When his hand landed on my shoulder, it felt heavier.
“If I’d stepped in, if I could’ve gotten them to understand earlier, if I’d made them see her for what she was, we would…we wouldn’t…”
When his voice broke, we moved. My wolf didn’t understand this, these labyrinthine games, but she did understand pain. He didn’t deserve to feel that, she decided. We crawled onto his lap, and his arms went around us. His face buried in our fur, he mumbled the last of his confessions into it.
“If I’d been able to make them understand, Tobias wouldn’t have marked Chloe as his, then presented her to the rest of the pack, like bonding with her was a fait accompli. Lucien exploded, started shouting abuse at him and Chloe, while Beau was trying to make peace, just like he always does, but couldn’t decide who he needed to make it with, and me? I just watched that tiny little smile on her face form as she preened, her fingers running along that damn collar.”
When I licked at his face, I tasted salt and musk and man, and that made him smile for just a second, before he stopped me. He stared into my eyes, man to wolf, and he got the last confession out.
“I should’ve changed that damn code. Admittedly, I never thought in a million years that she’d come strolling back in like she owned the place, but…” He shook his head. “We don’t think about it as being Chloe’s place. We haven’t seen hide no hair of her for years, so we just assumed it was all done with. We needed a place when we got to Sydney, and that was the nicest one we had, so we brought you there.”
He moved in closer, his gaze burning into mine.
“Into what must’ve felt like another woman’s space—her house, her nest. I see it now, fucking see how it must’ve looked when she sauntered in, like we were slotting you into the space she’d left, but Sage…” His hands moved restively over my face, stroking my fur and my ears over and over. “She’s fucking nothing to us. That’s how we were able to forget her so damn easily. You didn’t take anything from her because she was never there in the first place, and certainly not once we locked eyes with you.”
The benefitof being in wolf form was I didn’t need to reply, to add to the conversation. I just listened and learned, with all the implacable care of a predator.
He took me outside then, his brothers leaping to their feet when they saw me, but I flashed a fang at them, making clear what I thought about them coming with us. They sat down, and Max led me outside, beyond the apartment block and the busy streets, betas casting us sidelong looks as a man walked with a wolf at his side. I trotted and trotted until we reached the long park that went along the River Torrens, where the feel of grass under my feet, dried oak leaves crunching, helped settle something inside me.
But not everything.
I returned with him some hours later, still in wolf form, something each man seemed to note with resignation, but Lucien got up, holding out a bowl of cooked diced steak for me to take. I sniffed and sniffed, my stomach rumbling enough to get the wolf moving forward, even if I was finding it harder. He nodded when he set the bowl down and I started scarfing the meat.
“You lot can fuck off to somewhere else now.” He didn’t inject an alpha bark into his voice, not needing to right now. His voice resonated with emotion, something that had me looking up from my food, even if I kept chewing. “It’s my turn now.”
45
“Iknew exactly what you were the minute I saw your profile on Howlr,” he told me when I went padding out into the lounge room, still licking the remains of my meal from my teeth. “I didn’t know what it meant, but I get it now. I’d seen a whole lot of tasty-looking betas” —my head whipped around, and I started to growl— “but none more than you. You were laughing in your profile pic, your head thrown back and your fucking amazing tits pushing through your T-shirt, begging for my hands to touch them.”
I tilted my head to one side, and he laughed at that, seeming to realise this wasn’t a productive line of conversation.
“You were beautiful and alive, and you popped off that damn screen the way none of the others did. I messaged you as soon as we matched, wanting and needing to see if it was real.”
His breath came out in a low hiss.
“If we’d chat and I’d find out you were hot but a bloody idiot, or worse, boring.” He shook his head slowly. “It was so much worse than that.” Lucien’s eyes roamed across my face, but he didn’t seem to find talking to a wolf hard at all.
Perhaps it was easier.
“You were cute and funny and real, so fucking real. No canned ‘oh alpha, you’re so big’ bullshit. You were just…you. When you agreed to go out with me, I had to get up and rub one out in the corporate bathroom, that’s how hot and bothered about it all I was, but when the haze settled? I knew it was you. My brain wouldn’t let me admit that, not fully, because you said you were a beta, but… It was you, always you, and that was confirmed the moment you walked into that damn restaurant.”
He reached out, our keen eyes noting the slight shake in his hand, but when his fingers dove into my fur, something seemed to break inside him.
“I’ve never been so fucking hard, seeing you in that pretty dress, looking smoking hot and smelling so good, but it was more than that, Sage. When you looked at me, you just saw Lucien, not part of the Lockwood pack, not Tobias or Beau’s brother, and part of me knew it’d be the same for the others. I plied you with food, watching you eat every damn mouthful with way too much interest, sure it’d make you uncomfortable, but I couldn’t fucking stop. I felt like I needed to suck you in, absorb everything there was to see, think, and feel about you.”
His lips thinned, then he shook his head.
“With good reason, it turns out. When I got you into that car, when I took you to my place, held you in my arms, and breathed you in, I had every damn thing I’d ever needed. I woke up knowing I just needed to help you see it too, but you were gone. The sweetest fucking thing I’d ever had, and…”
His hands formed fists now, then he pulled away from me and pushed them down into the couch.
“I didn’t want to let you go. I’ve got contacts. I could’ve used them to find out where you were, where you lived, from the numbers I had. I didn’t. I’m not telling you that to earn me brownie points, but to explain…”
When he tilted his head towards me, when he stared at me with silvery eyes, the movement wasn’t entirely human. His wolf stared down mine, and right then, they shared something I didn’t quite understand.
“My brain was fucking racing a mile a minute every hour I was awake, trying to think of a way to get you into my life, our life, while still respecting the fact you’d obviously decided you didn’t want that.” He sucked a breath in, then another. “And then there you were, standing in my fucking office, looking like every damn thing I’d ever dreamed of. I blinked, thinking I was hallucinating, because you couldn’t possibly be here, in my space, in my office. Mine.”
He shifted then, leaning forward, getting into my space, his voice little more than a growl now.