Page 78 of The Wolf in My Tavern

“I don’t know how to share you, Ada,” I say bluntly, fearing this is where she is headed. “I don’t know if he will even let me.”

Only the little voice inside my head tells me that is why I am here, chained up in this fucking room, forced to watch him rut her. He is a bastard. But his tenderness earlier says he cares for Ada in his twisted, bastard, wolf way.

Her hand against my cheek arrests all my attention and produces instant calm. Only now do I realize my chest was heaving.

“I will tell him to let you go,” she says, her lips quivering. “To unchain you. I will tell him I was yours first. That he must let me go, too.”

I know this is not what she wants. The selfish part of me wants to take her away, supposing Gray would let her go, to forget all this happened and go back to that innocent time when there was just us.

Yet that time has passed.

I understand that I am young, and she is young, too. But also that neither time nor maturity might help us to navigate this.

He has claimed her.

“He has put his mark upon you, Ada. He has bitten you. Rutted you in the way of wolves,” I say, still drawn to believing he has ensnared her mind somehow, for that is the only plausible explanation. My lips tremble. I should take her away. Maybe the spell will break if I do… Or maybe it will hurt her in unrecoverable ways. “You are his as much as you are mine now. From this, we cannot go back.”

Her mouth opens like she might offer a protest.

Before she can speak, the door bursts open, and Gray strides in, still buck naked.

I expect her to fling herself away from me. She doesn’t. She clings tighter and issues the strangest, cutest little savage growl. “You will not hurt him,” she says, keeping a possessive hold on me.

My chest puffs up a little. Gray’s lips twitch as he closes the door and then turns to lean against it with his arms folded.

“I do not choose to hurt the lad. He is merely a whelp and needs to be put in his place. If he taunts me, as he has frequently, I cannot account for that… Now, he is fucking filthy. And probably hungry, too. The deckhands will take him out and not land a single blow… so long as he behaves.”

Sermon delivered, he strides forward and plucks her from me.

The door opens, and deckhands enter with a tray bearing food and drinks. Two more enter, carrying clubs, and drag me outside.

I don’t want to fucking go. I put up a fight and get a thumping for it. By the time they have wrestled me outside, I’m beaten black and blue, and I can hear Ada sobbing.

Fuck!

The fight leaves me, and the deckhands secure me to the mast.

“You could have handled that better.”

I turn toward the voice to find Drake leaning casually against the ship’s rail, watching the show.

“You’re upsetting the lass for no reason.”

“Me? Uff!” A bucket of water is tossed over me, dousing my temper. Goosebumps erupt across the surface of my skin. Gods, that was cold.

“Aye,” Drake says as the water drips down me. “I understand the way of shifters are foreign to you. But the lass has latched on to both of you, and you need to work your differences out.”

“Fuck—uff!” Another bucket of salty water is thrown over me. “Fuck’s sake!” I snarl at the offending man.

The bastard shrugs and, with a determined glint in his eye, swaps his empty bucket with a full one from the man standing to his right.

I stand still, figuring I deserve the third dousing.

Shivers wrack my body. It is fucking freezing as the wind cuts across the deck.

At least it washes some of the disgusting seed and sweat from my body.

I glare at Drake like this is his fault.

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