Cillian grunted, but didn’t respond. Partially because he knew that Franco was right. He had made a choice to go at it alone, and it had ended up costing him.
“It’s no use arguing over it anymore,” Jasper said from where he leaned against the wall. “Things are already in motion. What’s done is done. What we need to focus on now is what we’re going to do about it.”
Camden muttered something, but nodded. He glowered at Cillian, but didn’t bring the argument up again. Instead, he said, “We need more information on the Night Pack and the people involved. At the moment, we’re flying blind.”
“I can bring you up to speed,” Cillian said. “Just give me a day or so to gather all my old notes and see what else I can dredge up.”
“We’ll set up a meeting for the end of the day tomorrow,” Camden responded with a curt nod.
The alpha’s shoulders remained stiff, his words clipped. Cillian was nowhere out of the woods yet. Camden was far from happy with him, and Cillian would get an earful about all of this when they had taken care of the threat.
Camden dismissed them. Cillian walked down the hall, his mind wandering. No matter where his thoughts drifted, though, they kept coming back to what Jasper had said, his words spinning around in his mind.
What’s done is done.
That included what he had done to Amber, making her marry him. His stomach squirmed in unease. He had questioned whether he had been impulsive in insisting on it nearly every day now, whenever she shot him angry glances or hurried out of the room when she saw him. He smothered the stab of guilt by reminding himself that it was to protect her, even if she didn’t see it right now. But that tiny inkling of remorse continued to linger.
His own feelings toward Amber had grown more complicated of late. He had never met someone like her. He admired her fire. Whenever he had interacted with her during training sessions, they had bantered easily. She had always been quick to stand up for others. He had liked her even before stumbling across her in the woods. In another world, he might have asked her out at some point. They could have dated and seen where things went, instead of him dragging her into marriage.
That guilt resurged. He might have been doing it for the right reasons, and he didn’t regret doing it. He only wished that it hadn’t resulted in the hostile or distant stares from Amber or how guarded she was around him. Because he could tell there was something else bothering her. Something had been eating at her ever since her encounter with Eric. But whenever he tried to ask her about it, she deflected. She didn’t want to confide in him.
It frustrated him because he was trying. He was trying to be there for her, and she wouldn’t let him.
Probably because you forced her to marry you, a voice in his head said.She doesn’t trust you now.
Even if that were the case, he wanted to break down those barriers. He wanted her to trust him. The question was how he could do that now, after everything. The answer was that he couldn’t, not immediately.
His mind began to turn, mulling everything over. He should do something nice for her, something to tell her that he did want her to be happy. That he wasn’t trying to dictate her life, and that he valued her as more than just a possession, unlike Eric.
The problem was that he had no experience in that department, and he had no idea what he could do.
As he went to his own office, he ran through options in his head, everything he had learned about Amber since he had met her and since she had moved in. As he sat in his chair and stared out the window at the bright green leaves just beginning to bud on the trees, he let his mind wander until a memory popped into his head.
She had mentioned that she missed working in the library because she liked being surrounded by so many books.
He smirked. Well, there was something he could do about that.
Chapter 8 - Amber
Amber stepped into the house and, for a wild moment, wondered if a tornado had blown through the living room.
Scraps of wood lay on the ground, along with an open, half-empty box of nails and a power drill. Her eyes slid across the chaos, trying to make some sense of it. It was all construction debris, the sort of stuff one might find if someone were redoing a room. The scents of wood shavings and metal wafted up her nose. And, above it all, was the unmistakable smell of fresh paint, acrid and strangely pleasant at the same time.
Before she could even fully process what she was seeing or come up with a reason as to why someone had converted the living room into a construction zone, Cillian appeared. He was wearing old jeans splattered with paint, some of which was the same color as the paint crusting on his hands. He brushed his hands against the sides of his thighs, adding new smears of paint across the denim.
She looked him up and down. For a wild moment, a spasm of lust cut through the confusion. As much as she hated to admit it, he looked good in jeans. The shirt, plain white but clearly a tattered work shirt, did nothing to conceal his muscles. His hair was slightly disheveled and shaggy, the way it might get after hard work, or—and she really hated her mind for going here—a different, more carnal activity. It shouldn’t have been as attractive as it was. It shouldn’t have made longing shoot through her.
Then he broke into a lazy grin, and that smirk only made him more attractive.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Amber replied, still dazed by the state of the house. She glanced around again, trying to figure out how to ask what he was doing to create this much of a mess.
Before she could come up with the correct words, however, he was already speaking.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. Then, without waiting for her to respond, he took her wrist and guided her down the hall where he had come from, the still-wet paint transferring to her arm. She let out a squeak that was somewhere between confused and surprised, but let him guide her around the debris.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
