My fingers twitch. I quickly cross my arms, tucking my hands tight against my chest.
“We’re not mates,” he spits, finally breaking the silence. It sounds like an accusation.
It cuts, but no worse than a splinter or a bee sting.
“I know,” I say.
His jaw tenses into a sharp line. His expression is now beyond forbidding—it’s menacing. “This is the second time you’ve been the cause of disruption in the pack.”
How’s that?
I don’t actually reply. Pack protocol is so ingrained.
“I could have killed Gael.”
He’s putting that on me? No way.
He’s gearing himself up for something, pacing short steps, left and right, glowering at me in contempt.
Shit. Is he going to exile me?
“I will not tolerate this, this—disorder. You cannot—”
I panic. “Bullshit.” It flies from my lips.
He freezes mid-step, eyebrows slowly raising. I interrupted him. Oh, crap. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
I hug my arms tighter. “You can’t blame me because you can’t control your wolf.”
“I can’t control my wolf?”
“Or your males.” If I’m getting exiled, I’m laying it all out. “Lochlan tripped me on purpose. Are you okay with that? ‘Cause I remember having to sit through a bunch of lectures about how only pussies hit females and pups.”
It was early on, when Killian had just secured alpha rank, fending off three challenges in a row, including Eamon. Declan Kelly had passed a few months earlier. The power vacuum had made bad wolves worse, and all the males were posturing and jockeying for status. A lot of females and young were taking beatings from mates asserting dominance.
Killian was nineteen or twenty, and not anywhere near as articulate as he’s become, and he mostly grunts and curses now. Someone would slip back to the old ways, and he’d call everyone out to the grassy lawn in the middle of the commons, and spend an hour or two ripping the pack up for being a bunch of “limp dick bitches who can’t fight someone their own size.”
Then, he’d tell the females to go home and get back to work, and run the males along the pack land perimeter until they were too exhausted to mess with anyone.
At the time, I thought maybe things would change. Killian would be a new type of alpha. He stopped the beatings and got the males focused on the circuit, but that was it. Females still had to stay home and ask a male for anything they wanted. I was disappointed, but I was younger then, too. Na?ve. I thought a wolf could rise above his nature.
Eamon’s right about one thing. In a pack, at the end of the day, strength rules.
I’m so lost in my head, that it takes a second for me to realize that Killian has closed the space between us. The scent of blood and fury fill my nose.
Instinctive fear saps my strength. I let the wall hold me up, and I fight the terror. I don’t want to be afraid. I’m mad. Pissed, actually. I’m not the one in the wrong this time.
Killian’s lips peel back. His fangs have descended, but he shows no other signs of becoming the wolf. Flip-shifter weirdness.
“I control my males,” he hisses, threat lacing each word.
I need to shut up. Nod. Make this be over. But now my mouth has its own mind, too. “Was it your idea for them to trip the female with the bad leg, then?”
He snarls. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Gael dealt with it. You were busy with your dinner and a show.” I know when you’re in a hole, you’re supposed to stop digging, but I can’t stop myself from adding, “Playing Haisley Byrne’s chair.”
He slams a palm into the wall beside my head. There’s no give. The lodge is made of solid pine logs. Still, I’m thrown, but not by the display of aggression. From the heat emanating off his body and his breath on my cheek.
He smells even more like toffee. Hot toffee. Drizzling, thick, delicious toffee.
“Be careful, female. I don’t think that little wolf of yours can back up that big mouth.”
He sneers. My “little wolf” perks up. Her ears prick, and she has prancing feet. Whatever this is, she’s here for it.
I don’t know what possesses me. I swear I don’t have a death wish. Maybe Abertha took my filter when she yanked out the mate bond.
“I don’t need my little wolf,” I say. “I have your big one.”
He growls.
“Your wolf likes me.” I lick my dry lips, and plunge ahead, right over the cliff. “He saw someone touch me, and he did something about it. You’re mad because you were asleep at the wheel, and he went after the wrong guy. I own going after Haisley the other night. That was on me. But this was you.”