Chapter 2

REID POV

“Good morning, Imogen,” Sebastian says, but his gray eyes are looking at me.

And he definitely emphasized the word “morning.”

“Morning!” Imogen chirps, chipper as fuck.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks, this time emphasizing the word “sleep.”

I glare at him, my jaw set. This mother fucker. Goading me. Poking at me. Gloating.

“Fantastic, actually,” Imogen tells him, oblivious to the stare down happening between Seb and me. “Oh! Do you know what brand of mattress you use?” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the bed. “I asked Reid, but he’s clueless.”

“I do not know,” Sebastian says, sipping his coffee.

“Oh, that’s fine,” she says, waving him off and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll just ask Haven. See you later!”

With that, she prances away, leaving me to face my worst nightmare by myself.

“Sleepover, huh?” Sebastian says, taking another sip of his coffee.

My fists clench to stop myself from smacking that steaming hot mug of coffee into his stupid, smug face. He just watches me over the rim, his eyes flicking to the muscle twitching in my jaw and the vein pulsing in my forehead.

I don’t give him the satisfaction of a response, though. I just walk away, heading down the hall to the back door of the packhouse.

“Where are you going?” Sebastian asks, his footsteps echoing mine as he follows me.

“Gym,” I grunt. “I want to get a workout in before we lead training later,” I tell him.

“I’ll join you,” he says, gulping down the rest of his coffee and dropping the mug off in the kitchen on our way through the house.

I grit my teeth and hold in a groan. That’s the last thing I want. The last thing I need. Especially when he’s the reason I need to work out some aggression in the first place.

I was hoping to imagine his face was the punching bag. I suppose his actual face is a much better alternative. But if he’s there, that means listening to his taunts for most of the morning. Or he may choose to go the silent route, baiting me to bring it up on my own.

He sticks his hands in his sweatpants pockets as we cross the lawn dusted with snow, his face turning towards the rays of the bright sun. The sun will melt the little dusting of snow we had last night before lunchtime, but it’s only a matter of time before it sticks, and we have a winter wonderland. Which is what Haven is hoping to have for the wedding in just a few weeks.

Seb breathes out, making little cloudy puffs of condensation in the air, and I make a face. He’s either oblivious to the tension building inside me, or he’s intentionally using his lack of words to get a rise out of me and put me on edge.

Who am I kidding? It’s definitely the latter. It’s what Seb does.

He just knows. He knows what makes others tick and knows how to get people to do what he wants. It’s how he lured me into all these stupid bets over the years, before I finally learned that betting against him on anything was the worst idea ever. It’s how he knew that the only way Haven would give Wes a chance was if she saw how important she always was to him, as opposed to being told.

And right now, he’s trying to get me to acknowledge my failing, my shortcoming, trying to get me to admit that I, once again, lost the bet. He’ll just be all silent and smirky and smug, never saying “I told you so” but thinking it just beneath the gleam in his eyes.

Well, two can play that game. If he’s not going to bring it up, then I won’t either. He thinks his silence will annoy me, will make me blurt it out and fess up and probably even beg him to let me off the hook. But I won’t let it get to me. I’ll just ignore him and his dumb face and his superiority. I’ll just use it as the fuel for my workout. I’ll make him be the one to talk instead of the other way around.

We reach the gym and change in silence, neither of us breaking. I know he’s waiting for it. Waiting for me to give in to the pressure he’s putting on me. His keen eyes watch me when he thinks I won’t notice. I yank the laces on my shoes a bit harder than normal, and Sebastian’s lip twitches, but I just continue on my merry way over to the indoor track.

Throughout our stretches, he watches me, still not saying a word. I clench my teeth and I’m sure my vein in my forehead is still pulsing, probably as large as a branch from the redwoods surrounding the pack, but I hold out.

I’m tempted to just start my run, but the importance of stretching before a workout is too ingrained in me, too much a part of my workout routine for me to just skip it. We may be werewolves and we may have advanced healing, but that doesn’t mean we’re immune to illness and injury. Just like our extended lifespan doesn’t mean we are immortal. We can still die. We can still be killed.

It was a reality I knew all too well.

“Run or spar first?” Seb asks once our warmup is complete, breaking the silence between us.

I stand there, hands on my hips and eyes pointed at the turf on the floor of the gym, waffling between the two. Do I want to pound his face first, or kick his ass in a race around the track first?

Both sound equally appealing, and both would bring me satisfaction, especially with the knowledge of what is coming. But if we race and then spar, I’ll get the extra enjoyment of ending my workout with a sparring pin, which at the moment sounds much more exciting than ending the workout with a racing win.

“Run first,” I grumble, and his lips twitch again, making that vein in my forehead pulse again. “Last one to finish five miles buys lunch,” I say, taking off before he can respond or get ready.

Too late, I realize my mistake. Too late, I realize I shouldn’t have uttered those words. But it seems I never learn. That, or I am a glutton for punishment.

Sebastian catches up to me with ease, not even breaking a sweat, using a speed I haven’t seen him use in almost 15 years. The speed he used that day he raced Alpha Wesley before Wesley shifted into his lycan almost six months before he should have.

“Goddess, damn it,” I grumble, picking up my pace to keep up with him.

How did I forget that Seb is a master deceiver? That he puts out the barest amount of effort needed for every workout or training or sparring match, but that in truth he is much stronger and more powerful than he lets on?

I’ll tell you how. Because I am too fucking cocky at times, that’s how.

I try my best to stay with him, but after the third mile, I have to tap out and slow my pace. I’m fuming by the time I finish mile five and join Seb at the water station. It’s my own damn fault, but that doesn’t make me any less mad. It probably makes me more mad.

I chug my water, then crush the cup in my fist, enjoying the sound of the crunching paper and the way it feels in my hand as it collapses. My face drips with sweat, a river of it running off the tip of my nose, but Sebastian is fresh as a mother fucking daisy, his forehead barely glistening with moisture.

“Still want to spar?” Sebastian chuckles as he sips his water, his eyes flicking down to the crushed cup in my hand.

No.

“Yes,” I grit out between my teeth as I move to wrap my hands before we spar.

Like I said, we heal quickly, but I prefer to not have bloody knuckles all the time.

I know I won’t win. But I am sure I can get some good hits in, so I can get at least some satisfaction from the feel of my fist meeting his face. Especially since he’s still giving me those smug looks, still obviously waiting for me to cave and bring up the bet.

But I won’t. I won’t give in. I won’t give him that satisfaction, give him something else to hold over me. His head doesn’t need to get any bigger than it already is. He’s too damn sure of himself in everything he does. Someone needs to knock him down a peg or two.

I wish it could be me.

I shake out my muscles and roll my neck, stalking over to the sparring ring with Seb hot on my feet. I duck under the ropes and he hops over, stretching his arms across his chest and behind his back. I pull my shirt over my head and toss it aside. It’s soaked with sweat from my run and will be more of a hindrance while we’re sparring, sticking to my skin and making it easier for Seb to grab me.

Seb crouches down into a starting position and I launch myself at him, not even waiting for an acknowledgement that he was ready. I needed to get my hits on him in and let the frustration and annoyance out before he had a chance to take me down.

Of course, once again, I overestimate myself and underestimate Sebastian.

I get one hit in, square on his jaw. But then he gets the upper hand on me, putting me in a chokehold in seconds and taking me to the mat. I squirm and fidget and fight against him, but there is no point. He has me pinned.

I swear there is smoke coming out of my ears as I tap the mat and he releases me. I hop up to my feet and shake the loss off.

“You’re a little slow today,” Seb comments.

“I’m still warming up,” I retort, and then I pounce for him again.

“Maybe you should put in extra hours at the gym instead of trying to get laid so much.”

“Maybe you should try to get laid instead of making ridiculous bets with everyone all the time,” I shoot back.

His jaw ticks and he frowns, and I take my shot, shouldering him in the gut and taking him down to the floor. It was a cheap move, but recently the mention of his self-imposed virginity pledge seems to bother him more than it used to. He doesn’t try to get out of my hold, he just taps the mat, surrendering right away.

We both jump to our feet again and square off for our third round. This time, he doesn’t even let me get the jump. He just goes straight for the knockout. His fists meet my body in precise strikes, hitting specific spots on my body that he knows will weaken me. I have no time to react or defend myself because he’s too damn fast, and in a blink, I’m on the mat again, pinned in another chokehold.

“Fuck it, you win!” I gasp, and he releases me.

I stay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, panting and cursing to myself in my head.

“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Sebastian coos, squatting next to me and patting my cheek.

I swat his hand away and turn onto my side, rolling my eyes.

“Now, if I recall correctly, the bet was if you broke one of your ‘rules’, then I got to set you up on a date. An actual date, where you take her to dinner and talk to her and get to know her. A date with no sex at the end of it.”

“Hmph,” I grunt, sitting up and resting my elbows on my knees, avoiding his eyes.

“Is that correct or not?” he pushes.

“It’s correct,” I grit out through clenched teeth.

“Great!” he exclaims, and jogs over to our phones. “Here,” he says as he comes back, messing around on mine and tossing it to me before going back to the water station.

I snatch it out of the air and find the date-to-mate app already opened. The account name is “CookieMonsterBeta,” and the entire profile is already filled out with likes and dislikes and anything else the website asks for when you signup.

“The fuck is this?” I ask, turning the screen to him.

“Your profile,” he replies, cool as a cucumber, just sipping water from his cup as I stare at him from the floor.

“You made it for me?” I gape.

“What’s the matter? Did I answer the questions wrong?”

“No, they’re all fucking correct!”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“They’re all correct!” I repeat, and he just laughs at me. “Am I really that much of an open book? And come on, did you have to include that Rapunzel is my favorite Disney princess?”

“Girls love that shit.” He shrugs. “You already have several matches, but I think TearinItUp is the one.”

I tap on the profile he mentions as he walks into the locker room. I don’t even bother to look at any of it, instead just typing out a message to ask her on a date.

“I’m so going to regret this,” I sigh, closing my eyes and hitting send before I can change my mind.