Chapter 8 Reign
REIGN
I woke up snug and warm, not ready to be up yet. I kept my eyes closed as I held my blanket bunched up against my cheek and thought about what I needed to accomplish for the day.
And it wasn’t until this point that I realized I wasn’t back at the university, about to start a typical day. Nor was I at my father’s mansion, ready to start a horrific day.
No. I was in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a mafia dude who turned into an animal. Add to that, I was hiding from a different mafia dude who turned into an animal that my father was forcing me to marry so that he could get some sort of power or money or both.
Basically, I’d woken up in the middle of a freaking soap opera… one that I somehow got sucked into being the main character of.
The weird thing was, I didn’t even want it to be a dream, because Ezra mattered. I may have only known him a short time, but he had already wormed his way into my heart. I didn’t think I could live my life without him, and that was over the top and wild and irrational. It was also 100% how I felt.
I rolled over, hoping that he was beside me, reaching out and patting the bed, wanting his touch. He wasn’t there, and the bed was cool. I was alone and had been for some time. Come to think of it, I didn’t fully remember going to bed. Had he been lying by my side?
Disappointment flooded me at his absence. I grumbled and pushed myself to sit up, opening my eyes as I stretched my arms wide. I looked around the room, and when my eyes shifted downward, I saw a wolf lying on the floor beside the bed.
Only it wasn’t just a wolf. It was my wolf. It was Ezra. And he was just as beautiful as he was last night.
“Were you there all night?”
I swung around so my legs were over the edge of the bed, and I reached down to him. “I’m gonna pet you now.”
Goddess, that sounded so wrong—telling the man who called me mate I was gonna pet him like he was a domesticated animal.
I’d have taken it back, but I couldn’t. I needed to touch him.
It wasn’t a want. I had to do it, and as I worked my fingers through his fur, a feeling of comfort fell over me.
Suddenly all was right in my world, even though objectively nothing was.
“You were there protecting me all night, weren’t you?”
He didn’t say anything but leaned further into my touch. I wanted to stay there longer, but I needed to use the bathroom, something my bladder quickly reminded me of.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
I headed to use the facilities, planning to clean up a little while I was there. Yesterday had been like nothing I’d ever even thought of happening in my wildest of imaginations, and I had a pretty active imagination.
I remembered watching a horror movie with my high school friends and being shocked by how there were always these stupid people who would go toward the danger and then just accept everything as it was. No questions asked. That was, if they survived.
They would go toward the danger, and the vampire would be there and say, Hey, you’re gonna be one of us now, and they’d be like, Oh, vampires, cool. Let’s do this.
Or they would follow the noise and get eaten by a monster from the underworld or cut to pieces by a serial killer.
In any case, it never ended well for them.
It had caught me as odd at the time that there was always someone naively following along and just accepting everything as it was. Who would do that? No one, right?
Only looking back on recent events, that was exactly me, just walking into danger and pretty much going with the flow.
I went from hiding in a closet, a glorified closet, but a closet nonetheless, to leaving with a man I didn’t know and who looked every bit as lethal as he was, and then disobeying my father in such an over-the-top way by staying with that man, the rival of the person he’d promised me to. There was no going back.
And at one point, I second-guessed whether I’d made the choices or if they’d been made for me, but that was as close as I came to a critical thought.
Now here I was, in the middle of the woods with a wolf who also was objectively a pretty bad guy based on the whole mafia thing, and I was happier than I could remember being in years.
I finished brushing my teeth and washing my face. I caught my reflection in the mirror. I’d looked better, but I’d also looked worse. “I guess this is what it is.”
As presentable as I was going to be without a shower and new clothes, I went back to the bedroom.
When I got there, my wolf wasn’t there anymore, but Ezra was.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but his boxers.
If he wanted us to have a full-on conversation, he was going to need a shirt, because damn, he was delicious.
“I thought you were still gonna be where I left you.”
“Oh.” He grabbed the back of his neck. “I thought you just meant stay in the room.”
Wait. Was he really just going to obey the things that I said? Was that what he was implying? No. That made no sense.
“I did.” I sat beside him, averting my eyes from the defined muscles of his chest and abs. “I didn’t want to come out of the bathroom and have you run into town or something.”
“I promise you,” he took my hand in his, “I’m not leaving you unless I have to. And if I do, you will know, and you’ll never be left unprotected.”
“They’re gonna come looking for me.” Might as well lay it out there.
“Yeah. That’s why I downloaded something my brother created to prevent your phone from being tracked onto your device.”
That was something I hadn’t even noticed or knew was possible. “They’ll still find me. My father’s kind of powerful.” There were no other words for it.
“You mean corrupt,” he corrected.
So, apparently, there were some words for it.
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean. And he promised to marry me to Stravon, and I don’t know what they want from me. I don’t understand how I’m a good bargaining chip. I’m not part of the family business. I’m an academic nerd. What can I bring to the table?”
That had been the wrong question to ask.
A growl built in his chest. “You. Bring. Everything.”
“Possessive much?” I rolled my eyes.
“You better believe I am.” He didn’t even pretend to deny it. Sexy as fuck.
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you just mate me, then?” It was something I hadn’t understood from the time I discovered mates were a thing. Not that I fully understood them still. “It will mean there’s no… that I’m not up for grabs anymore. My father can’t make his deal. They can’t expect me.”
He turned slightly and waited til I met his eyes. “There is nothing I want more than to mate you. To show the world that you are mine and mine alone, and that you are protected, loved, and cherished, and to have shut from the rooftops that they need to back the fuck off you.”
He closed his eyes.
“But if you do that—if we do that—it won’t work, because it’s just going to put a target on your back. And mine. If they have their eyes set on you specifically, the only way to break that mating bond is to kill me.”
I wanted to puke. I refused to let that happen.
“But also,” he continued, “a lot of wolves… once you’re mated, they think your value is gone. And they might shoot you just to show me that I attempted to take something that wasn’t mine and now neither of us can have you.”
I rubbed my eye with my heel, my hand giving the pressure I needed. “So basically, we would both have huge bullseye’s on our backs.”
“Yeah, pretty much. But don’t worry… we’ll figure this out. We’re having a meeting with my brothers and the leadership of the pack you’re promised to. We’ll figure something out. If we need to trade for you, we will.”
I bit back a hiss. What was I? A freaking cat? “Did you just say you would trade for me?”
“They might demand compensation for what they see as you being stolen from them. It’s not because I think you need to be purchased… it’s just the way of things. And I hate it too. But at the end of the day, what’s more important? Getting you out of there and keeping you safe.”
“Okay.” His point was solid, even if the entire situation was distasteful at best.
He handed me my phone. “You should probably see what’s on here.”
I turned on the phone, and it beeped incessantly. Notification after notification after notification—each and every one of them from my father’s people. He was livid. Livid.
“We’re gonna need to deal with this too.”
I turned it around to show him the texts.
“One problem at a time, mate. One problem at a time.”