Page 16 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

She was naked standing there, she now fully realized. She gasped again and dove under the sheets, sliding back over to her side of the bed. She drew the white cotton up over her breasts. Agnar had a pair of black boxers on. Most of his powerful body was on display. Even bowed over, his fist resting against the wall, agony painted in every inch of him, he was still deadly and powerful.

“Stay here,” he commanded. He marched to the door. “Lock it after me.”

“Where are you going?” Her cry was raspy and wounded. She ground her eyes shut. “It was an accident. Please don’t leave. Don’t go somewhere and hurt yourself.”

“I’m going somewhere else to protect you,” the growl was pure raw animal.

“I don’t want you to leave. Please. Stay.”

She shouldn’t have even thought she could sway him. He wasn’t there to give her comfort. Did he even know how to do that? He’d pushed out any tenderness in him because he saw it as a liability and a weakness. He didn’t see that staying and talking to her, touching her face, even giving her something as simple as a hug would have healed her and protected her far more expediently and effectively than his opening the door and closing it hard behind him.

She rushed to it, pressing herself against the cold, solid surface. She wasn’t going to lock him out.

“In the morning, you’re leaving.” Agnar’s gruff tone raised the hair on her arms. “It’s the only way to keep you safe from this place, from my pack. From me.”

“No. Agnar, please.”

Before she could fling the door open and do something he’d hate, like beg him, she heard his footsteps as he thundered away. She listened and a door closed hard down the hall. His study? Wherever he’d gone, she wasn’t going to get in. Not in this form and not as her wolf. She couldn’t break down that door and she couldn’t tear down the stones and iron bars of the cage that Agnar had built himself into.

He was her mate, and the irrational desire was there to bloody her hands, rip them ragged trying. She would have, if she’d had something visible to work with. They weren’t tangible and she didn’t have time.

It wasn’t until she was back under the sheets, lying on Agnar’s side, inhaling his lingering scent, that her heartbeat calmed, and the adrenaline faded enough for her to organize her tattered thoughts into one clear stream.

The only way out of a cage of wrath and hate, of anger, hurt, blood, torture, and numbness was kindness.

Maybe the kindest thing she could do for her mate was to go back to her family with his sons and love them and keep them safe until the tempest inside his soul calmed and he came back for them.

Chapter 8

Prairie Rose

“Do you want me to kill him for you?” Briar May might have been the gentle, peaceful younger sister, but she could be fierce when it came to her family.

She shifted Sadie in her arms. Prairie Rose’s new niece was as beautiful as her mom and far more spirited. She’d obviously inherited her dad’s warrior soul. She wasn’t an easy child in the least. She’d been more than twenty-four long, painful hours in coming, and come she had, screaming and wild into the world.

“Because I will. And by kill, I do just mean rip off his balls and feed them to the birds all while giving him a piece of my mind. It’s one thing to send you away for your own safety. It’s another for him to ignore your texts, your calls, and any attempts you’ve made to reach out. For a whole month.”

Technically, it had been thirty-four days. Thirty-four agonizing days.

“You’ve turned into quite a warrior as well. Castor’s clearly rubbing off on you.” Prairie Rose forced a smile she didn’t feel for her sister’s sake.

Castor was out splitting logs with her brothers and some of the other men from the pack. Briar May invited her over often during the day. She knew Prairie Rose better than she knew herself. She could tell when she was hurting, when the hours the boys were in their little community school grew far too long, when the worry and the pain felt like it was going to rip her apart at the seams.

Briar May grinned at the warrior bit, which she took as a compliment. “Castor knows Agnar well. I could—”

“No. It’s okay. I don’t want him to try to talk to him. Don’t make this his burden.”

“We already feel it’s our burden. All of us. We love you and you’re clearly unhappy.” She reached past their half-empty cups of tea towards her hand. Prairie Rose forced herself to keep it on the table and not jerk it away, just like she forced herself to stay seated and not fling herself up from the table and start pacing her sister’s small kitchen.

She hadn’t allowed herself to cry when she was packed up into that black SUV and sent away with the boys. They’d remained stoic when Agnar spoke to them early that morning.

“I won’t have you share my fate. You are warriors and I need you to be strong. I’m not sending you away because you’ve done anything wrong. You’re the best sons a man could ask for. I need you to go with Prairie Rose. You need to protect her now. Watch over her. Be strong for me until the time when I can bring you back to stay.”

Neither boy spoke a single word on the long ride across the country. She hadn’t pressed them. She had no idea what she could possibly say that would make anything okay for them. If they were afraid, they didn’t show it. They were boys with the hearts and souls of old men who had seen too much life and death already and she was sure it had done some kind of damage to them. Maybe damage was the wrong word, but it had altered them irrevocably.

When they’d arrived and she’d shown them into her old cabin, which had a fire lit and was cleaned and well cared for by her family as they promised they’d do, she’d shown them to the one room that she had extra. The place was small and not at all what they were used to, but when she’d asked them if they were going to be okay, they both told her yes and thank you.

“I’m not unhappy,” she tried to say, but Briar May shook her head. She brought Sadie to her shoulder and patted her little back while the baby made angry snuffling noises. She was always on the verge of breaking into a screaming spell, even when she was being held. Good luck putting her down at any time. Prairie Rose wasn’t sure how her sister and Castor even slept.

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