, pinning them to his body. I can feel the indentations of his chiseled abs through his t-shirt, making this position feel uncomfortably intimate. I want to pull away, but there’s a hundred percent chance that if I do, I’ll go flying off this bike.
“Hold on tight,” he warns, as he starts the bike.
A high-pitched scream tears through me when we shoot out onto the road. My butt slides back on the seat, and I instantly cling to Kole, no longer worried about how his muscles feel beneath my fingertips.
“What happened to taking it slow?” I screech, as he accelerates even more. Tears race to my hairline while the wind repeatedly bitch slaps my face.
“Consider this payback for biting me,” he calls out over his shoulder.
“You didn’t really give me any other choice,” I retort, trying to shield my face with his body. “Where are we going?”
“Home.”
The home Kole had been referring to wasn’t the mansion, but a penthouse here in the city. And good thing because there was no way I was going to make it on that bike for the hours it would take to get back to the house in the woods.
“Do you like spaghetti?” Kole asks, pulling out a pot and setting it on the stove.
“I like it a hell of a lot more than tuna,” I quip, turning back to the wall of windows.
The city lights shine in all their glory like the world hasn’t completely turned upside down.
But it has.
In the old world, I wouldn’t be standing up here in the warmth of a home I could never even dream of living in. No. I’d be down there. In the cold. On the street. Begging for a different life than the one I was born into. But now I’m here. In a new world. With a new life. Only instead of being bound by hunger and poverty, I’m bound by an Alpha hybrid who has made it his mission to take away what little freedom I had.
Tonight, he forced my hand. I couldn’t just let Sienna die, and now the hope I had been holding onto is nothing more than a delusion. There’s no escaping this new fate. Thane found my weakness. A weakness I didn’t even realize I had until I saw her standing in the middle of a ring of wolves, looking to tear her apart. Now, her life is bound by my choices. One wrong move and she’ll be dead.
Why couldn’t she have just been cruel like the rest of them?
“Here.” Kole appears next to me, holding out a glass of red wine. “You’ve had quite the day.”
“That’s an understatement,” I reply, taking the glass from him before turning back to the window. “I signed my life away today.”
“Is that really such a bad thing? I mean, what kind of life could you have had living in the woods, always looking over your shoulder?”
“It doesn’t matter! It wasmylife!” I snap, turning to look up at him. “And now Thane has taken that from me.”
“So don’t let him. You’re his pet, not his prisoner.”
I roll my eyes. “Same thing.”
“No, it’s not,” he argues. “You won’t be living in the dungeons when we get back. You’ll be in your room with clean clothes and bubble baths. You’ll get to eat food that isn’t out of a can. Thane’s deal with you was contingent on your behavior. It’s not about imprisoning you; it’s about owning you. And thanks to that little mark on your neck, there’s a bond between the two of you whether he likes it or not.” I shake my head, not quite following. “The mark triggers an innate instinct to protect you… even from himself.”
“And yet, he’s the one who continues to hurt me.”
“Because you keep challenging him. He’s an Alpha. Power. Control. That’s who he is. To his very core.” Kole brushes his fingers along my neck, making me flinch. “But this mark restricts him from fully acting on those instincts now.”
