Page 39 of Remy & the Wildcat

“Let me clean that up, hold on.” Remy climbed from the bed and returned a moment later with a wet cloth, which he wiped tenderly over the small marks. Then he kissed them and leaned up to kiss her lips. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“It’s okay, really. I hardly felt them, and I just want to point out that I was pretty damn lost to the pleasure too.” She touched the blanket that was shredded in several places where her claws had torn through the fabric.

“Well hell,” he said, dropping the cloth to the floor. “We were both in the heat of the moment.”

“It was amazing,” she said. She pressed her hand to his cheek and brought him to her lips. Then she said what was on her mind.

“I love you.”

His eyes softened, crinkling around the corners. “I love you too, Thyme. Finding you in the woods was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Me too.”

They kissed for a long moment, then curled up together, talking quietly in the way that lovers did, ignoring all the bad shit that had happened over the last week and focusing on the future. On love and babies and the new town.

They could worry about the people out to get them tomorrow.

For tonight, it was just her and her truemate, and that was the only thing that mattered.

Saturday afternoon, Thyme and Remy headed to Copper Creek, the first vehicle in a long line containing the heads of the pride families. Conspicuously absent from the group were not only Brilla and Leif, but her father Jacob, and two more heads of families that were on Leif’s side.

“I can’t stop thinking about Brentiss,” Thyme said.

“I know, it’s bugging the hell out of me too,” Remy said.

They’d gotten up that morning and after a romp in the shower, they’d dressed and headed to the healers’ home to talk to Brentiss and find out who told him to try to take out Thyme. They both knew Leif was behind it, along with Brilla and Jacob, but they didn’t know why. It didn’t make sense why they would try to take out Thyme just for the position of alpha. There was more going on in Marin with the pride than they could figure out right now.

When they’d arrived at the healers’ home, Brentiss wasn’t in the room and the females didn’t know what had happened to him. They’d both agreed he was too injured to shift and heal himself, so he wouldn’t have been able to walk out of the house on his own. Which meant someone had taken him out overnight and no one had seen anything.

“I kind of think he’s dead,” Thyme said.

Remy hummed in surprise. “You do?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’s a loose end. If he stayed in the house, he would eventually have to talk to us and Leif might have assumed he wouldn’t hold up to any questioning. And if we had proof, an eyewitness that Leif had tried to kill me outside of an official challenge, then we’d be able to take action lawfully against him.”

“That makes sense,” Remy said.

“Leif really has no standing anymore,” she pointed out. “I’m over twenty-one and mated. Even if he mated a female on his twenty-first birthday, you and I have pride laws on our side to claim the alpha position on the full moon. And at this point, if he tried to issue a fight challenge, he’d have to fight one of us. Not just me, as it would have been before you and I mated, but either of us. He might be able to take me out, but he wouldn’t be able to beat you.”

He knew that he could beat Leif in a fight, and he was certain that Leif knew that too. Remy was bigger and stronger than him, and while Remy had grown up being trained to be alpha in every possible way, Leif had lived what seemed like a pretty leisurely life, letting others fight his battles for him.

It was shitty that he’d rather fight his half-sister than another male, but that seemed to be his M.O.

“It seems like Leif and his friends know that there’s no way they’ll be allowed to stay with the pride, that exile is in their future, and they’re doing whatever underhanded things they can to put a stop to it.”

She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder with a yawn.

“I wish things could be different,” she said softly. “When my mom died and my dad mated Brilla, I thought she was my friend. But I figured out really fast, even at such a young age, that she wasn’t interested in me and saw me as a burden. Once she had Leif, I wasn’t really part of the family anymore. Thankfully my dad still trained me to take over, but Leif never wanted to be part of the training, never wanted to learn.” She paused and then said, “I didn’t know that they were conspiring behind my back. I thought Jacob, as an elder, was on the side of the pride laws and doing what was best for everyone. But he’s been behind Leif the whole time. He would rather have that useless psycho as alpha than me, especially now that I have a powerful alpha male as my mate. It’s nuts.”

“It is,” he agreed, “which is why I think there’s something more going on than simply the alpha position.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Why do people do illegal shit?”

“Money?”

“Maybe. Power is a driving force for a lot of people, too. We may never know, but once we’re alphas and we get the pride moved and settled into Copper Creek, those left behind can form their own pride and do whatever the hell they want in Marin.”

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