Page 46 of Fated to the Warrior Wolf

I had to do something to stop this, but how could I do that without humiliating Gael? He had the best of intentions, but everything they’d said wastrue. He was going to be furious with me, and somehow, that was the worst thing of all.

The disappointment when he found out his matewasa half-human mutt, not worthy of whatever fancy, full bloodline he came from here in Romania, would crush this fledgling bond between us. Dirge had told us when we first arrived they were old money. There was no way they’d approve of me, a mutt from a broken home in Texas.

We weren’t dirt-floor poor, but we werelights shut off every forty-five dayspoor, and that was close enough for people like that. People who didn’t know what it was like to struggle.

Gael turned to Kane, who nodded gravely in acceptance of his words. “As you say, let it be,” he said, waving for the fight to commence. The oddly formal words were probably ceremonial or some shit, because everyone around the ring fell silent in a sudden, weighty hush.

Marcus had been so careful to always protect his image. His standing with the pack. Any perceived imperfection—like my faulty bloodline—was a blemish to be hidden away, ashamedof. And here Gael was, airing out what he didn’t know was the truth in front of everyone.

Should I call out? Ask him to stop, drag him away from here before he could embarrass himself? That could embarrass him too. Gael was screwed either way.

This is all my fault.

My stomach rolled despite Bri’s best efforts. I’d already fucked up our relationship once in a fit of stupidity—how could I put Gael through that again?

He would never forgive me after this.

Brielle’s eyes dropped closed as she concentrated on flooding her power into me, but this wasn’t something she could fix. A sob escaped me as I squeezed her hand.

When her eyes opened again, I shook my head. She didn’t need to make herself sick trying to fix this.

Nobody could fix this.

I was racking my brain, trying to figure out some desperate, last-second way to stop this, when they all blurred into motion at the same time. I don’t know what I expected, maybe a little circling or some hesitation, but there was none as Gael’s opponents shifted.

Karl and Sven split, each darting around the circle in the opposite direction, hoping to hem Gael in and catch him off guard. But Gael was an experienced fighter, and within seconds, he landed a spinning kick to one wolf’s chest, sending him flying across the circle with a yelp and a crunch. He didn’t get up.

The other wolf froze, but before he could turn tail and wait for his backup to attack again, Gael was on him.

He fastened an arm around the wolf’s neck in a choke hold I’d never known would work on a wolf, wrestling him down onto his back in a matter of seconds. One booted foot planted on the wolf’s rib cage, one arm locked around his throat, Gael squeezed his other biceps to tighten the hold.

The wolf whined, and the acrid scent of piss filled the arena.

The man shifted back a few seconds later, buck naked and lying in a puddle of his own urine. He tapped the ground, a murderous look in his eyes even as his lips turned blue.

TWENTY-FOUR

Gael

Iwiped the sweat off my forehead with the side of my palm. A hum of satisfaction thrummed in my veins, leaving me energized after the fight rather than tired.

If someone had plugged me straight into a light socket, I couldn’t have been buzzing any higher than I was. There was onlyoneperson who could send me higher, and she was standing ringside, a dismayed frown on her too-pale face. She was normally golden, as if she’d captured her own personal ray of sun, but today, she looked wan in the cold, overcast afternoon light.

“Gael, I—” Leigh paused, swallowing hard. She seemed to second-guess whatever she was about to say and change course. “We need to talk.”

“Why does that sound so ominous?” I asked, wrapping my arms around her waist, ignoring the rest of our pack mates standing around chatting and forming a not-so-subtle privacy shield from the Pack Caelestis members still loitering nearby, hoping to get the scoop on the gossipbehindthe challenge. They were going to be disappointed, though. Nobody knew the rest of the story except me, and I wasn’t telling them shit.

I did have to tell her, though, and that thought brought me down a few notches, even though the hum of violence in my blood was still there, still pushing me to do something reckless with it.

Something like claim your mate.

Reckless and suicidal were two very different things, and judging by the stiff cant of her shoulders and stubborn set of her jaw, if I suggested that course of action, she’d be tearing me a new one before I finished the sentence.

It was a tempting thought, though. Stripping her naked and driving her to ecstasy, then sinking my fangs into her, marking her so that no more fucking idiots ever dared talk about her again. No one would mess with her once she bore my mark. The thought of claiming her had me indecently hard, and I knew I’d be working out my fantasies in the shower later. Because from the look on Leigh’s face… she wasn’t in the mood to help me take the edge off.

“Because it just… is. If it were a happy discussion, we’d just say the thing instead of saying ‘we need to talk’ and then dragging it out and waiting until we were somewhere alone, and then?—”

“Hey,” I murmured, skating my hands up her back until they tangled in her blonde hair, tilting her head back to focus on me instead of the endless thoughts she always seemed to have. “It’s going to be okay. Let’s go talk.”

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