Thirteen
E dison was not happy about his wedding day being interrupted. I could see it in the rigid frame of his shoulders as he sat across the stainless steel table from the four men that made up Pack Ricci.
There used to be five, once upon a time when Alessandro Amante Jr. was still alive. But after the heir to the Amante family caught a stray bullet that none of the five families would claim, it was just Elio, Dante, Ranieri, and Nicolo left.
They were all around ten years younger than us. So we’d essentially watched them grow up. I knew that Edison had a soft spot for them despite their belonging to the ever-irritating Italians. Young men didn’t survive long in our world if they didn’t toughen up and to see the four of them coming back together after the loss of their lead alpha was the ultimate test of their ability to live and eventually take over the Amante family—that was what the elder Alessandro was grooming them for after all.
All that sentiment seemed to have vanished now, though, as Edison eyed them critically, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he seemed to be trying to formulate his thoughts.
Elio had a black eye from struggling with me when my security guys brought them over to me while the wedding was taking place and the other three looked equally disheveled as they looked anywhere but at me and Edison.
“In what world,” Edison began, finally breaking the tense silence that had hung in the air since we’d come in, “Do you think you would ever be able to sneak into my property and steal away my bride?”
“You did it to us,” Elio muttered, sounding more like a petulant child than the future head of the Amante family.
“I walked into a public venue and reclaimed the property that was promised to me. Don’t get it twisted. You are very lucky that you failed today as wars have been started for less.”
The four younger men stiffened like they hadn’t considered war to be a possibility. They probably thought that because Edison had lost so much in the last war that he’d be hesitant to threaten it again.
I was still stuck on Edison referring to Perrie as property. My mind was already conjuring the redhead’s snarky response about that and I had to fight to keep a smirk off of my face at the image. No, it had become very clear that Perrie was her own person—contract or not.
“You don’t even like Perrie, why are you fighting so hard to get her back?” Edison crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his seat.
“Isn’t it the same for you? What use do you have for a skinny omega when you have your pick of the litter?” Dante, who had never been known for his tact, cut in despite his pack leader shooting him a look that was clearly meant to shut him up.
Edison’s growl filled the room, quickly followed by an overwhelming pressure that made the rest of us start to sink down into a bowed position.
It was rare for any alpha to use his pheromones to make others submit—it was an archaic evolutionary trait that was used in the times of kings and kingdoms to make their people obey—but Edison never feared reminding people that he was, in fact, the king of the Keane clan and people should treat him as such.
His alpha pheromones were the strongest I’d ever experienced, and despite knowing him for the better part of my life, it still never failed to make my skin itch with the need to drop to my knees.
The four alphas of Pack Ricci had even less experience with Edison’s overwhelming pressure and I watched the four of them slump forward until their foreheads smacked into the metal table in a chorus of bangs.
“Care to repeat those words?” Edison’s voice was low and dangerous. “I am letting you four sit in my home relatively unscathed after you disrespected me and now you disrespect my new wife and omega. The mother of my future children. So, I ask, would you like to repeat those words so that I can tear you limb from limb?”
There was a heavy silence before Dante finally managed to gurgle out a response. “ No .”
It seemed the hotheaded alpha had finally met his match in my friend and Edison kept all four of them there for another beat before the pressure finally eased and they were able to sit up straight in their seats.
“Now you four will go back to Amante and relay my message: Peregrine Keane is mine now. It doesn’t matter how many men you send or what promises Ethan Chandler made to you. So take your pound of flesh from him and not me.” Edison stood, the legs of his metal chair squealing on the smooth concrete floor of the interrogation room. “My security will see you off of the property. I hope I don’t see you here ever again or I’m afraid we’ll have to use you for target practice next time.”
Edison turned to sweep out of the room, but Elio’s voice stopped him. “He won’t stop you know—Amante, I mean—he sees it as a challenge now. A temporary stopper in his plans.”
I frowned at him, having trouble wrapping my head around why it was so important to Alessandro Amante to have Perrie in the first place. Edison’s desire to find a woman outside of the system with enough knowledge to survive made sense. The scars on his chest could attest to that.
But why did Amante want her so damned bad?
Ethan Chandler’s political power couldn’t be that useful. Especially in the city where we operated almost unhindered by the local and state law enforcement thanks to decades of corruption.
Edison and Elio stared at one another, the former seeming to size up the younger alpha before he finally nodded resolutely. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now get the fuck off of my property.”
Stepping into the long concrete hallway, we headed for the stairs that would lead us back up into the main mansion and back to where the reception was currently taking place over our heads.
I waited for Edison to give his directions to the guards waiting at the top of the stairs before I finally spoke for the first time since I’d interrupted Perrie and Edison’s moment in the garden.
“Is it really okay to let them leave like this, Edi? They nearly made it into the venue and I think some bruises and a black eye aren’t enough to dissuade them or Amante from trying again.”
It was troubling that they had made it that far in the first place. It meant that there was either a hole in my security planning, or we had a rat in the team that I had personally vetted. Either way it made my stomach sour as we walked together towards the garden where the reception had been set up.
“For now, it will be fine. It’s clear they at least don’t want Perrie enough to fight for her. We can deal with Alessandro Amante separately later,” Edison told me, his golden eyes measuring my expression which I thought I was keeping neutral. But I’d never been able to hide my emotions from him. “And I have every confidence you’ll figure out how they got in, Rhodes, it’s what you do best.”
He was right. I wouldn’t stop until I figured out how, or more likely, who had let them pass through several layers of security relatively unnoticed.
What I didn’t like, though, was the fact that the security team was made up almost entirely of the younger generation of the Keane clan, a group that was supposed to be in Edison’s corner entirely.
A rat on our side had implications for Edison’s plans that I didn’t even want to entertain.
Edison’s words also had another question rising in my throat and I grabbed his wrist to stop him. “Why are you fighting for Perrie so hard? I thought it was just supposed to be a contract marriage.”
Edison’s lips pulled up into a half-smile as he gently pulled his wrist out of my grip and instead slid his fingers through mine. “It started that way, sure, but I think I’m going to enjoy my married life thoroughly.”
Despite knowing that Edison and Perrie would be a fully-fledged married couple, all the way down to having children together, I couldn’t help the sudden thread of jealousy I was feeling as he spoke.
Before today, I’d never wanted him to reveal how our partnership had changed from friends to more. It held implications that the older generation of the Keane family would protest, and most likely, refuse to ever accept, putting Edison’s leadership on even shakier ground than it already was.
What was even crazier, though? I was jealous of Perrie, sure, but when I happened upon them in the garden with swollen lips and childish grins, I found myself wishing I was Edison. Jealous that he’d gotten to kiss the omega who’d basically taken over our lives over the past month.
It was confusing as fucking hell and I hadn’t had time to parse through my own emotions yet, but now they were bubbling up to the surface and were clear on my face for Edison’s ever-perceptive eyes to catch.
As if he could read my thoughts entirely, Edison cupped the side of my face. I started to pull away, realizing we were in the middle of the mansion and not in his room, but his fingers tightened as he forced me to look at him.
“Just because I like my wife doesn’t mean that I am going to like you any less. You’ve known how I felt since we brought her here.”
Then his lips descended on mine and I could taste the last bits of strawberry flavored lip gloss that still clung to them as his tongue slipped into my mouth. It was heady and I was nearly lost to it, uncaring that we were still in a place where anyone could see us.
We hadn’t so much as touched since that first night because Edison was too busy with planning the wedding and I’d been hesitant and kept myself busy, cramming as much as I could into each day so that I wouldn’t have to confront the impending change that was about to happen in our lives.
And I regretted it now.
It was easy to forget how much you craved someone until you couldn’t have them for three weeks.
And mix Perrie’s sweet strawberry scent into it? I was done for.
Pulling the man by the lapels of his jacket, I let him crush me against the wall until every inch of us was pressed together and I wanted nothing more than to drag him upstairs to his room and tear the tailored tuxedo off of his body. To give into the itch of need that always seemed to swell when we were away from each other for too long.
But then I remembered where we were and why Edison was wearing a tuxedo in the first place.
Giving him a gentle shove away from me, I pressed a hand to my tingling lips. “I shouldn’t be kissing you on your wedding day. You’re someone else’s husband now.”
I thought my words would hurt Edison but instead, when I looked at him again, I found the alpha grinning at me.
“Why not? My bride doesn’t seem to mind at all.”
Confused, I frowned at him and watched as he turned to look at something down the hallway. Following his gaze, I found a wide-eyed omega standing at the end dressed in a shorter version of the wedding dress she’d been wearing earlier, her lips half open as her eyes darted between us.
An apology started to bubble up in my throat—for what I wasn’t sure—but it died almost as quickly as it started because Perrie didn’t look angry about discovering us in such an incriminating position.
Her gray eyes were wide, sure, but not with shock or hurt. No, judging by the way her pale cheeks flushed and the opening of her glossy bow lips, it almost looked like she was enjoying what she was seeing.
“Pet? Are you all right?” Edison asked, finally releasing me so that he could go to her, his hand outstretched. I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I followed along in a daze, my body still buzzing from our kiss.
She glanced between the two of us before slipping her hand into Edison’s. “Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?”
It was an implicit acknowledgement that she’d seen what we were doing and had seemingly accepted it. Perrie could have turned and ratted us both out to the rest of the people outside. She had every right to do so as Edison’s new wife. But every instinct I had was telling me that she wouldn’t.
“Rhodes was worried,” Edison told her cheerfully as he drew a finger down her bare spine, grinning over his shoulder at me when he caught my eyes following the digit and the lift of gooseflesh that was left in its wake.
Perrie glanced back at me, her gray eyes meeting mine. During our self-defense training sessions over the past few weeks she’d taken to trying to get under my skin. I knew my lack of expression frustrated the overly-emotive omega and it had been a bit of a point of pride to not let her in.
But I knew that she could see every inch of confusion, jealousy, and need that was coursing through my body on my face and Perrie looked as if she didn’t know what to do about it. It was like the pair had cracked my body open at the ribs and were perusing my soul like a pair of fucking morticians to see what made me tick. I almost would have believed that they’d planned the whole thing except for the fact that they’d barely had a moment alone together over the past three weeks.
“Rhodes shouldn’t be worried about anything,” Perrie said, finally putting me out of my misery and turning back to face the direction we were walking in. We were close to the door that led out into the garden where the reception was being held and I could already hear music wafting down the hall towards us.
“That’s what I told him, pet, but you’ll have to forgive him. It takes him a while to trust new people.”
I followed behind them with clenched teeth. I hated being spoken about as if I wasn’t there and Edison knew it. The bastard was probably trying to draw some kind of reaction out of me, and despite my best efforts, it was working.
We made it to the large double doors and two of the security guards pulled them open for the new couple to walk through and out to the reception area.
“Now, shall we go have our first dance? There’s a bit of a surprise waiting for you at the end of it.”
One of Perrie’s auburn brows rose as she looked over at Edison. “Is it the doves you’ve been muttering about for the last week?”
“Can’t you just let it be a surprise?”
“No.”
Edison frowned down at her. “You’re no fun, pet.”
Perrie straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin into the air, the very essence of a haughty young rich woman that I knew she wasn’t. “And don’t you ever forget it, Husband.”
With that, she dragged a very flabbergasted Edison into the reception, leaving me to watch them go with a shake of my head.
I still wasn’t sure how I felt about any of this, but at least I knew that Perrie would keep the both of us on our toes.
As the crowd cheered their entrance, I brushed my fingers along my lips and got one last taste of that strawberry lip gloss before following them into the reception.