2. Lycan #2
“How so?” I went through the motions of discarding the card on top of the deck before revealing the next one. Three of hearts. I had my two pair. I tried not to let my face show it, relaxing into a mask of indifference.
“I don’t know,” Ava said. “I can’t stop my racing thoughts. All the what-ifs. All the possible outcomes. Maeve doesn’t care about that. She lives in the moment. I can’t stop fretting about the future.”
I ignored the impulse that flared in my chest, begging me to order her to drop and crawl to me.
I could shut her mind off with two simple commands.
I could take that away from her, even if only for a moment.
But no. This wasn’t that type of arrangement.
We may have put on a show for her stupid ex and her obnoxious colleagues, but it ended there.
“What would you do if you could?” I asked.
“Hmm, now you’re asking for secrets you haven’t won yet.” She preened and gestured to my cards. “Moment of truth.”
I flipped over my hand and grinned when she revealed she had nothing.
“This game isn’t fair,” she said with a scoff. “We should be betting as we go. I would have folded.”
“Don’t deflect,” I said with a laugh.
“I’m not deflecting,” she replied. “Just pointing out a flaw in logic. What’s the point of this if it’s up to chance? I should at least be allowed to withdraw if I don’t like my odds.”
“Hmm, talk about overthinking.”
She scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her seat. “Well, go on. What secret do you want to know?”
I debated the first five things that came to mind. What really happened with her and the Seventh Earl of Little Dick Energy? What would she do if she could clear her mind? What was her biggest regret? What did she hope for the future? None of those hit the mark.
I thought about the weeks I’d spent with her, how I’d seen her chew men up and spit them out, how I’d never seen her flirt or even entertain the possibility of a random hook-up.
I’d come here expecting two nights off every month.
One to shift on the full moon, the other to release pent-up energy with whoever I could find willing.
But Ava? Nothing. It was like that side of her had been chained up and hidden deep in her soul. Like she never allowed it to breathe.
Somewhere along the way, she’d decided she didn’t need anyone. That she could only rely on herself. And fuck, I understood that far too well.
“When did you stop letting people get close to you?”
Her features froze, her gaze locked on mine, the glass of scotch dangling between her index finger and her thumb. She took a moment to recover before blinking and releasing a tight breath.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “Cutting right to the heart of it, huh?”
“Is that something you’ve ever told anyone?”
“No,” she said. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
“Perfect.” I picked up my liquor and took a long, deep sip, sighing as it warmed my blood. “Go on.”
She licked her lips and blinked. “I don’t know. I suppose when my mother died. Or maybe when I ended things with Scott.”
I winced at the mention of her mother. For a long time, the Vanderbilts blamed the Bastards for her mother’s death, and her father had retaliated by sending the Scorpions on our land during a full moon to kill whomever they found. It had been devastating for both families.
“It’s easier to keep people at arm’s length,” she said. “If they can’t get close, they can’t hurt me.”
I smirked. “Relatable.”
She laughed and waved her hand at me, dismissive. “Oh, c’mon. You’re…”
When she didn’t finish, I raised an eyebrow. “I’m what?”
“I mean, I’ve heard the stories.” She grabbed the deck to shuffle again. “You’re rather liberal with who you get close to.”
“So you’re saying I’m a slut?” I teased.
“No,” she immediately replied.
“You’re slut-shaming me.” I couldn’t hold back my chuckle.
“I would never,” she said. “By all means, be liberated. It’s just that I…I mean, I can’t…I wouldn’t…”
“What really happened between you and the Earl of Spineless Pricks?” I asked.
She dealt out a new hand and shrugged. “He wanted to get married right after graduation. He wanted a bride and an heir, and that isn’t me.
I wanted to go to law school. I wanted to work for Vanderbilt Holdings, make a name for myself.
He said I’d be stupid to throw him away, to discard our future for the sake of my selfish dreams.”
The beast inside me growled at the fucker’s idiocy. Ava was brilliant. He didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, much less have a second of her time or energy. I’d rip his throat out the next time I saw him.
“He was probably right, in a way.” She placed the deck down between us and flipped over three cards.
“No one wants to date the cold Vanderbilt bitch who’s married to her career, and here I am, all these years later, alone and drinking with a man who was forced to be here for the sake of his business. ”
“No one forced me to be here,” I said. “And no one forced me to drink with you, either.”
She pursed her lips and lifted her shoulders, perhaps hardened by my response. Her scent shifted, now more ice and metal, like she didn’t believe me, like she’d guarded herself against her emotions because if she let herself think they were true, she’d let me in. I could hurt her if she did.
I wouldn’t.
“What about you?” she asked, flipping over the next card.
“What about me?”
“I imagine you have a long line of broken hearts behind you.”
I sensed where this was going, and I’d play along because it wasn’t a secret how much my relationship with Poe had affected me. Everyone in the pack knew we’d been together, and then suddenly, we weren’t.
“Who made you the way you are?” she asked. “Unless that’s a secret, and if it is, I’ll wait until I beat you this round, and then you can tell me.”
I laughed and finished my drink before picking up my cards to peek. The queen of hearts and the ten of spades. When the draw revealed the ace of hearts and king of hearts, I tried not to let my excitement show. How well had she shuffled that deck?
“Poe,” I said. “His name is Poe.”
She glanced up. “Oh, I didn’t realize you were gay.”
“Non-discriminating,” I corrected. “Life’s too short for inhibitions.”
“Fair.” She finished her scotch and lifted the crystal to refill both of our tumblers. “What happened with Poe?”
I hummed and bit back the ache in my chest, the clench in my lower gut.
“Something similar,” I said. “He wanted forever. I couldn’t give it to him.”
“Why not?” Ava discarded the first card on the pile before flipping over the next. A seven of clubs. I kept my face trained on hers, watching as she bit her bottom lip before locking down her reaction.
She had a good hand, and she didn’t want me to know it.
“I’m not a good person, Ava,” I said. “I’ve never loved anyone except my family, and Poe…” I debated the best way to tell her I was a piece of shit as I gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Parisian skyline.
Lights twinkled in the distance. The waning moon illuminated the buildings, casting shadows on the dreary landscape.
Despite its reputation as a romantic place, Paris was a shithole.
Dirty and rotten and teeming with an epic wealth divide.
But perhaps that was what I loved the most about it. I saw myself in its filth.
“Poe is the closest I’ve ever come to saying yes,” I admitted, unsure why I was divulging this much to her.
No one in the pack knew the truth, at least not from me.
I hadn’t talked about him since it happened, since he asked me to mate him and I’d turned him down.
Tears in his eyes and frowning with silent resignation, he’d broken it off, kicked me out.
I deserved worse.
“Why didn’t you?” She put her elbows on the table and leaned closer, her blue eyes begging me for answers, begging for recognition. Perhaps she wasn’t the only lonely person in Paris. Perhaps she longed to see herself in me, too.
“That’s a loaded question,” I said with a snort. Then I gestured to the deck, reminding her of our game. She discarded the top card and flipped over the next one. An ace of clubs.
I had nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“Alright, show me,” she said. When she revealed her hand, she had a full house and kicked my ass, just as she said she would. “Well?”
“Nada,” I said, trying not to focus on the long stretch of skin from her neck down to the hint of chest peeking out through her top. “I guess you get to know my secrets after all.”
She smiled and hummed, pretending to think while she drummed her perfectly manicured nails on the table. “When did you stop letting people get close to you?”
I guess I brought that on myself.
“Is it that obvious?”
“It takes one to know one,” she replied with a tender lift of her lips. Her casual, cute smile. The one she wore authentically. Not the one she wore right before she cut someone down to size.
“My parents died when the Bloody Scorpions raided our territory,” I explained, and she averted her gaze to her drink, the rancid scent of shame pluming between us. “A lot of people died. I’m not special.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but I kept going before she said something she couldn’t take back.
“Nothing in this life is forever,” I continued. “Not love. Not money. Nothing.”
Not even mates, but she didn’t know such a thing existed.
Even if a shifter had the piss-poor fortune to find their magical soulmate, one would eventually watch the other one die.
And I’d seen what happened to shifters who survived the loss of a mate.
They turned rabid, uncontrollable, frothing at the mouth, and determined to kill anything that came near them until someone put them out of their misery.
What a fucking terrible way to go. I’d rather not experience it at all than live in the delusion of happiness only to know it would one day be ripped out from under me.