CHAPTER 8 #3
“Demand is the word for what she’s been doing.
” Ronald lifted a meaty hand and began counting off fingers.
“She demands that you return home. She demands that you submit yourself to your alpha. She demands that you apologize. She demands that your mate”—he cut me another searching look—“apologize as well.”
I frowned. “What the hell did I do?”
This time his dark gaze landed on me and stuck. “She’s under the impression that this little escape act was your idea.”
“Great.”
Beside me, Michael sighed. “Don’t disobey any direct orders if you can help it. And pull our best people in. Layla will likely draw some unwanted attention.”
Ronald snorted. “No shit. You could have warned me you were bringing a nuclear bomb into the city.” His gaze narrowed on me. “The fuck are you, anyway?”
Excuse me?
Michael put a preemptively restraining hand on my shoulder. “Don’t pay any mind to Ronald. Sarcasm is his default.” He turned back to the larger man. “She is Layla. She’s not an alpha, merely powerful. Past that, no one needs to know.”
Ronald’s expression flattened. “Not even your head of security?”
Michael shook his head.
“Your mother know what she is?”
Michael nodded.
“Then it will get out eventually,” Ronald said. “You know it’s better to get ahead of her. Put it out yourself. That way you can control the way it’s done and we won’t find ourselves in an unplanned shitstorm.”
I couldn’t help it. “A planned shitstorm is somehow better?”
Ronald nodded, his expression flat. “At least in a planned one you know where to stand with the umbrella.”
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
A surge of protectiveness flowed through the bond, and I realized what was happening.
Michael’s need to keep me safe had gone to war with his logic and they were locked in battle, both digging in, refusing to give ground.
To reveal my lineage would be to place my safety in the hands of a man I didn’t know.
To keep my lineage hidden would be to place my safety in his mother’s hands, a woman I knew and didn’t trust enough to turn my back on.
The decision was a no-brainer, but it seemed that Michael was just now finding out what the bond could do to rational thought.
I made the decision for him. “I was born into the MacKenzie Valley pack.”
Ronald put his hands on his hips. “Well, fuck.”
Michael, freed from his inner struggle, found his voice again. “We’ll figure out how to spin it in the morning.”
Ronald clapped a hand on his shoulder and cracked a smile. “Sure we will, boss.” He turned and walked away, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Code orange,” he said into it. “Call the enforcers in. We got a big-ass problem in a tiny-ass body.”
“I’m not that small,” I muttered at his back. Just because he was a damn giant.
Michael led me in the opposite direction, toward an ornate set of doors that opened to reveal an old-fashioned but thankfully well-maintained elevator.
The doors shut behind us, trapping us together in a tiny space that quickly filled with our scents.
The car had been bearable because we’d blasted the air.
This was cloying. I could almost taste him on my tongue, which threatened to open the Pandora’s box of inappropriate thoughts I’d secured with heavy-duty duct tape in the back of my mind.
Michael, taking shallow breaths through his mouth to mitigate my own scent, flipped open what looked like an innocuous panel on the wall to reveal a state-of-the-art keypad.
He punched a seven-digit code into it, pressed his thumb on a small black square to have his print scanned, and then pushed a button.
The elevator hummed to life and began to lift us upward.
“My apartment is on the third floor,” he said. “The whole brownstone is ours. Security lives on the first two and works out of the top two, placing a barrier between us and anyone hoping to gain access to our rooms.”
“What about the windows?”
“Bulletproof. With blast curtains and Kevlar shutters that shut automatically when motion is detected outside. Which you can expect them to do several times a day.” A hint of amusement unfurled from him, and he looked at me. “Because pigeons.”
I laughed. Thanks to my current stress level, it came out slightly hysterical.
His amusement fled, replaced by concern and a bone-deep weariness that dragged me further into my own state of exhaustion. Either I was getting better at reading his moods, or he was too tired to guard them.
The elevator slowed and then stopped, the doors whooshing open to reveal a different apartment from what I’d expected.
I’d been anticipating more beige. This was done in shades of gray, cast iron, and brick.
It was modern, masculine, and industrial.
There wasn’t a single piece of art on the walls.
The décor was minimal. It made the place feel open, eased some of the claustrophobia that being in the city triggered.
“Where can I sleep?” I asked, shuffling in.
“The spare bedroom is to the right,” Michael answered.
“See you on the other side,” I said, beelining toward it.
“Good night, Layla.”
“Night,” I said, so tired that I somehow managed to slur a single-syllable word.