Page 49 of Hexy Beast

It takes everything I have not to shoot back with a few no shits or wow, I never knew thats, because they won’t be helpful here, no matter how good it would feel to just let them out. What was I thinking when I started this conversation? I knew how it would go.

“This is ridiculous,” I say, throwing up my hands in disgust. “Forget it.”

My wolf doesn’t say anything for a second, but the moment I take a step toward the cave’s entrance, he lets out with, “What are you going to tell our Effie?”

“She’s not ours,” I grumble as I stomp over the crunchy leaves littering the woods’ floor.

“Lie to others, but don’t bother lying to yourself,” he scoffs. “She’s ours. We’re hers. It’s fated. End of the story.”

From my vantage point outside of the cave, I can see her inside, floating in the air. She’s doing these leg stretches that end with double kicks. Her light auburn hair is flying every which way, her cheeks are pink from exertion, and her eyes are focused on some bit of magic I can’t see, but I can feel like a buzzing under my skin.

“There’s a lot more to being mates than being horny for each other,” I say.

Absentmindedly, I rub the purple leather cuff I always wear; the color is bare in places from where I’ve touched it as I roll through strategies and options. This isn’t the same. This isn’t having to deal with pack problems, or figuring out how to carry off a job, or how to put Nikos and his minions back in their place without getting his back up. Somehow, this is more important than that. It’s like everything is coming down to Effie, as if she’s the key to fixing the Aetos pack’s future and addressing the past. I can’t explain it. I just know, like how I know when the first frost is coming or how a job is going to turn out before we knock out the first guard.

Still, there’s a part of me—a large part—more comfortable with the status quo than rolling the dice on a chaos witch and my wolf.

“Wow, deep insight there. I had no idea,” my wolf says with enough attitude to be used as a battering ram. “I mean, wolves mate for life, but yeah, we have no idea about the complexities of long-term relationships.”

Fates save me. Talking to my wolf is like dealing with a teenager. “Why are you always like this?”

“Because I’m bored,” he says as he paces around, all wound-up energy and tension. “You keep me locked up or on a very short leash, and it’s dull as shit.”

“So if I do this, you’ll be more normal?” It sounds just bizarre enough to work.

“I don’t know that we’ll ever be that,” he says. “It sounds boring.”

“Wolf,” I say in warning.

“Human,” he mocks back.

I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly while counting to twenty. Of course he’s going to be a pain in the ass. It’s how he functions. It’s his nature to be ornery and risk-taking and…well…wild. But Effie and Aunt Artemis are right. There’s too much at stake for me to continue bringing a knife to a nuclear submarine fight.

“One day,” I say, my jaw clenched so tight that if I needed to speak the words out loud to someone not in my head, I’d never get them out. “On a loose leash.”

“One day, no leash,” my wolf counters.

That’s a ridiculous option. He knows it. I know it. People I’ve never met would know it. Seriously. My wolf is not one to be trusted without a leash. I’d do all sorts of things just because I’d be so tapped into my instincts, so wired up that my alpha side would practically glow in the dark. It’s the one thing I’ve always avoided, afraid that if I went hands-free, I’d never get things back on lockdown like they need to be.

“You know,” I say, putting all the menace I can muster—and that’s a lot—into my words. “I can call you up any way any time I want whether you want to come or not.”

“Try it and see what happens.” My wolf swishes his tail back and forth, his hackles raising. “It won’t be pretty. You remember Stefanos.”

Yeah, that had been a fucking nightmare. A younger wolf, he hadn’t yet reached full maturity and had used a charm to force his wolf to the surface before hijacking a semitruck full of magic carpets and ended up losing himself to the wolf. Last anyone heard, he couldn’t change back and was making do as a freelance guard wolf.

As an alpha, I don’t have to worry about that happening to me. However, I also know that my wolf would do whatever he could to get his revenge—and he could do a lot. That’s the thing with being an alpha: Not only do you have to deal with keeping things on an even keel with your pack, but you have to do the same with your wolf.

Power is never just yours to wield. It always carries a price.

And it seems my price is going to be going hands-free. “One day, no leash, but you keep things under control. No stupid shit.”

My wolf snorts. “Deal.”

There is no way I’m not going to regret this.

Chapter Nineteen

Darius…