Page 81 of Broken-Hearted

“I didn’t even have to go looking for you. You appear in my city, sitting in the passenger seat, window open, singing. I saw you, and I knew exactly what you were.”

“What, er, happened to the last one?”

“She fought me.” He kisses my neck and I swallow my shudder of revulsion as he takes my hand with a delighted smile. As if he didn’t just choke me seconds ago. “Let’s go, mate. Time for the ceremony.”

22

Enforcers lead the way outside the house, down the wide steps and into the backyard.

The pack stands in small clumps, feet from the forest where I saw Nathan minutes before. The grass is freezing under my bare toes, but the cold isn’t why I’m shivering.

It starts raining. A fine drizzle to go along with the heavy dread settling over me.

Adrian stops, which forces me to a sudden halt since he’s currently leading me along with a tight grip on my wrist. As his packmates form a circle around us, he turns to face me.

He’s smiling, pleased. There’s no evidence of the vicious, unpredictable man who lashed out at me so suddenly in the bedroom. “Remove your dress.”

I stare at him like a twit. “What?”

But I heard him. I heard him loud and clear.

There’s a full moon above and a traditional moon-blessing is always conducted under moonlight with bare skin.

He intends for us to fuck under that full moon, and he will bite me and tie us together in a ceremony so traditional, no pack does it anymore. Mine didn’t. Neither did the Dawley-Stones, and I get the impression that the Blackshaws don’t either.

I can’t do this.

Not any of it.

Even if tonight ends with Adrian choking the air from my lungs, I amnotdoing this.

I yank my arm, breaking Adrian’s grip on me. His pack and his enforcers surround me. I’m going nowhere and Adrian knows it for him to not be even the slightest bit concerned about letting me go. I get the sense I didn’t break his grip so much as he let me go.

Maybe he wants me to fight from the almost wild excitement in his eyes that wasn’t there a second ago.

“Your dress, Clara,” Adrian’s voice is light.

I lift my chin. “No.”

“Clara,” there’s a warning in his tone as he takes a step forward.

“I said no.” Retreating, I bump into someone. One of Adrian’s packmates, I assume, until a familiar mint and cedar scent envelopes me as arms slide around my middle and urge me back.

“Behind me, peach.”

Nathan.

Adrian’s eyes harden as a man clears his throat.

I swing my head to the right, the location of that throat-clearing.

Someone I did not expect to find is standing near the trees. Dayne.

Arms folded, he’s naked as he leans against a tree, relaxed. Seemingly not the least bit concerned that there must be twenty or more shifters who have a good reason for wanting him dead, given he just invaded their territory.

Dayne gives Adrian a cold smile. “It’ll be in your best interest to walk back inside that nice big house you have and forget you know Clara.”

Adrian smiles tightly. “You’re onourland, and I promise you there are more of us than there are of you.”

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