Chapter 15
fifteen
. . .
“You don’t like it?” Celeste asked, holding up a gown of green silk that would flow over me like a green waterfall.
“It’s great.” Everything was horrible. Sammy was back in the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes with a fever, not as bad as the last one, but bad enough to terrify me. Joe had been busy with meetings, or he’d been avoiding me. It felt like the latter. I had stacks of money on my dresser that made my stomach turn every time I looked at it. I hated it, but at the same time, how could I trust someone who had lied to me about what he was, about how he was trying to turn me into a werewolf, and making me kiss him so that I’d remember all over again exactly what I’d been missing for the last decade.
He was playing me. But could I blame him? He needed me stable and alive, or Sammy would have a harder time with her transition. He also wanted me. A lot. Was he trying to give me space and respect my decisions, or was this just him manipulating me and my weakness for him to get me where he wanted me? Both? Maybe he had a different agenda that I didn’t know about.
I shouldn’t have said that I loved him. I definitely loved him, but saying it didn’t help when I still wasn’t committed to him. If only I could just trust him, close my eyes, and make him my everything, but how could I when I had so much to lose? If I gave him my absolute trust, how could I survive another betrayal?
A knock on the door came right before Danny slipped in, eating a sub sandwich. “Hey, Honey. Celeste, isn’t it? Are you trying to put that dress on my girl?”
Celeste bared her teeth at him. “She is not your girl. She is Josiah’s mate and his wife.”
Danny shrugged and took the dress, holding it up to me. “You’re just not an evening gown kind of woman. You’re a bleed out on the mat kind of woman. Of course, you wouldn’t be alone on the mat.” He winked at me and I rolled my eyes, snatching the dress out of his hand.
“You’re trying to get Celeste to bite you. It won’t work. She has better things to do with her teeth. I can be hot and elegant. I just need a push-up bra and heels. Also to keep my mouth shut.” Especially when I saw Joe without a beard. I’d keep my eyes shut too.
I grabbed Danny’s arm and squeezed tight. “Can you please watch Sammy? If she’s struggling, come and get me.” I also didn’t want to let go of him for some reason. Sam had refused to talk to me when I visited her after that whole Joe debacle. She wrinkled her nose as she sniffed me and then crossed her arms and looked at the wall, like her being sick was the time for her to have an attitude.
He pulled me into a hug, covering me in his man-whore scent. I squeezed him back, starting to panic. He was right about me not belonging in an evening dress on Joe’s arm. Beardless Joe. Why did he have to shave, anyway? It was a stupid tradition. If I were alpha wolf of the world, that would be the first thing to go. How was I supposed to be what Sammy needed when even the thought of Josiah without a beard turned me into a clingy wreck?
“You need to bathe,” Celeste said, grabbing Danny’s neck until he started howling and let go of me. “And you need to stop being such a silly puppy.” She threw him out, and then it was all about me getting ready for the party. People came in, like dog groomers, and I tried to bite the woman who poured hot wax on my bikini area, which meant that Celeste put me in a jaw lock and threatened to let whatever female I hurt wax Josiah.
I glared at her and let them do what they wanted, because no woman was going to touch my husband. Except maybe me. Could I touch him? I wanted him so much, painfully so, because that kiss still lingered, like a brand that I couldn’t erase or forget.
By the time I was half-decent, I was in a terrible mood and nervous because I was going to see Josiah without his beard and I’d have to deal.
I left my room with Celeste a step behind me and to my right. It didn’t feel like submission. No, it was definitely her making sure I didn’t bolt.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, taking a deep breath. Not that I could actually breathe in the shapewear I had on. My core was solid, not slender, but no one had told the shapewear that. The dress was gorgeous, and I was in it, so I was pretty nice looking too, but I was nothing compared to the man standing in the hall at the bottom of the steps in an immaculate tuxedo.
I gasped and froze on the curving step, staring at the man who had terrified me with his absolutely fierce perfection so many years ago. That was a man who would and could do anything to accomplish his goals. It was his jaw probably that gave that impression. Strong wasn’t a strong enough word. It was fierce. Like his cutting cheekbones. His mouth was the only soft thing about him, particularly when his eyes glowed openly.
He was shaking someone’s hand, but there was no smile, no soft easiness. No, this was business, the business of intimidation, and he was an absolute artist at the craft. Celeste poked me in the kidney and I stumbled forward, stepping too loudly so the man who was shaking Josiah’s hand turned to look at me.
My blood turned to ice as the extremely handsome man scanned me from my feet to my head. I knew that face. I knew those hands. I knew every other part of his body. I froze as the terror hovered on the brink of absolute rage that would rip apart everything I could get my claws into, particularly this monster. His eyes widened when they got to mine, his confidence shaken for one breath as he realized exactly who was Josiah’s new mate. Yep. The girl he’d caged, tortured, and done his best to break.
“If you turn and ruin that dress, I’ll kill you myself,” Celeste breathed in my ear. “Don’t make the alpha look weak and out of control in front of the enemy. Keep moving. Keep your head up. Look at your mate like you want him.”
Sure. I’ll just do that while I’m curling up in a ball in a corner of the cage to keep away from the monster’s hands, needles, beat-sticks. I’ll just keep moving. Keep my head up. Look at Josiah like I want him. Sure. I’d do all that when I couldn’t even breathe. My blood had stopped moving, but I was supposed to just perform?
“Samantha is counting on you,” Celeste hissed.
Sammy. I could do anything for her, even this. I straightened my spine and took a slow step, gripping the fabric of my dress so it would probably wrinkle, but I needed to hold on to something. Why were there so many steps? Right. fifteen foot ceilings had a ridiculous amount of steps.
The enemy finally turned back to Josiah, breaking eye contact and saying something about the weather while I continued one step by agonizing step closer and closer to my absolute worst nightmare, keeping my eyes down on my feet. Cages were one thing, an irrational fear because cages didn’t actually run around trapping people, but this guy was so much worse.
My skin buzzed the closer I got to him, squirming to escape. I didn’t try to breathe, I just moved, step-by-step closer to the enemy. Finally, I reached the hall floor, and I noticed all the nicely polished black shoes lining the hall attached to various dark pants and legs, but I couldn’t look up, because if I saw that man close enough to kill, I’d try. I’d rip him apart and put him through the wall.
Finally, I stopped in front of a particularly large pair of black shiny shoes. Celeste didn’t nudge me anywhere else, so I slowly let my eyes go up the legs of the smooth black fabric that covered his legs. His thighs. Um. I’d seen those thighs quite recently. The thought of my husband’s bare thighs was enough to melt some of the ice in my veins so I finally took a breath, not a big one, just enough to catch his scent, a smell of rich, tantalizing masculinity and wildness that swirled around me, soothing me, reassuring me.
I finished traveling up his legs to the sharp edges of his tuxedo jacket. Yes. This was the strong, powerful body that I could use to bury my fear. I kept looking up, over his chest, the bow tie beneath his chin that did nothing to contain his raw power, and then the jaw that was clenched as I finished taking in my husband. His mouth was tilted in a slight smile, but it did nothing to soften the rest of his face.
“Finally, I must introduce you all to my mate.” He offered me his arm, and I took it, barely needing Celeste’s prodding to slip my arm in his.
“Such a shy, sweet thing,” one of the men said, but not the enemy. No, this guy was soft around the edges, but the softness didn’t reach his eyes. He had a glass of champagne raised to me, like that hadn’t been impossibly rude to call me a thing. Also, he could probably smell my fear. Because he was a werewolf. They all were, all the men who stood in the hall, and they all shared the wild fierceness beneath the carefully cultivated exterior of perfect grooming and gentlemanliness. These weren’t seconds, or general populace. They were all alphas with enough destructive energy among them to level a city.
“She’s hardly a thing,” the enemy said in a carefully cultivated voice. It was his charming voice, the one he used when he wanted you to forget all the times he’d tortured you. I hated that voice so much. At least when he was rough and brutal, he was being honest.
I didn’t look at him, just clung to Josiah’s arm and gazed up at him like his face wasn’t terrifying. It was, but I wanted him to be as strong and powerful and scary as all the rest of them put together, or I wouldn’t survive this. Neither would Sammy.
“I hope you didn’t wait for me too long,” I murmured over the lump in my throat.
He smiled, and he looked so absolutely devastatingly handsome that I couldn’t breathe again. “For you, I would wait for an eternity. Shall we?” He turned and led me through a pair of doors I hadn’t noticed before, and then we were in a ballroom. Of course we were. Werewolves were notorious dancers.
“You look stunning,” Joe murmured, his gaze openly admiring.
I forced a smile, but his face was too terrifyingly handsome. He wasn’t quite as handsome as the enemy. No, Josiah was too strong and powerful to be perfectly handsome, but it was enough to shake me.
Jane was in the ballroom holding a tray of champagne and keeping her expression carefully blank. I caught the scent of something as I passed her, anticipation, hunger, hatred, that kind of thing, but it wasn’t directed at me. She’d set all of this up. If she had her way, there would be blood spilled tonight.
A woman came towards me, dragging a male along with her. Her hair was dark, big, like her dress and her effusive charms. “So you’re Josie’s sweet little wife. I was so thrilled to hear that his wolf had claimed a mate, but it took him so long to finally introduce you! I’m Bonnet, and this is my husband, second of the Eastern Canadian Dogs.” She put her hand by her mouth and whispered at me, “That’s a joke name that I can use because I’m alpha of the pack, but usually you don’t call them dogs, or they get pouty and you have to play fetch with them until they come to their senses.” She smiled brightly at me, showing her sharp teeth while her husband stepped forward.
He bowed at me and then shook his head at Josiah. “You know how Bonnet gets around all the alpha mates. She’s doing her shock and awe strike to see their secret nature. Your mate seems too controlled to reveal her baser instincts.” The swarthy man gave me a curious look that was extremely calculated, considering his easy manners. But he wasn’t the alpha? Interesting.
Me, let down my guard in a room full of alphas? Were they both insane? I might have a heart attack, sure, also shift into a dark wolf and try to chew my way through walls to get away from all of them unless it came to it, and then I’d rip the enemy apart. Only I wasn’t sure I could. Okay, I was kind of sure I couldn’t, because the enemy was an alpha, and some warlord, before he’d gotten into caging and experimenting on nice normal human fighters.
“Honey? Is that really you?”
I whipped my head around to see who belonged to the strangely familiar voice. I stared at the blond woman who looked so comfortable in her skin, which was flawless, and carried an obscene amount of diamonds. Diamond? No. It couldn’t be Diamond Dancer, a fighter in the same circuit I’d been in, absolutely not. And she couldn’t be willingly touching him .
My lip curled in a snarl before I could stop myself. After I’d been rescued from the burning building and my tiny cage, I’d never gone back to see anyone I’d known from that world, but she’d been someone I considered my friend. We’d gone out to the club together the night I’d met him , been stunned by his pretty face, and his compliments about my fight like he knew what he was talking about. Oh, he knew what he was talking about. He knew more about fighting than anyone else I’d ever met. He’d shown me a lot of moves when he kept me in the bigger cages at the beginning.
I realized that I was staring at him and quickly turned my eyes on Josiah’s shoes instead. They were so big, so stompy and attractive. They were cockroach killers for sure, like the man, the enemy. I couldn’t breathe or swallow because I was holding back a scream, or maybe that was nausea.
“It is you!” Diamond said, coming over to us, bringing him along with her. “My precious love, we used to fight in the same circuit,” she said, smiling up at her precious love. Yep. It was nausea. I was going to throw up all over her sheer dress. How did she hide her shapewear under it? She didn’t need it, no, she’d always been more slender than me. Of course, that’s why I always beat the crap out of her when we were matched. My core was my strength. I could probably explode my shapewear if I flexed hard enough.
Somehow the thought of exploding shapewear, taking all the alphas out with nude underwear shrapnel, diffused some of my paralyzing fear. I grabbed a glass of champagne off Jane’s tray and smiled at Diamond. “That’s right. You’re a werewolf now? Small world.”
She laughed, all throaty and sexy, while she slid her hand up his arm like she couldn’t keep away from his perfect musculature. I swallowed a gulp of the pink champagne, even though it was too sweet, too bubbly. I needed a bottle of the stuff so I could start bashing heads with it. His for being evil and hers for being stupid enough to touch him without flinching.
“That’s right. I shifted much younger than you. Your age is showing.” She gave me a catty smile that was downright unnatural on a werewolf.
Josiah growled deep in his throat, barely enough to hear, but her ears perked up as she looked at him and then she gave him a demure smile. Are you kidding me? Diamond was smiling at my husband?
“I meant it as a compliment,” she said to him with big eyes before turning to me with a sweet smile, sweeter than the champagne. She’d always been somewhat backstabbing, but I’d never fought with her over any guy, so I’d never personally experienced that side of her, at least not until now. How surreal.
“Of course you did,” I said drily. The weirdness tipped the fear over and dumped it into normal life. I knew how to cope with stressful situations with people who liked to power trip, like Clarissa and my most recent former boss. I really needed to get back to work, or I’d lose all those contacts I’d worked so hard to build. Then again, maybe I didn’t like being an accountant. I was a werewolf. Did that mean I was immortal? Was I stuck at this age forever, or at least until I was brutally murdered by some vengeful opposing alpha? I took another sip of champagne and tried not to giggle. Fear could only last so long before the stress turned it into something else. I knew that something else, the loose and ambiguous grasp on reality that had kept me moderately sane during my cage trip.
He’d been trying to break me so he could turn me into a werewolf. Huh. A year of me in a cage and he hadn’t been able to break me? I must be incredibly stubborn or awesome. I met the enemy’s face. Malachi. He’d joked about his name, ‘Mal,’ because he was so bad, and then he’d smiled with that charming smile that couldn’t possibly contain centuries of bloodthirsty conniving.
“You’re a psychopath,” I said before I knew what I’d been about to say, then I sipped my champagne so I didn’t say anything else. The fear was churning into something else, more than mindless rage, anger, righteous anger that was anchored in this weird unreal reality. I was an immortal werewolf? Fine. Whatever. I was going to take this asshole down if it was the last thing I did.
He raised a brow and glanced at Josiah before returning his attention to me. Oh, yes, I remembered what having his attention was like. My skin crawled under that look, but I gritted my teeth and held my glass like I might shatter it over his head and then gouge out his eyes with the jagged edge. Yes, that sounded quite pleasant.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, so cultivated, so charming, so revolting.
I curled my lip at him. “You slaughtered anyone who wouldn’t join you, or did I misunderstand? I’ve only been a werewolf for a few days, so maybe I’ve got you confused with someone else. Somehow, I doubt it.”
He blinked twice, the only sign he’d give for me hitting a nerve, but I knew him well enough to know how to get under his skin and bring the raging beast to the surface. I preferred being beaten to being raped. Go figure. He preferred my fear to my defiance. For me, they went together like peas and carrots.
His voice was so smooth. “You’ve been a wolf for a few days? How remarkable. Usually the older you are, the more difficult you are to turn. Did it take him a decade to break you? Our Josiah has such patience. It is admirable.” He smiled at my husband, and I knew the monster that lurked beneath that smile. Malachi would love to rip out Joe’s intestines and drag them across the ballroom floor.
I snorted. “Hardly. It took him a week once he’d decided to do it. And he didn’t have to raise a hand against me. All he had to do was twist the love I had for him. You see, I love him so desperately. I would die for him.”
Josiah stiffened up next to me, his eyes searching me, a frown creasing his brow as he looked at me, then turned his attention to Malachi. “You know my wife.”
Malachi’s smile turned more honest, hungry, and objectifying as he glanced over my carefully presented beauty. “I suppose I did, but it wasn’t ever anything serious. I could hardly be with anyone seriously until I met my own precious mate.” He raised Diamond’s hand and kissed it without looking at her. No, he was looking at me, and his mouth was curved because he was thinking how much fun I’d been to try to break.
Jane’s snarl was a surprise. “You filthy—” She cut off her words thanks to Celeste’s timely punch to Jane’s stomach. Enforcers were brutal.
Malachi gave her a mild smile. “Ah, the legendary Jane. You should join my pack. There are so many strong wolves looking for a good mate.”
I laughed. “In your pack? A good mate? At least you must keep your subordinates amused.”
Josiah covered my arm with his strong hand, a warning to keep my mouth shut and not start a war in his ballroom probably, but I was here, and not trying to kill my enemy. What more could he possibly expect from me? Seriously, he had no idea how much restraint I was showing.
I turned to smile up at my mate. “Will you dance with me?” I had to get away from Diamond and Malachi before I said or did something really shocking.
He raised his brows, again surprised. “Of course. Excuse us,” he said and swept me into a waltz or something else. I had no idea, because I wasn’t a dancer. At all, but I didn’t worry about that, not when he was taking me away from my worst nightmare and pulling me against his strong body. He knew how to dance, and more, how to lead a woman in a dance so that she didn’t make an idiot of herself.
I looked up at him, staring at those strong features that had terrified me so much. He was not Malachi. He was a gentleman werewolf, even if he was strong and clever. And he felt so good under my hands and against my silk dress. He soothed the stress and strain without even trying. He also smelled like my saliva, like he hadn’t bathed off my licking and I absolutely loved that. He was mine. He would be mine forever.
His voice was low, breath skittering over my cheek like a caress. “You’re announcing your love for me publicly. I did mention that I’m struggling with my possessive side, didn’t I? Yes, but your feelings for Malachi have overwhelmed you. What was your relationship?”
I gazed up at him and tried to think of words for what had started as a wonderful fairytale Cinderella story and quickly devolved into a nightmare of confinement and torture. “He admired my fighting skills, so he decided to make a pet out of me. I suppose he was trying to break me so I could turn, but that doesn’t explain the injections. I think he was experimenting on me. You said that he was obsessed with creating the ultimate fighter, right? Not to be vain, but I’m pretty good.”
His eyes hardened slightly, but his voice maintained its pleasant timber. “He’s the reason you have such a strong reaction to cages?”
“I spent almost a year in cages, and he put me in smaller and smaller ones until I could barely move. Look at me talking about it like it’s possible. Weird. I think that facing him was actually good for me psychologically. He took such huge proportions of terror in my mind, but he’s just another slimy asshole with too much power.”
He spun me under his arm and I did it effortlessly, coming back into his arms without a stumble. “You know his mate?”
“Yes.”
“You were a better fighter?”
I smiled with confidence. “I never lost to her, even one time when I had the flu. Not that she’s not good, she’s just not as stubborn and sadistic as I am.”
He smiled and pulled me close, for a moment pressed thoroughly against his strong chest so that I could feel his heart pounding. His bare face was becoming less terrifying all the time. Maybe I was just past the point of fear. That was probably it. This was probably the beginning of a mental breakdown. “You don’t mind if I go to war to defeat him?”
“Only if you lose. Seriously, I can’t live without you.”
He stared back at me, his expression becoming intent and deadly serious. “Your words are building a cage, Honey. Your words are building a very strong cage that will hold you for much longer than a year.”
I swallowed hard, because I couldn’t breathe quite right. Was I about to start laughing hysterically? Everyone was watching us, all the alphas and their mates, looking at how strong we were together to decide whether I was a weakness or a strength.
I pulled his head down and rose on my toes to kiss his soft mouth. I kept my eyes open and saw his eyes flare gold before he let his eyes drift shut and pressed his spread palm between my shoulder blades, pulling me even closer.
He kissed me like I was his breath, like he’d been aching to kiss me for all of his very long life. I melted against him, submitting to his strength, his desire, his need for me. I needed him just as much. Would I let him leave me? Would I let him escape the cage of my love? Sam needed her dad, and I needed both of them. They were my heart, my home, my happiness. If that made me weak, then it also gave me purpose.
“Get away from my mother!” Sammy shrieked, cutting through the music and sending a prickle down my spine.