22. Harper
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
harper
"Didn't we already do this?" I drawled, as Rhone reached the stairwell. "Why not go with the elevator? Are you trying to stay in shape or something? You don't need any help in that department. Your ass is an eleven out of ten."
"The elevators have other people in them.
Other men in them. And for the record," Rhone growled, "I did abduct you.
You told me you needed time to think. If I had known you weren't going to stay in your apartment, I wouldn't have played along.
I don't appreciate you publicly implying that I'm not interested in you. "
"You aren't interested in me. Why would I imply otherwise?"
"Of course I'm fucking interested in you. I don't know how you could've come to any other conclusion."
"You said you were going to mate with me so I could be stable for Maverick and Bloom," I shot back.
"I was trying to put you at ease," he snarled, his fingers digging into the backs of my thighs as he took the stairs two at a time. "I'm well aware that you don't like me, Harper."
"My dislike has obviously shifted. I couldn't have spent two weeks fucking you if I didn't like you. The last guy I slept with who I didn't like literally killed me."
His fingers dug in a little deeper. "Don't talk about fucking Velour, or I will lose the shred of sanity I still possess."
"It's a very small shred. The only small part of you, though."
His grip relaxed a little. Just a tiny bit. "You'd know best."
"I'm the expert."
"Are you?"
"Yeah. I'm your mate, remember?"
His chest rumbled. I wasn't sure if it was a good rumble or a bad one. "I sure as fuck haven't forgotten. I can feel you in my mind constantly. There's a bridge. Does your head still ache?"
"No. When the pain stopped, it didn't come back. I don't feel a connection, though."
Rhone spoke right into my mind. "It's there."
I shuddered. "What the hell? That's insane. You have Maverick in your head like that? And a whole pack?"
"My connection to the pack is weaker than Maverick's.
I can only communicate through the link with people I'm physically close to.
Thank fuck for that." He muttered the last few words.
"The next time something goes wrong, I'd better be the first person you talk to.
Use the link. Text. Call. I don't care. I'm first."
"Fine. Where were you?"
He reached the top floor. "The roof. I go up there to think sometimes."
"You can go up to the roof?"
"If you have a key."
"I want the key."
"Not happening." He strode down the hallway. "You're abducted, remember?"
I rolled my eyes.
He carried me to his room. There was a gift bag in front of the door that said CONGRATS.
"Who's the present from?" I checked.
"Nolan. I sent him to the hardware store."
"The hardware store? Why?"
"I needed hardware." Rhone carried me to his bedroom and set me down unceremoniously on the bed before striding out of the room.
"What kind of hardware?" I called after him.
He ignored me, because he was Rhone.
I thought about following him to figure it out, but I was tired and overwhelmed and emotional about the whole Neve situation, even though I was trying not to be.
I was bloodthirsty on top of it, too.
Really bloodthirsty.
And his room smelled good. Like marshmallows and sex and the teeniest hint of peppermint.
Yum.
So I slipped under the blankets and pulled Rhone's pillow closer, breathing his scent in and closing my eyes.
Maybe being mated to him wouldn't be all bad.
The sound of a power tool being used a few minutes later had my eyes snapping open.
What was he doing?
I sighed and slid out of bed, padding back to the front door.
It took me a minute to process what I was seeing.
Rhone.
Shirtless.
Sitting on the floor, with the door between his legs.
While he used a drill to remove the keypad portion of the locking mechanism.
I blinked.
On the floor at his side, there was a replacement lock.
One that would require a key.
When I looked back at Rhone, I noticed a new chain around his neck. With a key on it.
"Really?" I asked, and he glanced over.
"You started it." He looked back at the lock and pulled the last piece of the keypad off.
"Technically, you started it. You locked me out of my old room."
"The observation room. Where you weren't comfortable, devolved frequently, and couldn't sleep."
I made a face.
I wasn't going to win that argument, so I abandoned ship. "You can't lock your mate in an apartment. That has to be illegal, even for werewolves."
"It's a gray area."
"There's no way."
"It's frowned upon, but understandable in some situations. And I wasn't planning on locking you in here, so it's irrelevant."
"You weren't?"
"Of course not. I'm not a fucking monster. I'm the one who spent more than a month trying to convince you to stop living in an observation room, remember?"
"Right." I padded over to him, sitting on my ass a foot or two away from him and studying the new lock. "Then why are you changing this?"
"My mate keeps locking me out."
"She's a bitch. You should ask fate for a reroll."
"I don't want a reroll."
He reached for the new lock, and I caught his arm. When I lifted his wrist closer to my face so I could see the raised scar there, he didn't protest. I felt his gaze on me while I dragged my thumb slowly over the mark.
"Do you hate it? Most wolves have mate marks on their necks," I said.
"I like being able to see it. I usually have a neck wound at some stage of healing, too. People will still know I'm taken."
My face warmed. "Bloom said my scar is scandalous."
"Show it to me."
I turned my shoulders and tipped my head down, so he could see the whole thing. I wasn't sure how much of it was covered by my hair.
Rhone rumbled. "Looks fucking hot to me."
It was definitely scandalous, then.
"I wasn't going to make you mate with me," I said, needing to clear the air. "I know you didn't want a mate bond. I didn't want you to have to deal with it, so—"
"I wanted you. I still want you. I want the bond. It's just a big change." He set a hand on my thigh and squeezed lightly before letting go and grabbing the lock.
Somehow, the simple response wiped away almost every shred of uncertainty I'd possessed about the way we'd ended up bonded.
"Does it make me look more interesting?" I asked. "The bite mark?"
"Yeah, it does."
"Good. Do I get a key too?" I asked. "Or am I going back to my own apartment again?"
Maybe I was still salty about that.
He grabbed the chain around his neck—which I then realized was two separate chains and two separate keys—and lifted one over my head.
Both chains were rose gold, like the necklace that still held the fangs around my throat.
"You look good with a drill," I said.
Rhone grunted.
"Did you use power tools a lot when you were growing up?" Based on what I knew, it seemed likely.
"They were the main part of my education."
"My education mainly consisted of vampires. Neve asked me to become a blood donor when I was eight. She told me it was my choice, as if I could’ve said no without it ruining my life and my shitty relationship with her."
"Did you want to say no?"
"No. She’d been talking about when I started donating blood since I was a toddler, so it was just a part of my culture. Later, I wondered if she only had me to help add to the pool of blood donors that was never quite big enough. I still do. Never had the balls to ask."
"That’s fucked up, Trouble."
"I know. I went to therapy. A lot of it." I let out a quiet breath.
"Did it help?"
"I don't know. Sometimes, it did. Sometimes, I just felt sad afterward. I think I needed it to accept what I'd been through, and then I needed to just... let go. Move on with my life. Bloom made that a lot easier. She was always on my side, and I needed that."
"She's a good friend."
"The best," I admitted. "I miss our days in our old apartment. At the investment company, too. It was so normal. I felt free."
"What do you feel now?"
I considered it.
Above everything else?
"Tired," I said quietly. "Everything is a battle, now. I didn't realize how simple it all was, before. I wish I'd known how lucky I was. Appreciated it more. Enjoyed it more."
Rhone didn't respond right away.
"That's the reason I wanted to take a mate. When we were with the Wilder Pack, and we were feeding and fucking all the time, I felt like myself again. I had fun. The only real fun I've had since I turned was when I reprogrammed your door and locked you out of your room, so that was a big deal."
There was a quiet moment between us. It wasn't tense, or uncomfortable. Just… calm.
"I can't live for Bloom anymore, Rhone. I'm done. She's okay now. If I'm going to keep going, I have to live for me." I gestured to my face.
To the fangs around my neck, too.
Rhone looked at me for a long moment.
Then he pulled the new lock he'd been about to install away from the door.
I watched silently as he took the new hardware off, and put the keypad back on just because I'd told him I had fun reprogramming it.
He didn't say that, but I knew it.
"We're spending every night together," he warned, as he finished securing it in place. "I'm not sleeping in the hallway, in your old apartment, or anywhere else. This place is ours."
"Okay. That's fair."
"I will pester you with the bond if you lock me out, and I have a lot more experience being annoying with it than you do."
My lips twitched as I fought to suppress a smile. "That's also fair."
"When you get bloodthirsty, I get to know about it and fix it."
"I'm always bloodthirsty. We can't spend all day every day in bed together."
"I've had the misfortune of staying next door to Nolan and Oren enough times to know how often they're together. Usually, three or four times a day is enough. Luckily for you, I have great stamina."
I bit my lip to hide a grin. "Believe me, I know."
Rhone gestured to the door. "It's all yours."
My lip remained trapped beneath my teeth as I scooted closer. Rhone lifted me onto his lap, and he leaned against the door while I reprogrammed it. I used the current date for it, like I had for my room across the hall.
"Are you still going to take down the security lock?" I asked.
"Already did."
He picked it up off the floor and showed it to me. I hadn't noticed it, but Rhone was pretty distracting.
One of his hands was on my hip. He held the door for me with the other one. It was... well, honestly?
Perfect.