Page 31 of House of Lilith

But when I reach them and look down into the water, it’s not my own eyes I see. It’s someone else’s. A little vixen’s.

And just like that, I find myself flooded with echoes of impressions — her creamy white skin, that sexy fucking voice, the way she moved…

And it’s the first time this entire afternoon that my fox makes his presence known.You know, he starts in this strange voice,if you went walking around the grounds right now, you’d probably bump into her.

It feels like a cold shower, him shedding light on what I’m thinking about. “So what?” I demand.

I just want a whiff, that’s all.

I roll my eyes. “You already got one.”

Dahrian, he warns, making my ears prick up. He almost never addresses me using my actual name. It’s mostly ‘boy’ he calls me.

“Yes?” I ask.

Don’t play dumb with me.

“You’renotgetting to smell the girl again.”

It’s a complex scent, he urges.Taking a single whiff is just not enough. Some things you need to savor a little. He pauses for a second.But that’s where you come in, he says in this conspiratorial tone.You chat her up a little, you know, like you do, I get a few more whiffs and that’s it.

“Nope,” I tell him.

He stays silent for a second. When he speaks again, his voice is vibrating with a low growl.You’re actually insisting on refusing me, boy?

I don’t let him get to me. I stay determined. “Yes, I am, and with good reason.”

You need me.

“I do, yes,” I say with a sigh. “But she’s a fucking princess, she’sengaged, and we have more important stuff to do than go around trying to fuckingsmellher.”

There’s a long moment of silence before he tells me through gritted teeth.Then we’ll just have to see how you fare at the Second Game.

I let out a scoff, fighting an urge to throw my hands up. “Threatening me,really?”

But he doesn’t say anything. He slinks back into the shadows, throwing his sulking in my face.

My blood suddenly boiling with frustration, I throw myself on a soft patch of grass between two reef bushes, so I can still watch the lake.

What the fuck is going on with my fox? I’m usually so in control of him.

There are things people generally misunderstand about shifters, alphas especially. Hell, even shifters tend to misunderstand them. Trying to become stronger, they focus on building muscle and making themselves as deadly as possible.

But that’s not it, where a shifter’s power resides. We’re like two halves of the Moon, one light and one dark, just like our sigil. It makes us… powerful but unpredictable, I think as my eyes sweep over the calm surface of the deep lake before me.

That’s why it’s the control that matters. And perhaps counterintuitively, the more in control an alpha is, the fiercer he can be in his shifted form. Aggression alone gets you nowhere.

And usually, I ruminate as I pluck blades of grass from the moist ground below me, I’mincontrol. Besides Brogan and my mother, I’ve never met anyone more in control. Life has offered me quite a few valuable lessons and I’ve made sure to sear them all into my brain. Andthatis why I was chosen to be the alpha of my pack despite my age generally being considered too young, not because of my muscles.

That’s more for the ladies, I think with a smile.

But that’s exactly my concern. The ladies. I frown and I accidentally rip an entire clump of grass from the ground.

Sure, Shadowscape girl is a curious one.

But I’ve been with so many women in my life.

So why’s he acting as if he’s never smelled one?

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