And now they’re smeared on a sidewalk, my buyer is a grade A creep and traumatized to boot, and Killian Kelly wants to lecture me like I’m a child.
I don’t have any energy left to be angry.
Killian rolls down his window. He keeps glaring at me and glancing away. He’s pissed, and it eats at me. You just can’t totally ignore biology. An angry alpha is an overriding danger. But the whole suckiness of the day muffles the instinct enough that I don’t feel compelled to show my neck and try to smooth things over.
He can stew. Dirty looks can’t hurt me. Much. My belly does ache.
We’re silent for a mile or two, and then he turns on the air conditioner to full blast. “It reeks in here,” he mutters.
I sniff quietly. I don’t smell anything besides old truck, which, granted, does stink. But it’s not that bad.
He drums the steering wheel. His nails really are a mess. As if he bites them. He turns on the radio, flips through the stations without stopping, and then turns it back off.
Finally, he huffs, frustrated, “Can you stop? I’m getting pissed.”
“Stop what?” And he’s already pissed. So am I.
“You smell sad. It’s stinking up the cab. And it’s fucking with my wolf.”
Un-freakin’-believable.
“Yes, Alpha.” I close my eyes and picture the mushrooms smeared on the sidewalk. I picture the girls’ faces when I tell them. I don’t even try to fight the tears. I set them free to flow, but of course, now they won’t.
He growls. “You’re doing it on purpose.”
My lips twitch, and I fight it with all my might. “Yes, Alpha.”
I have to suck in my cheeks to keep from smirking.
“I should pull over and make you walk,” he grumbles.
“Fine by me, Alpha.”
“No male wants a female with a smart mouth.”
“Don’t want you either.” I stare straight ahead. “And you said you liked a female with a mouth on her. Earlier.”
He barks a laugh. “So I did.” His smile is slow to fade. “So I did.”
We fall quiet. He doesn’t speak again until we turn off Rural Route 10 onto pack territory. “I like how you smell now. It’s better.”
He glances over at me and catches my gaze. “Better than better. Good.”
Then, he schools his expression, and he doesn’t say anything else until we pull up in front of his cabin.
“We’re home,” he says when the engine sputters to a stop. “Now do you walk in, or do I carry you?”
9
KILLIAN
She chooses to walk. She won’t let me help her up the stairs. I’m gonna have to get the maintenance crew out here to make a ramp.
She’s been hopping up and down stairs this whole time. In the rain. In the dark. One wrong step, and she could fall and break her neck. Her wolf’s not saving her. Not with how tortuously slow she shifts. It’s like watching a baby chick fight its way out of an egg every time.
And there are stairs to every single cabin in camp. And the lodge. The commissary. Shit. Maintenance crew is gonna have to build a lot of ramps. How did so much escape me all this time?
Truth be told, I’ve got the sinking feeling that I’ve missed a hell of a lot. Like how our lone females have been running a side hustle in the human town for an entire decade. And it did not escape my notice which truck she was drivin’。 It’s the one I learned on. There’s a trick to getting the engine to turn over the first time.
Liam and I have a date. I’m gonna hang his pelt from the flagpole in front of the lodge.
Later.
Right now, my mate is finally in my den. The rightness settles in my bones, and the bond pulses. It’s growing stronger by the hour. It’s more than a vague sensation now. It has a physicality, a location. The end anchored in my chest throbs with life, and then it dwindles into a cold nothing except for the slightest thread drifting toward her in the dark space between us.
I scrub my pecs. I’ll fix this. My mate is here. That’s all that matters.
She’s almost across the threshold when she stops mid-step and sniffs. Her face screws up like she’s sucking lemons.
“What?” I don’t smell anything unusual.
“Nothing.”
She’s trying to cover her tits and her pussy again. She can hide those dark curls, but she’s got too much up top. Her breasts spill from her arm, sweet and ripe. My cock swells to full length yet again. I try to keep my eyes above her neck. I don’t need to antagonize her any more than I already do with my mere existence.