Chapter 20 #2
I am moving before the thought finishes. Out of the den, across the hall, Tristan’s shirt snapping against my thighs as I stalk toward the bathroom.
The water shuts off before I reach it. Tristan steps into the hall with a towel around his hips and another in his hands, rubbing it through his hair.
“Where are they?”
He lowers the towel.
No surprise. Not even the quick calculation that usually crosses his face when I catch him off guard. He looks at the note sticking out of my fist and meets my eyes.
“They should be at the house by now.”
At the house. Owen with a bad shoulder. Freddie with his hands shaking over those photographs.
“How long have you known?”
Tristan doesn’t reach for me. Smart man.
“Since last night.”
My fingers tighten around the note.
“For the record, I objected to the wording.”
“The lying part?”
“The do not try to follow us part.” He folds the towel over one shoulder. “Optimistic.”
My fist hits his chest.
Tristan rocks back and catches himself against the bathroom doorframe. The towel slips from his shoulder. Owen’s note slides out of my hand and sticks to the wet floor between us, but I don’t care.
“We were supposed to finish discussing this before making a decision. You let me go to sleep believing that.”
His hands stay loose at his sides. No laugh. No filthy little smile over the marks I’m leaving. He takes it like a punishment he already agreed to.
“Say something!”
“I told them keeping it from you was a bad idea.”
“Wow. Thank god there was one brave man in the room.”
“I wasn’t agreeing they should take you.”
I slam both palms into his chest. “You say you love this side of me. But when I might actually be useful, I get left in the soft room?”
Tristan’s back hits the wall.
“You think I don’t know what you can do?”
“What I can do ends when it stops being fun for you.”
He flips us around and traps me against the wall, his much larger body closing around mine. He pins my hands on either side of my head, and the pressure of an alpha holding me down quiets my omega for just one second.
I buck against him. “Get the fuck off me.”
“If Charles offered Colleen for you, you’d hand yourself over before Freddie could stop you. We can’t have that.”
I twist against his grip. Pain bites through my knuckles and up my wrist, but he doesn’t give me enough room to hit him again.
“Then you tell me to my face. You don’t stand by while Weller fucks me unconscious so you don’t have to deal with me.”
Tristan’s mouth flinches at one corner.
“I told them you deserved the truth.”
“And then you kept it from me.”
His grip loosens, but he doesn’t let go. “I wasn’t going to let you go either way, Bianca.”
“Were you planning to restrain me?”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “If I had to.”
I turn one wrist hard toward his thumb and rip it free. When he shifts to catch me, the other follows. I shove him away and stumble over the towel.
The soft music continues downstairs.
I snatch the note off the wet floor, shoulder past Tristan, and storm into the kitchen.
Weller is still cooking fucking breakfast.
He turns from the stove and his eyes move over my face while Tristan fills the doorway behind me. He switches off the music, and the violin dies abruptly.
“Bianca.”
“Did you have this all planned out before I fell asleep on your knot?”
His hand starts toward the bite on his neck, then stops. “Yes.”
Weller turns off the burner, moves the hot pan to the back of the stove, and puts down the tongs. He wipes his hands on a kitchen towel.
“Was that a strategic move, Weller? Pacifying the omega with cock until she is knocked out and can’t argue with you?”
“I always want you.”
“Wasn’t my question.”
His fingers curl against the edge of the counter. “Yes, I knew you would sleep better and be less likely to wake up when they left.”
For a second I can only stare at him. There is a raw little ache where my body stretched around him while I begged for more. I loved it, and that might be the part I hate most.
“You’re an asshole.”
Weller comes around the island, and I hold my hands up.
“Remember that whole conversation we all had about honesty—telling each other everything?” I slap Owen’s note onto the counter. The wet paper tears beneath my palm.
The line between Weller’s brows deepens.
“I remember.”
“I told you I could live with being argued with. I told you I couldn’t live with being managed, and you looked me in the face and agreed.”
“I broke your trust and I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t do much when you’d make the same choice again.”
The only sound is the hot pan ticking against the cooling stove.
“We should’ve told you. Freddie wasn’t going to be able to leave if you were awake and trying to come with him.”
“So now we weaponize knots?”
“If he had to choose between you and his mother, he would choose you, and you would choose her.”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Fuck.
But it doesn’t make this okay.
“Did you forget I’m the one who saved your asses?” My voice keeps growing louder and I can’t stop. “You would still be with Whitney if I hadn’t come back.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“Then why does it feel like my work ended when I got you out?”
Weller’s eyes narrow. “Your work?”
Tristan shifts in the doorway.
“At the refuge, I had a team. They asked my opinion before they made a plan. I trained. I hunted. I kept track of supplies and medicine. I kept watch. People expected me to show up because I was good at things that mattered.”
“You matter here.”
“Are you deliberately missing the point?”
Weller’s nostrils flare. “Your usefulness is not the price of belonging to us.”
“I didn’t say it was. Jesus Christ, stop dancing around the issue.” I yank Tristan’s shirt away from my thighs where it has stuck to my skin. “I want to be part of a team, not sitting on a pedestal like those ugly fucking sculptures you had in the penthouse.”
“I refuse to have you bleeding for this pack.”
“Then what is my purpose, Weller?”
“You’re our mate.”
He reaches for me, but I slap his hand away hard and the sound cracks through the kitchen.
“I love the sound of it. I’ve wanted it my whole life. But being your mate doesn’t give you the right to strip away the parts of me that make you uncomfortable.”
“Bianca—”
“No. You’re not turning my name into a command right now.”
I walk away before he can answer.
Neither of them follows me into my nest. The lock catches on my second try because my hands won’t stop trembling.
I rip Tristan’s shirt over my head. It snags in my hair and I fight with it until the seam tears, then throw it. The flowers tip sideways when the shirt catches the pitcher. Water sloshes onto the cabinet and begins dripping over the edge.
Fuck it. I really don’t care.
All of my mates are liars and half of them left me in the middle of the night.
They could get hurt. They could be captured. They could fucking die.
And they didn’t even have the decency to let me say goodbye.
It makes me even angrier when I think about how happy I’ve been here with them.
Hard to believe that not so long ago, mornings started with a bow in my hand.
I drag the balcony doors open. Wind rushes through the room and tosses the curtains in my face. The ocean is right there, wide and blue beneath the morning sky, and I need to be near it. I need to be anywhere that doesn’t smell like the people I love deciding I am safest when I don’t make choices.
My body wants trees and a direction I picked myself.
I sit in a chair and press my hands between my knees, focusing on my breathing. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. I lose count, swear, and start again.
By the time my breathing slows, my anger has ebbed slightly, but not enough.
I pull on a clean shirt, shorts, and shoes. The knife I hid in a drawer goes into my pocket. I take one of the prepaid phones from the charger and check the battery before I unlock the hall door.
Weller is waiting across the hall. Tristan has put on a pair of pants, and angry red marks cover his chest.
“I’m going for a walk.” I hold up the phone. “Alone.”
Weller steps away from the wall. “No, Bianca?—”
Tristan turns his head toward him. “Weller.”
Weller’s attention stays on me. “You’re approaching heat, you’re upset, and people are looking for you.”
“I can protect myself.”
“That’s not in question.”
“You guys have a funny fucking way of showing it.”
His mouth pulls tight. “Take one of us with you. We don’t even have to walk next to?—”
“No.” I slide the phone into one back pocket and pull the knife from the other. “I’m telling you where I’m going. I won’t go far, and I’ll call if anything comes up.”
I look at both of them. “If either of you tries to stop me, I’ll fight you. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. Leave me the fuck alone right now.”