Chapter 5: How To Go Viral For All The Wrong Reasons

RAE

I grabbed the large hem of my wedding dress and ran off the altar.

My father stopped me on the aisle, forcing me to be still. 

“No!” I struggled.

If anyone had the slightest idea of my situation, they’d offer to send me to another planet.

Suddenly, I sidestepped him and yanked out of his grip, but my foot held down on one end of my wedding dress. I slipped backwards, crashing into a table and a pile of something cool and soft.

The crowd gasped.

I was covered in my wedding cake. 

Silence stretched thin around me. My radar of wrong choices overflowed. I was in the same space as my fiancé and the man—son—kid—that I cheated on him with. At this rate, I could sell a crash course in romance and make a fortune.

“Are you alright?” I heard Mandy’s voice as people from the crowd helped me stand.

Multiple cameras clicked. My cousin Tallulah already had her phone out, streaming my epic fall live. I felt a heavy, familiar stare on me and I shouldn’t have turned.

Malachar held my gaze until I lost track of time and everything else but him. 

I’d thought the chances of meeting him again was zero to none, that I could outrun my mistake. But this was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to me.

“Rachel—“

I sprinted down the aisle, sucking in a deep breath as my bare arm brushed his on my way, but I never looked back. 

After that, I locked myself up in my suite, panting hard while my back pressed against the hard wood. 

I yanked down the straps of my wedding dress, desperate to get back into my running clothes and disappear before they decided to break down my door.

A shadow cast over my window and someone jumped in. I backed away, one hand holding my dress up over my breasts. 

“Who’s there?”

The figure moved like a flash. “I’ll call security—“ I whirled around in alarm.

And Malachar’s chiseled face stood an inch from mine. I backed up until there was no room between me and the wall. But he crushed the gap between us immediately. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said in a voice that made my stomach flutter.

I was half naked, at the verge of crumbling just like that night in Storm Creek, but this time around, he wasn’t here to pick up the pieces—not that I would ever allow that to happen again.

“There’s a door. You should have knocked.”

“Are we really about to avoid the obvious? Is that how this is going to be?” The crease between his brows deepened and his jawline flexed as he towered over me, ripped in every sense of the word, looking hotter than I remembered in this sinful black suit.

I looked away, nerves eating me up, but then I realized I was the victim here. He played me for a fool and had the guts to over complicate my life now. 

“Why are you in my suite?” I snapped at him after a minute. 

Instead of an answer, Malachar gave me a heated once-over. “Damn, Rae, I pictured many things… not this.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt your lack of imagination because I’m sure all you wanted was a good fuck with an older woman so you could brag about—“

He laughed. And I blinked rapidly. 

He wasn’t even going to deny that he knew I was older, yet still went after me? Had I looked so desperate for attention?

“It was a good fuck.” His arrogant smirk had my stomach in a twist.

“Get out of my suite.” 

I tried to move, but he kept standing there, hands slipping into his pockets. “You can’t marry him,” he told me.

“Why? Because I fucked his son by mistake?” It felt like I had dropped a literal bomb from my mouth, but I couldn’t take the words back. 

They were true, and avoiding it like I’d done these past few weeks won’t make it any less. 

Malachar bent his head, smiling. He had this dominant aura that could confuse even the blind, yet I wouldn’t let him treat me like I was the kid between us here. 

“I recall you being very aware that night—“

“Yes, aware of my mistake. Same thing.”

“Rachel,” he suddenly said my name, his tone grave. “The Alpha of the Trydon pack can’t be trusted. He’s going to harm you, but if you back out now, you’ll be safe.”

Malachar stepped closer, and my back pressed against the wall once more. I could hardly breathe, yet there were windows everywhere, lots of breeze. He just made me nervous for no reason. 

But what had he meant by “safe”? Jason Kane didn’t seem like a bad person. All his businesses were legal and he was adored by almost everyone in the city. Though all I knew about him was surface level information. And this prickling fact that he had a son no one alive seemed to know about. 

“He’s my mate, he can’t harm me.”

Malachar’s expression hardened, as if hearing the word ‘mate’ annoyed him. 

“So what?” He ground out. “You think he’s in love with you?”

I deflated instantly. 

That word again. He didn’t even know me that well. We had spoken a lot that night at the lodge, but I purposely didn’t share anything about my family and my sad past with him. 

So why would he say such a cruel thing to me now? Could he and Jason have talked about me already?

“My relationship with your father is none of your business.” I finally walked past him, grabbing a towel and rubbing residues of cake out of my hair to distract myself from overthinking.

He came up behind me, so close that the fabric of his clothes brushed mine. 

“You’re right. I couldn’t give two fucks about that,” Malachar growled in my ear, and I unconsciously let the towel drop. “But we can leave quietly now or I will go down there and tell him how you like to be fucked raw and hard.”