Page 8 of Cruel Mate

“Do you really think you could keep up with us?” Eddie asked Layla as Zander drew nearer.

“Do you think I couldn’t?” Layla asked, and Zander saw the spark in her gaze. It was the same one she’d had in the woods with him, only this time it was playful and not at all threatening.

“I, for one, would like to see you try,” Will said. “I’ve never known a woman to drink us under the table.”

He held out an open beer bottle to Layla. With the cockiest of grins, she snatched it from his hand and proceeded to chug it.

She coughed a little as she finished and wiped a dribble from her chin before taking the beer that Eddie was holding out for her.

“Go easy there, doll,” Kane advised, reaching an arm around her to steady her when she threw back her head so hard to chug the second bottle that she almost tipped right off the back of the bench.

Just seeing Kane’s arm wrapped around her made Zander’s blood boil. Was she trying to start a fight?

“Jeez, woman, do you have a gag reflex?” Will gasped, and Zander’s stomach churned. He knew what all his friends were thinking. They would all like to be the one to find out first.

But not if he had anything to say about it. Zander fought the urge to grab her wrist and yank her right out of his circle of friends.

Before he could do so, Jason, one of the humans who had settled into the group, said, “You’ll make one man very happy one day, girl.”

That was it. Zander couldn’t stand the way they were all gawking at her anymore. She deserved more respect than that, and the fact she was encouraging their attention only infuriated him more. Didn’t she have any self-respect at all?

He took a step forward, his foot crunching on some loose gravel within the grass, but Layla was the only one who seemed to notice his presence. The others were all too intent on her.

And when her gaze met his, her eyes went from twinkling to dark. The wry smile dropped from her lips, and she scowled so deeply at him that it hurt his soul.

By the wolf gods, he wanted to show her a thing or two.

“Sorry guys,” she said in an all-too-sweet voice, turning a charming half-smile on the rest of his crew. “Looks like the party pooper has just arrived.”

She looked him dead in the eye as she rose to her feet, her body moving in such a way he couldn’t help but admire it, and said, “I had better go and see if the other women need some help before our stick-in-the-mud beta gives me what for again.”

Zander bit his lip. He wasn’t about to rise to the bait and cause a scene.

Instead, he silently watched her go, slipping around the circle as if she wanted every one of them to get a good whiff of her scent before she went. And the way all of their gazes followed her, he knew it had worked.

“If you will excuse me, too,” Jason said, hopping to his feet, “I think I’ll give her a hand.”

He hadn’t even joined her at the refreshments table before another human beat him to it. The two men were practically drooling all over her, just like his friends had been. It was sickening.

Fighting every instinct, he dropped down onto the log where she had been, nowhere near Kane’s knee, and growled low in his throat when her scent enveloped him.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Kane asked, angling his head around to look at him out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m tired,” Zander shrugged. Kane didn’t look convinced, but he just lifted his own shoulders and turned back to Will and Eddie.

“What were we talking about before that hot piece of ass interrupted?” he asked, taking a swig of the beer he had been about to hand to Layla before Zander had interrupted.

Zander didn’t even hear the other guys' response. He could barely hear anything at all save for the music blasting from the speaker system as he tried his hardest to zero in on the conversation being had at the refreshments table.

It was next to impossible to hear anything over his friends talking and the music.

He was just considering making an excuse to grab himself something to eat when Will landed beside him, opposite Kane, and jammed his elbow into his ribs. “What’s with you?”

“What? Nothing!” Zander replied a little too quickly. He struggled to clear his throat and shook his head, trying to clear that, too.

“She’s got her hooks in you, doesn’t she?” Will asked, following Zander’s gaze.

“What? No, what do you mean?”

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