CHAPTER 7
My first encounter with Michael’s mother had been less than ideal.
Hopefully dinner that night would provide an opportunity for improvement.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, though.
She and Michael hadn’t ended the conversation on the best note, and now there was the added bonus of meeting the rest of his extensive family as well.
To that end, I put a serious effort into making myself presentable for dinner.
I took my time in my en suite bathroom, showering again but actually washing my hair this time.
I didn’t consider myself a vain creature.
I’d always called myself run-of-the-mill pretty.
I was on the taller side, with an athletic frame.
My bra size was in the A–B range, depending on the brand, and my limbs were long and muscular from all my time spent running through the woods with my pack.
I liked to think I had a decent set of facial features, but vanity finally kicked in when it came to my hair and my eyes.
My hair fell to my waist, a medium brown with natural highlights from where the sun bleached it out.
My eyes were almond shaped and heavy lidded.
They looked killer in winged liner and three coats of mascara.
I found a hair dryer and a curling iron in one of the bathroom drawers. Thank you, Marlena. It took me over half an hour to dry so much hair. It was such a pain in the ass that usually I let it do its thing, but I couldn’t risk it deciding to frizz out on me tonight.
Afterward, I took a break to search out coffee. I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night, and I felt like I needed the jolt of caffeine to keep me going.
Michael sat with his laptop propped up on the coffee table in our common area, his phone pressed to his ear. On the other end of the line, a man droned on about acquisitions.
“Coffee?” I asked, voice low.
He pointed to the kitchen.
I stared at him. No shit that’s where I’d find coffee.
“I mean, do you want some?” I clarified.
He shook his head.
I did my best to ignore his conversation as I went about learning how his fancy coffee machine worked.
The man he talked to had a kind of monotone voice that was easy to drown out.
Michael spoke only to ask questions and was silent for long stretches in between.
He sounded perfectly calm and polite, but an itchy feeling came through the bond that betrayed his impatience.
A few careful button presses later, I had myself a latte.
I took a tentative sip and closed my eyes, relishing the flavor and deciding that maybe there were some perks to living here after all.
Michael’s gaze followed me back to my new bedroom, steady and fixed.
What was going on behind those intelligent dark eyes?
I would have given anything to find out.
I didn’t like enigmas, and I definitely wasn’t used to self-contained shifters.
The people I grew up around were loud, boisterous, and blunt.
No use pretending not to be angry when your scent would give you away.
I was still freaked out by the way his mother’s anger had just… disappeared. As if she’d turned it off like a faucet. There was something weird about that woman. I glanced at Michael one last time before shutting the door behind me. There was something weird about him, too.
From everything I’d been told about new bonds, I should have felt his emotions coming through loud and clear, like I had last night right after the bond snapped into place.
It was almost like he’d learned how to mute it, but I knew that wasn’t it.
Because the thing was, I should have still smelled his emotions, and I didn’t.
You can’t mask scent. Not that I knew of, at least. Michael’s emotions weren’t coming through the bond that strongly because he wasn’t experiencing them that strongly.
He wasn’t letting himself get upset. He had his feelings under lockdown.
I would have been impressed at his level of control if I wasn’t so weirded out by it.
My thoughts ran in a loop as I carried my coffee over to one of the taller wardrobes and pulled out my favorite red dress. It wasn’t anything fancy, tight in the bodice and looser over my hips, falling to mid-thigh, but it set off my shape well, made me look like I had more curves than I did.
I pulled it on and went back to the bathroom to curl my hair.
That took less time than blow-drying it did, since I opted for loose waves.
Afterward, I pulled out a little cosmetics bag filled with organic brands.
Werewolves were hypersensitive to chemicals, and I couldn’t stand unnatural products touching my skin.
I spread a tinted moisturizer over my face, brushed a little blush over my cheeks, and applied my go-to winged liner and multiple coats of mascara.
It was funny how putting on a dress could feel like donning chain mail.
How easy it was to think of my makeup as war paint. Ready for battle, I left my room.
Michael waited in the kitchen. His expression hardly changed as his gaze took me in—just a slight raise of his brows—but through the bond came a newfound…
awareness. His mouth pinched, and the emotion disappeared, like he’d mentally quashed it.
Too late. I knew what it meant: My mate thought I was hot.
“You look… well,” he said, with almost no inflection. Not nice, or pretty. Well.
I leveled my gaze at him and strode over, my hips rolling thanks to the heels I wore. I’d had just about enough of him trying to hide his emotions from me. “Michael, thanks to the bond, I’m aware of just how well you think I look.”
His gaze raked over me again, quickly, like he couldn’t help himself, and then he turned half away. His cheeks colored slightly.
“But thank you,” I said, taking pity on him as my eyes took in the sight of yet another suit. “You look nice, too.”
He pushed his right arm straight, exposing his watch, and then bent his elbow to read it. “We should be leaving soon. Are you ready?”
Guess we’re not going to talk about our mutual attraction.
“I am,” I said. “Better to be early than late. I’d rather not risk your mother’s wrath. You might be her son, but I’m just the inconvenient cannon fodder you got bonded to.”
I’d meant it as a joke, but he didn’t take it that way. Anger wafted off him like the breeze that precipitates a storm. His voice dropped into a near growl. “She will not make a move against you.”
I lifted my hands. “Okaaay. No teasing about my personal safety. Got it.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment. In the back of my mind, I felt him battling against a sudden mix of fear, panic, and what must have been protectiveness. The fear and panic felt familiar. Because they were mine, I realized, rebounding like my parents had warned.
Michael took a deep, shuddering breath in through his nose and gripped the edge of the kitchen island. I hated to see him like this, and even though I knew it was the bond driving my need to comfort him, the urge was impossible to ignore.
Screw it, I thought, reaching out to rub his back.
He stiffened in response, and I almost pulled my hand away, but then I felt some of the tension ease from his back, and instead I pressed in a little harder.
He relaxed in increments, his anger draining away along with the stiffness in his body.
After a few minutes, he bowed his head and pushed into me.
Huh. Maybe he wasn’t allergic to surprise hugs after all. Maybe he just wasn’t used to them.
“You doing okay?” I asked. “Mr. Iron Self-Control?”
He stared down at the floor. “I am unaccustomed to this feeling of… helplessness. And while I pride myself on being the master of my emotions, yours are proving somewhat more difficult for me to wrangle. They seem to be amplifying my own at the moment.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m trying.”
He lifted his head and met my gaze, a small, humorless smile playing over his full lips. “We are forever apologizing to each other.”
“Want to just call it even?”
He nodded. “Thank you, for…”
“Rubbing your back?” I asked, grinning.
He nodded again, a hint of pink in his cheeks.
Was he shy? Or just a prude? And why did I suddenly want to keep teasing him until I found out which one it was?
Michael proffered his arm. “Shall we?”
If it was anyone else, I would have told them that I could walk on my own, thank you very much, but there was a hint of…
anticipation maybe, coming through the bond that made me think this was just an excuse to keep touching me.
I wrapped my arm through his, careful not to brush my fingers over the exposed skin on his wrist, and we made our way downstairs.
I thought we were still early. Dinner was supposed to be served at eight, and it was quarter till. But when Michael led me into the dining room, we were met by a crowd of people. The only ones I recognized were his mother and Lizzy.
I forced my spine straight as they turned toward us, taking shallow breaths through my nose to sniff out the mood of the collective.
Wariness pervaded the room. Their heartbeats ran the gauntlet from pulsing at the speed of a hummingbird (Lizzy) to the slow cadence of boredom (a handsome man near the windows who wore laconic disdain like other people did designer clothes).
I felt several soft points of pressure along my psyche, their power stretching out to brush against my own as they gleaned the unique signature of a new wolf.
The probing was delicate, like they were trying to be polite about it.
With difficulty, I managed to pull my power back even more.
Hopefully they assumed that I was leaking metaphysical juice because I was nervous to meet them and didn’t think I was an alpha trespassing on their territory.
A tall man with salt-and-pepper hair detached himself from the crowd and came over to us. “I hear congratulations are in order,” he said, unsmiling.