CHAPTER 13
Ihoped our drive north would give me and Michael time to talk.
For me to explain more of the bond to him.
For us to hash out what the hell was going on between us.
Yeah, not so much. I drove the Range Rover while he sat in the back seat, laptop open, papers spread out around him, phone pressed to his ear, the SUV turned into his mobile office.
He hadn’t said three words to me since we’d left the city. I felt like his chauffeur.
A flare of irritation sparked over the bond. “I understand your concerns,” he said, his tone the dictionary definition of civil. “But we owe a responsibility to our employees.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him openly frowning at his laptop screen. Someone was pissing off my mate, and it made me want to snarl.
I turned my gaze back to the road. I was in the right lane, because apparently my need to protect him extended to traffic.
With my eyesight, it was easy to pick out cops.
I could see the reflection of their lights even through the heavy tint of their unmarked cruisers.
Because of this, I’d never been pulled over, and normally I drove with a lead foot, left lane, all the way, that memorable Ludacris song playing in my mind.
But with Michael in the same vehicle, I’d slowed to the speed limit and maneuvered the SUV into a long gap between two tractor trailers, keeping a wary watch on the vehicles around us, ready to dive into the breakdown lane to get out of the way if I had to.
Having him in the vehicle with me brought new meaning to the term precious cargo.
A few minutes later, we came up on a merge.
I caught movement to my right and saw a middle-aged white man roaring up the oncoming ramp in a lifted truck.
He had a cell phone pressed to his ear. The semi in front of me pumped its brakes.
I eased my foot off the gas, holding the distance between us, giving the asshole on the on-ramp plenty of space to get in between.
Instead, he slowed, too, so he was flush with the Range Rover.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered.
The merge threatened. The man glanced over at our vehicle and visibly scoffed, then turned his wheel like he was going to beeline right for us.
I knew this maneuver. A lot of New England drivers favored it.
When merging, aim your car at the nicest one on the road because you bet your ass they’ll get out of the way instead of wrecking their baby.
Time to teach someone a lesson about manners.
I rolled the passenger side window down, loosened the cage on my power just enough to shift my eyes and elongate my teeth, and gave him a deranged smile.
He dropped his cell phone, gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and slammed on his brakes, disappearing from sight.
I chuckled and rolled the window up, letting my features slide back to human.
Michael put a hand over his phone’s mic. “Was that necessary?”
“No, but it was fun,” I said. And relatively safe. Humans, I’d learned, would do anything to tell themselves they didn’t see what they thought they did—at least after a minuscule glance like that. It might be tougher if I changed form in front of one and paraded around for a little while.
Michael was unamused by my antics. With a sigh, he brought the phone back to his ear.
He’d spent the past hour and a half discussing the details of a merger between two of Kolbeck Industries holdings with his CFO.
It sounded like a continuation of a previous conversation.
The one he’d had on the drive down the other day that left him similarly pissed off.
From what I could tell, the crux of the matter was that the merger would create redundancies within the newly formed umbrella company.
Two directors of operations, two HR chiefs, and so on.
The CFO’s solution was to lay off the more expensive of the redundant employees and cut down on costs.
Michael argued for the creation of new roles, paired with promotions and reassignments, to keep from having to let anyone go.
He spoke with logic and reason, citing sources and offering irrefutable evidence as to why his plan was best. The CFO ignored it all and dug his heels in, and how Michael hadn’t bitten his head off yet was beyond me.
The fact that he was even the one arguing to keep people was not only surprising but also incredibly decent of him, something I didn’t expect after all the rumors I’d heard of his boardroom bloodlust. And yet, again, I wondered why he gave a shit in the first place.
I mean, doing the right thing was commendable.
Saving jobs was moral. But they were mostly human jobs. How did this benefit werewolves?
That might seem like a shitty, selfish thought, but all my life I’d been taught to focus on my own kind.
Mom, as a beta, sat high up in our pack’s food chain.
I’d learned from her that every time our pack council debated their next move, it came with the question of how that move might advance our species in the grand scheme of things or how it might work against our common goals.
Did the Kolbecks have these same arguments during their weekly dinners?
I somehow doubted it. It’s not like they used their vast accumulation of wealth to help the poorer packs.
That kind of altruism I could get behind.
But I hadn’t heard a whisper of that type of behavior.
Instead, all I’d ever heard were tales of their greed.
“What’s troubling you?” Michael said.
It took me a minute to realize he was speaking to me. He’d gotten off the phone while I’d been lost to my thoughts, and now he stared at me in the rearview.
“Nothing I really want to talk about,” I told him.
We were both on edge. His frustration during the phone call had leaked through the bond and infected me, and I’d fed it back to him tenfold.
If I started to demand answers from him on why his family did things the way they did, it might end in our first argument.
We had more important things to do than bicker, and I really didn’t want to fight with him.
When and if we had that conversation, I wanted it to be with a clear head, so I might be open to understanding his point of view instead of digging in my heels like his CFO.
“Are you sure?” Michael asked.
I nodded at him in the mirror. He sighed and tugged his tie free from his collar. I returned my focus to the road when he undid the top button of his shirt. Dying in a fiery car crash because I was fixated on these rare glimpses of my mate’s exposed flesh would be a stupid way to go.
“We share pain through the bond,” I said to fill the silence.
“I noticed that last night. How is your spine, by the way? I don’t feel any lingering soreness.”
“It’s fine, thanks.”
“Is it truly shared pain? Or only the illusion of it?”
“It’s as real as you or me. I had bruises on my knuckles after you broke the vampire’s ribs.”
“Fascinating. Does it persist even over long distances?”
“Yup. But it’s muted. Instead of feeling your spine crack against that brick wall, it would have been more like a dull ache.”
“So every time the vampire hit me…”
“He also hit me.”
Anger radiated out of the back seat. “I killed him too quickly.”
“That’s the bond talking,” I said. “I know Mom and Dad explained this to us, but I don’t think either of us was ready for how intense the need to protect each other has been.”
“It is proving rather inconvenient, isn’t it?” he said. “Perhaps its intensity is due to the fact that we’ve been under near constant duress since meeting.”
“Sounds like a fair assumption.”
“Hopefully tonight will provide us with a much-needed break.”
“Please don’t jinx us,” I begged.
A trickle of amusement escaped from him, but his expression remained stoic. “What’s on the docket for the evening? I only caught the tail end of your conversation with Gia before we left.”
“We thought a small bonfire at my parents’ house would be nice.”
“Who’s on the guest list?”
“You, me, Gia, Natalie, Gia’s mom, Natalie’s parents, my parents, our alpha, and a few of my closer friends from the pack. No one should bother you. I told Gia to spread the word that if anyone does, I’ll flypaper their paws.”
Another hint of amusement flared in the back of my mind. I checked the rearview. Not even the ghost of a smile brightened his expression.
“You know, I can feel you smiling on the inside. Would it kill you to actually follow through? You’re destroying my ego here.”
“I can try,” he said, his tone sincere. “This level of openness is… new to me.”
“How? You were engaged to marry someone a few days ago.”
He turned his gaze out of the window, giving me the reflection of his profile. “Marlena and I ran in similar circles. Her family is from one of the larger packs in New York, and our engagement was largely political. Early on, she and I came to an understanding of what our relationship would be.”
“And that was…?”
“That of close political allies. We had to maintain a united front, both in the face of our adversaries and our allies, chief among them our own families. To do that, we kept the relationship unencumbered by any romantic feelings.”
“Wait, you didn’t even sleep together?”
The discomfort I felt coming off him manifested in the flush of color that appeared in his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “No.”
“You’re not a virgin, are you?”
He shot me a withering look. “No.”
I grinned at him. “Just checking. You blush pretty easy every time we get close to this topic.”
He sniffed and turned to look out the window again. “My family is private about our affairs.”
“Your sexual affairs,” I said, just to push his buttons.
He took a deep breath before answering. He looked like he was counting to ten. “Yes. Now are you done being childish?”
“Never.”
“Perhaps your Goddess is real after all. I can’t imagine someone better designed to test me.”