All Chapters of Echoes of Hate: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

DANE.My head was still spinning from the meeting, rage and possessiveness boiling inside me like a storm I could barely contain.Everyone but Aria had left my office. Her presence grounded me and stoked the fire at the same damn time. Sam wanted to chain her. That shadow bitch wanted to own her. Over my dead fucking body. She and Thea were ours, and no one would ever take them from us.Jericho prowled just beneath the surface, demanding I remind her exactly who she belonged to.Possessiveness burned hotter than fire, scalding through my veins, and Aria tilted her head just slightly, watching me. She didn’t flinch from the storm inside me. Nah, she fed it. She let it build, let me teeter on the edge, like she wanted to see how far I’d go before I broke.My gaze drifted down her body at a torturous pace. Her throat pulsed with a quickening heartbeat, the delicate flutter driving my hunger sharp. I dragged my eyes lower, across the swell of her breasts pressing against her top, nipples p

GAMBIT. I was trying to get something done, and my fingers were racing over the keyboard as I searched through all the clutter left on the flash drive, when Adam felt it was the right moment to become a pain in the neck.He bent forward behind my chair, and his mouth almost touched the shell of my ear, and his voice was low and smooth as sin. He was well aware of what he was about.It was a game we loved to play. There were so many ways of torturing each other, before one of us broke. It was a battle of wits, a battle of restraint. But it was always the same outcome. One of us snapping at the other, pulling them into bed, or up against a wall, or across a desk.I wasn’t picky.And neither was he.Adam was patient, though, I’d give him that. He had the uncanny ability to make my pulse skyrocket with a mere look or even a touch of his fingers. By the time he ghosted his hand down my arm, I had to bite back a groan.“Not the time,” I muttered, though the right side of my mouth pulled up

ALPHA JONATHAN.My arms scraped the corner of the desk as I sunk into the chair behind my desk. The paperwork was in piles, all of which needed to be taken care of after this. It was a reminder that not even a council member could get out of the endless paperwork. Business with reports and petitions, and sorting out dates and localities, was not my top favorite thing to do, but I had now learned to endure it, in the six years that I had been on the Werewolf Council. I haven’t forgotten the encounter of tension when I first got here, the size of everyone with their eyes on the subject and judging my value.There were nine of us that made up the Council. A prerequisite was that we had to have led our own pack as either an Alpha or Luna prior to us taking our seat. It was our responsibility to hold packs accountable for following our laws. Ones that were implemented to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. It was on us to govern over our kind.The councilmembers were Alpha Rourke,

DANE. The ticking clock was louder than normal. Was it doing it just to piss me off? This entire office had already been paced a groove into. Door. Window. Door. Desk. It was a loop that kept me here.There was a lot of shit going on right now. The treason within the Werewolf Council, Sam’s mess that was still unresolved, some shadow fucker trying to claim my mate, and the everyday insanity of running the pack. It felt like we owned no personal time of our own. There were days when I didn’t see my mate at all until we crawled into bed. Sometimes, we were too exhausted to do anything more than holding each other.That was the importance of tonight. I was done allowing everything to demand our time. My mate had been running herself ragged. More than anyone else. So, I had decided, or demanded, that she would be taking a break.A proper one.No work, strategy, or training. Tonight belonged to us and only us.The problem? Aria had been ‘kidnapped’ by my Beta and Gamma females hours ago.

ARIA.The picnic had been the most amazing date. The arcade had been a lot of fun and competitive. Then there was also the laughter, the teasing.The candlelit picnic though? It had been something else altogether. There had been raw passion, fierce intimacy that made everything explode in the best possible ways. What remained was how we’d talked, how every word had been peeled away everything away, until only truth remained between us.No walls. No defenses. It was just us in every sense of the word. I had the feeling that I’d seen a side of Dane that I was fairly certain no one else ever had. I couldn’t imagine him being vulnerable like that with anyone else.It was humbling in its honesty. Beautiful in its simplicity. I couldn’t imagine him letting anyone else that far in. Just me. I could feel lit in the way he touched me. The way he looked at me underneath those stars. It caused something to crack open and solidify inside of me. It made me realize that I didn’t just love him, I kne