Page 26 of The Beta's Blind Date

“Water break, Cadet!” I say, my voice barking out across the grounds.

She adjusts her trajectory towards the water jugs, where the current pre-warrior trainees are gathering to get their own drinks. Sebastian looks on with his arms crossed as he gives them their water break.

I stand next to him while I wait for Taryn, my jaw working as our pack members surround her to get their water, some of them shooting her second glances. I don’t know if it’s because she isn’t from our pack or because she’s the most gorgeous she-wolf ever, but either way, I don’t like it.

They shouldn’t be looking at her that way. Only I should get to look at her that way.

No, that’s not right either. No one should look at her like that. Least of all me. I can’t let myself look at her that way. She may be my mate, but that means nothing. The full moon will come, the bond will break, and we’ll go our separate ways.

“Who is that?” Sebastian asks, jerking his chin at her.

“Taryn.”

He turns his head and raises his brow at me. “I thought you don’t do repeats?”

I shrug. “That’s not one of my rules. That one is more like a guideline.”

“Okay, Captain Barbossa.”

“I’m not a pirate. And this isn’t a date. And I haven’t slept with her.”

“Yet.”

I wrinkle my nose and furrow my brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” he says with a snort.

“You know, as shocking as this may be, I don’t sleep with every female I meet.” He continues to laugh and give me that stupid, smug look he always wears on his face, and the tether on my restraint snaps. “Maybe you should get laid so you can stop paying attention to my sex life and start paying attention to your own since your hand clearly isn’t cutting it anymore!”

The laughter, triumph, and smugness are gone in a snap. His face shutters, his jaw ticking as his teeth grind together.

But the look vanishes in an instant, his smile and laughter back as Taryn walks up to us, her face glowing and dewy from our run, little tendrils of her ebony hair framing her face, seeking the moisture in the air.

“Taryn?” Seb asks, holding his hand out to her. She nods as she shakes his hand. “Sebastian.”

“Ah.” She smiles, those twinkling stars appearing again in her eyes. “The gambling man.”

“The one and only,” he says with a grin.

I roll my eyes, but my wolf doesn’t seem to mind Sebastian teasing her. Perhaps because Sebastian has always made it clear he’s waiting for his mate, and he won’t take any female before he finds her.

“I guess I should thank you, then,” Taryn says.

He cocks his head to the side as he crosses his arms again. “Why?”

Her smile grows, and my heart jumps up into my throat, the nausea and sweat from earlier returning with a vengeance.

Oh, Goddess. This is it. She’s been tricking me this whole time, and she’s going to tell him we’re mates and thank him for introducing us because we wouldn’t have ever met otherwise. And then I’m going to die.

“Because if you hadn’t set us up, I’d never have discovered how much I enjoy listening to people speak in French,” she says, winking at me.

I grit my teeth to prevent myself from breathing an audible sigh of relief, but the relief is one hundred percent felt. The nausea is gone, the sweat stops forming, and my heart returns to its normal position behind my ribcage.

Sebastian chuckles and jerks his thumb at me. “True, but it did mean you had to put up with this dickhead for an entire evening.”

Taryn shrugs. “He’s not so bad.”

“Trust me, he’s totally a dickhead.”

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