Chapter 4 - Killian
Owen stormed at Jasmine, his hands in tight fists. I reached out and grabbed his arm, yanking him to a stop.
“Chill out,” I grumbled.
He jerked his arm away from me. “What? You’re not worried about whatever schemes she’s been up to all this time? For all we know, she could have been plotting with assassins!”
“Assassins?” I repeated. I glanced at Jasmine with her faded jeans and shoes with holes in the toes. “Do you really think that she’s got the money to hire assassins? You’re just being paranoid now. The Goddess wouldn’t tell us to marry her if she were trying to kill us.”
Owen glowered at me in the way I knew all too well.
When he got into his moods, there wasn’t much that we could do to get him out of them.
I folded my arms and leaned against the doorway as Jace attempted to guide Jasmine past us into the house.
But Owen stepped in front of them and stuck his finger in Jasmine’s face, making her flinch back.
“I’m going to be watching you,” he said. “So don’t try anything. And if I found out that you did something to cause this—”
I pulled him back again. “What could she have done?”
“Drugged the priestess!”
“She didn’t drug the priestess,” Jace said through gritted teeth. “Let’s take this inside before people start noticing.”
Renz pushed open the door for us, and we filed in, Jasmine caught between Jace and me.
The hostility continued to bristle off Owen, which put my wolf on edge.
Yeah, I knew that he’d had a specific hatred toward her, not just omegas in general, ever since they were kids.
I didn’t exactly know what happened, other than Owen calling her a liar and a cheat and cruel.
At the time, I took his word for it and joined in with harassing her.
The older we got, though, the more I questioned it.
Even in those moments when Jasmine did do something that could have been taken as underhanded, like when she kneed me between the legs, it was always in response to something we did.
The kneeing incident was when we were late teens, and I pinned her to a wall, accusing her of stealing my backpack.
She hadn’t. But I had still trapped her between my arms, my hands on either side of her, not letting her escape despite her protests.
That was the turning point for me. After she drove her knee so hard between my legs that I couldn’t walk for two days, she ran away, then turned back and helped me get to the nurse.
It had made me realize that we weren’t acting like true future leaders, and I’d tried after that to pull back the others. I didn’t try as hard as I could have.
So it really was no wonder that Jasmine looked at us with such fear now.
“I’ll take these to your room,” Jace told her as we got to the common room. He lifted the two garbage bags he held and shrugged. “The rest of you figure it out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” Owen said. He didn’t approach Jasmine again, but kept glaring hotly at her. “I expect you to follow the rules. I’ve written a list and taped it to your door. You’ll follow it to the letter, understood?”
“How can she agree to that when she doesn’t even know what the rules are?” Jace argued.
Owen narrowed his eyes, but I stepped in and held my hands out, stopping him.
Truthfully, I didn’t resent the situation as much as it seemed the others did.
Owen hated her, Jace would follow along but not be happy about it, and Renz hated being told what to do.
I couldn’t understand how the Goddess thought that this was going to work out, but it seemed like I was the one who had to convince everyone to give it a try.
Goddess help us all.
“She wasn’t up to anything nefarious. She was with Jace,” I said soothingly. “I heard you pacing all night. Why don’t we pretend like this is the evening and have a couple of drinks, then try to have a nap?”
“We?” Owen repeated, snorting. “What are you, two?”
“You’re in rare form today, aren’t you?” I grumbled.
Renz took the garbage bags from Jace. “You deal with this. He’s been sulking all morning.”
“I’m not sulking!”
Jace pinched the bridge of his nose. “Renz, please take her clothes to her room.”
Clothes? I did a double-take. Why had they brought her clothes here in garbage bags?
“Owen, let’s you and I go to the office so we can discuss this without—” he jerked his head toward Jasmine. He fished his keys out of his pocket and pushed them into Jasmine’s hand. “So you can bring the rest of your things here.”
At this, Owen scowled. “Don’t get too used to expecting things from us.”
Jasmine sighed. “All I want is to be left alone.”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Not when she lived with us. I supposed if she became nocturnal and never left her room while we were up, it might be possible to avoid us. Seemed like a pretty lonely way to live in a marriage, though.
Owen got my attention. “Killian, I have something important for you to look into later when you have time.”
I nodded, then watched them go before turning to Jasmine. She looked drained, her face paler than usual, and her shoulders slumped forward. Her hand clutched the keys so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
She didn’t seem to remember I was there, watching the door through which they left.
It had always been inevitable that one day the four of us would have to take a mate.
It was true that it was usually up to the alphas to decide who they were going to marry, but the Goddess said this was her blessing to us.
Right now, everyone was acting as though it were a curse.
If we didn’t shape up, maybe the Goddess would curse us for it.
If she hadn’t given us this directive, chances were we’d all end up fighting over who to marry. And surely we could temper the more manipulative aspects of Jasmine’s omega personality, right?
She turned suddenly and headed for the door. I followed after her, eyeing those keys in her hand. “You’re not planning on taking off, are you?”
Jasmine came to a stop again. “Taking off? To where?”
I shrugged. “Somewhere else. Where you don’t have Owen sticking his finger in your face and accusing you of drugging priestesses.”
“I’m not sure that running away would help with the ‘she’s evil’ accusations,” Jasmine replied dryly. “No, I was going to go back to my place and bring the rest of my things back.”
“I’ll come help.”
Jasmine winced and shook her head. “No, no. It’s fine. Owen said he had something for you to do, and besides, I can fit more in the car if the front seat is clear. I don’t have that much, so it will be nice to try to bring it all at once.”
She lifted her black eyes to my face for the first time.
Her expression was wary, but also…embarrassed?
Come to think of it, when I glanced at her after Jace revealed her clothes were in garbage bags, she had flushed.
My first thought was that she was trying to dissuade me because she really was running away.
But what if it was actually that she was embarrassed by her living conditions?
“Come to think of it…” I scratched my chin, one of my earrings touching my neck. “You didn’t put up any sort of fuss when we decided to move you in with us.”
Her cheeks turned red. “Yeah, well. We’re getting married.”
“And this place is much nicer than where you’re living right now?” I deduced.
Her lips pressed together.
“Ah, I’m right.” I couldn’t help but grin as her expression grew more pissed off. It made her prettier, somehow. Well, far prettier than when she was nervous and withdrawn, at least. Come to think of it, if this was going to work, we needed her to be more open and forthright with us.
Perhaps I should start seducing her. We talked about sex when her heat came last night, and it would be so much more pleasurable when the time came if I already knew what made her toes curl and her eyes roll into the back of her head. I gave her my most charming smile.
“It will go faster if you have help. You don’t have to do this on your own anymore, after all, right? That’s what a marriage is supposed to be. I’m perfectly willing to help you out with any needs.” It was probably a little too thick on the end there.
Jasmine sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t need help, though.”
Hmm, maybe not too thick. Maybe she didn’t quite get my meaning. “Alright, you don’t need help. But I can be good company, I promise. And besides, I’d like to learn more about you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“We’re going to be married.”
“So?”
“So…” I shook my head, frustrated. Between my looks and my position as alpha, I was used to women swooning at my feet.
Maybe I’d gotten lazy. Maybe they weren’t as swooning as I thought, but they pretended to bolster my ego.
“So, what I’m saying is, I would like to spend time with you.
Get to know you so that we can have a somewhat decent marriage, Jasmine.
Maybe make up for the fucked up things I did in the past.”
Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I was trying to be seductive when really I wanted to be apologetic.
She shook her head. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend to care to keep me around.”
I opened my mouth, ready to protest, to tell her that wasn’t what I was doing, but stopped myself. Even in my head, it sounded like a lie when it wasn’t. Not entirely, at least. I ran a hand through my hair as I tried to figure out my next move.
“What do you want, then?” I finally asked her.
“Space to breathe.”
Her blunt reply made me frown. “Have you not been able to breathe? You were alone all last night, weren’t you?” I demanded. Images of one of the others sneaking into her room made my wolf growl, even though I knew none of them would do it.
“I haven’t had more than five minutes to myself this morning,” Jasmine replied, passing a hand over her face.
She fiddled with the keys in her other hand.
“Last night, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything. This morning, I’m trying to figure out what my life looks like.
So I just want space. Especially from you four. ”
I stepped forward, reaching for her without thinking of it. Jasmine shied away, tensing further. Her lips pressed together, and her eyes widened slightly. I stopped, but she didn’t relax, still looking like she was getting ready to bolt.
Jasmine sucked in a deep breath through her nose, her nostrils flaring. I stared back at her, not sure what I was expecting.
“I won’t fight against the Goddess’s command. She said this marriage has to happen, and so I will submit myself to it. I will endure,” she added, quieter, as though she was speaking to herself. “If it doesn’t get any worse than what it already is, then…”
“You’re afraid of us,” I murmured.
“If you were in my shoes, with our history, what would you feel?” she asked me point-blank.
I took a step back, putting more distance between us. It occurred to me only now that her statement last night about not expecting faithfulness wasn’t what I’d thought. At the time, I thought it was her declaring that she wouldn’t give up any lovers she might have. Now, though…
“Of course you don’t want us to touch you,” I murmured.
Part of me, the part that didn’t want to examine what I was feeling or the parts of our history where I was to blame, wanted to say she was just being manipulative. But looking at her now, I couldn’t believe it.
“Would you believe me if I said I wish we hadn’t gone as far as we did?” I asked her.
“Maybe. But what are your reasons?” She lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “I’m not interested in trying to figure you out and to divine what’s true and what are lies. I just want to be alone so I can actually think things through.”
I nodded as I stepped back again. “That is understandable. I forgot that to make this work, we need…”
“Need—never mind. Can I go now, Alpha?” As she spoke, her gaze dropped back to the floor.
“Of course. I won’t keep you any longer.”
She skirted by me. As I watched her go, I realized that this was going to take far more than I thought. Foolishly, I assumed that Jasmine would be thrilled about her rise to power. It hadn’t occurred to me that now, she felt more powerless than ever.