chapter 42

One foot in front of the other.

Just walk away, Talis. If you do what you’re thinking, he’ll kill you. No. He won’t have to. He won’t even need to lift a finger. The rest of the pack will make sure you’re dead before your body hits the ground. So, keep going.

You’re nearly there. All you have to do is

“Grab one for Luka as well. He’s about to run dry,” Dayne calls out from behind me.

I stop.

It’s one thing getting him food or beer or whatever the fuck it is he wants. But now I’m the pack’s fucking waitress too? No. Just no.

I close my eyes.

Breathe, Talis, just breathe.

Air is forced in and out of my lungs. An action that should come easily takes conscious effort. More than it’s ever involved before. But it’s working. My tightly coiled muscles begin to relax, and the tension in my shoulders ease.

“And some coleslaw. Homemade. With my sandwich.” That’s it.

I spin around with a snarl on my lips. I’m already reaching for my top to yank it off because I’m going wolf and ripping his throat out. A bottle to the face won’t suffice.

But they’re all staring at me. The pack, that is. Watching and waiting for… something.

Freezing under those stares, the rage bubbling up inside me just… fizzles out because for a beat I’m transported to my old pack, where my uncle is calling the rest of the wolves over to demonstrate what happens when they don’t fall in line. I’m lying on the ground with my uncle’s boot=fr on my neck, gasping for breath, and no matter how hard I struggle, how hard I fight, I can’t get up.

All because I dared to argue back.

So I lie there, surrounded by my pack, who smirks down at me, unable to see my uncle because his foot won’t let me. And I can’t close my eyes because that’s a form of escape, and escaping is a foolish hope that’s long been beaten out of me.

Snapping back to the present, something else rises to replace my anger. I try not to think about that, but I don’t have to. Not when it’s starting to swallow me whole, just like always.

My eyes are on Dayne now. Never taking his sight off of me, he shoves his beer to Luka and slowly rises to his feet. His face is granite hard. Expressionless. But he’s pissed. More than pissed. It’s reflected in the flashes of enraged wolf in his ice-blue eyes.

He takes a step toward me.

“Talis?” His voice is a low rumble of sound, more wolf than man.

I make an incoherent garble in the back of my throat. Almost like a whimper, but not quite. At the noise, he comes to a sudden stop as if he’s run into something.

When I dare to peek into his eyes, it’s his wolf looking back at me. His silvered gaze glitter with rage.

The rising panic I’ve been trying to choke down surges up. Overwhelms me.

Screw the sandwich. Screw everything. I bolt for the trees.

I run with everything I am. I hold nothing back.

Tearing through the woods, my steps are surefooted. I dodge every branch, weave, and dip and charge so fast, I don’t even feel the air on my face.

The only thing I hear is my heart beating. Pounding in time to my steps.

Right up until the moment I realize it’s not my heart at all, but footsteps behind me.

Dayne.

There’s no doubt in my mind it’s him, something my nose is all too eager to confirm. But I don’t slow or stop. I’m close to the lake now.

All I have to do is get past it, and then I’ll be in thicker woods which will slow Dayne down since he’s so much bigger than me.

Then I can escape. Leave.

On the heels of my thoughts, my feet are leaving the ground.

Dayne’s arms are tight around me, so tight I know I can never break free of his unbreakable grip. That doesn’t stop me from struggling, from fighting him.

He’s lifting me higher as I scream and kick and try to wrestle free.

My hair is whipping into my eyes, blinding me, into my mouth, silencing me.

Then I’m in the air, free, but I can’t run, not when I’m falling. Not when I’m suddenly choking.

Dayne just fucking threw me in the lake.

Fighting my way up, I break the surface as my soaked jeans work to drag me back down again.

He’s standing with his arms folded over his chest, impatience stamped across his face like I’ve been forcing him to wait for fucking hours when his dumping me in the water and my rising couldn’t have taken over thirty seconds.

I open my mouth, then stop, closing it again when I realize I don’t know what I want to say.

Whether it was his intention or not, his tossing me in the lake has succeeded in chasing away my terror.

So, we stand there, him and I staring at each other. Him on dry land. Me soaking wet in the lake.

“What did you think I was going to do?”

His quiet question surprises me, and I frown at him in confusion as I raise my hand

to smooth strands of wet hair from my face. Then I understand what he means.

“Stand on the back of my neck.” I’m amazed at the way it slips out. Like it’s no big deal. Like it didn’t nearly break me to fucking pieces whenever my uncle did it to me.

I wait for the denial, the accusations I’m a liar, surprise. Any kind of response except the one I get.

Nothing.

Dayne’s eyes are as blank, as unreadable as stone without the faintest hairline crack in it. This is the expression_oper expression I hate the most about him. It’s so impenetrable, I know I will never be able to break the surface and learn what kind of man he is. If there is more to learn about him, that is.

But I have my doubts about there being any more to him than what he shows me. His being the cold-blooded alpha the biggest clue that what I see is what I get.

His expression reminds me that even though we’re supposed to be mates, he’s as much of a stranger to me as someone I might sit next to on the bus.

Scratch that. I’m likely to get more out of the random guy on the bus.

“Your uncle?” His voice is gravelly like he’s got something in this throat.

“My uncle.”

His lack of response is starting to scare me since it puts me in mind of the quiet before the storm, and back in the Merrick pack, there were plenty of storms.

The quieter my uncle was, the more I had to be worried, because it was the biggest sign he was working himself up to something particularly nasty.

But instead of scurrying for cover or making myself the smallest target as I normally would, I stand taller, forming tight fists, glaring at Dayne. The nails of my fingers dig so hard into my palms they hurt.

“I will fucking kill you if you ever try,” I snarl.

I suddenly notice the silence, a sharp awareness in the direction I just ran from. I half glance that way, mentally counting down how long I ran, how far.

Can the pack hear me from there?

Fuck. They probably can.

“As you should,” Dayne says as his eyes flare bright-hot, nodding approvingly. Then he holds his hand out to me. “Come here.”

I drop my gaze to his hand, and I take a step back. “No.”

“Talis,” he growls low in his throat. “Come the fuck here. I won’t tell you again.”

Something in his voice, in his eyes, tells me he’s being more serious with me now than he ever has before.

I come.

And he gets to work stripping me. Waiting until he’s a few buttons down on my blouse and hopefully a little less angry, I clear my throat before speaking. “Uh, Dayne. What are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer.

After stripping my blouse off me and tossing it to the ground, he grabs the hem of his t-shirt and tugs it over his head before he meets my eyes. “What does it look like?”

My eyes widen in burgeoning realization.

Uh. Okay.

But I don’t stop him. I don’t do anything except let myself be distracted by all that rippling hard muscle on show since he doesn’t appear to be in a talking mood.

Once he has both of us naked and on the ground, I remember something important. At least to me. “Um, the pack. They can probably hear us from here, right?”

He covers me with his body, and my nipples bead at first contact with his chest. Seemingly distracted by my neck, Dayne lowers his mouth to my mate bite and gives it a firm lick. My gut clenches and liquid pools at how sensitive the bite has become.

“Probably,” he mutters.

My hands come up to his chest. Not quite pushing him away. “Maybe we could find somewhere they might not hear us?” I suggest.

Lifting his head, he gazes into my eyes. “No.”

Then he’s back to licking at my neck and shoves a muscled thigh in between my legs. Opening me up to him. Exposing me. Cool air kisses the sensitive skin of my inner thighs and I suck in a breath. “No?”

When he bites down, I arch my back instinctively. But this is only the beginning. He makes it his mission, his goal to make me scream loud enough I’m sure people in town can hear me.

And I love every single second of it.