Page 58

I stood so fast, my chair scraped behind me and fell over. He was fucking around on her? He had her, he had Jasmine, and he was fucking some random chick instead? What the actual fuck. That piece of shit! If Jaz were mine, if she wanted me, if I wasn’t so fucked in the head, I’d never let her go. No other females would exist. Hell, they already didn’t, not in any real way, and she wasn’t even mine.

I slammed my mug on the table.

“Yo.” Relic frowned. “What’s up?”

I ignored him and started across the main room as Rome walked his female toward the door. I didn’t know what I was going to do—no, fuck that, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to slice the tendons in the backs of his legs, and as soon as he was down, I was going to kick the fuck out of him until he was unconscious. He leaned in and kissed the female again—

The door opened before they reached it—and Jasmine walked in. Fuck. I walked faster to get to her, waited for the pain to hit her eyes, the betrayal.

She smiled. “Hey, Rome. Hey, Brandy.” Then she carried on past like she didn’t give a fuck that the male she loved, her mate, was stepping out on her.

I slammed on the brakes, stopping in my tracks.

She didn’t care.

Because they weren’t together.

She’d lied to me. My fucking legs almost buckled underneath me, and I switched directions without thinking, going after her. She’d just finished punching in the security code for the dens, and I came up behind her and opened the door, making her jump. She spun round, eyes wide.

“Jesus, Ren. You gave me a fright,” she accused and scowled up at me.

“You lied to me.” Her head jerked back. “You said you and Rome were together, that you were mates,” I said, firing my own accusation at her.

Her brows shot up. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“No, Ren, I didn’t. Think back to our conversation. You made assumptions. I didn’t confirm or deny anything. That’s not lying, that’s omitting information, because it’s none of your damn business.”

“You’ve come here the last two nights, you said—”

“I said nothing like that at all. I spent most of last night doing research on past soul disappearances at home, and the night before that I met with Councilor Trotman.”

“Trotman?” No, she hadn’t said she was coming here, had she? I’d thought up the absolute worst scenario and made it truth.

“Shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone he helped me,” she muttered.

I dragged in a deep breath because my lungs burned from holding it. My hands were shaking, and there was a feeling in my gut I hadn’t experienced before in my life, a feeling I couldn’t have, not about this female. Not her. My gaze moved over her, her beautiful, perfect face, those full lips, those wide green eyes. Her sweet little body that I’d seen bare, twice now. My gaze lifted, and there were two butterflies on her hair.

I’d never wanted to kiss anyone more in my life.

And she was right. She’d implied, but she’d never confirmed it. “I saw him with Brandy, and I almost—”

“You almost what?”

“I thought he was stepping out on you, that he was gonna hurt you.”

“And that’s your business how?”

I was breathing hard, trying to think, to find the right fucking words. But I didn’t know what to say, what the hell I was doing. Still, when she spun away, yanked the door open, and strode through, I followed her, down the stairs and into the tunnels.

She stopped and spun on me again. “What, Ren? What do you want?”

“You implied…and I thought…I thought…” The words flew from me, and I choked them back.

“You thought what?”

That I’d lost you.