Page 127 of Never Submit

Ready to rip my throat out should I make any sudden moves.

My hands automatically go out in front of me, and I stifle the urges of my own wolf. Those same urges that want me to shift and subdue her, that want to make sure this behavior of hers, in choosing another wolf over me, does not go unpunished.

But the man inside of me is too raw to do any of that and worries how Ren will react.

The change is new to her. Already her eyes have glazed and her tongue rolls out to the side of her mouth in confusion.

“You’re going to have to calm down,” I tell her in a low tone of voice.

Calm and soothing and projecting both of those things out to her. It’s like she’s slammed a wall down around her, the wolf inside her too new to even consider any suggestions. She’s running on pure animal instinct at this point and my mind flashes back to the time she changed in the apartment.

The havoc she caused then.

Even Dax is staring at her with a mixture of intrigue, lust, and apprehension. It shows a remarkable change of pace for him.

“Ren!” She snaps her head at me at the sound of my voice and bares her teeth, her eyes still confused.

What is there to say? What is there to do?

I’m torn between standing as still as a mountain or grabbing her by the scruff of the neck, as a man, and dominating her that way. I’ve got a gut feeling thatchanging into my own wolf form will only incite her further.

At least there’s nothing out here in the open for her to destroy this time around.

Her wolf eyes me back, testing my mettle, looking for weakness.

“You two are fucking useless, I swear,” Mathis cuts in. “Let me handle this.”

Acting like he’s somehow impervious to any kind of danger, the alpha of the Grey Valley pack strides between me and Dax until he stands right in front of Ren. Imposing at his full height.

“I can’t leave you three alone for five minutes without it devolving into bedlam,” Mathis scoffs.

I’m not sure what he says to Ren, his words murmured at such a pitch I’m unable to catch them, but I watch him. I watch him crouch down in front of her so that his very vulnerable face is eye level with those bad-boy teeth of hers.

Something…is going on. I’m not sure what it is, but the longer the two of them stare at each other, the more I know that an aspect of their relationship has changed. Shifted.

And as the world starts to speed back up around us, it trickles into my awareness.

Another layer to our mating bond and the energy between us. Something that adds to the connection, strengthens it rather than takes away from what we share.

In my next breath, Torin is at my side. His voice is low and rough in the back of his throat. “Sickening, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand what you mean…”

I had felt the moment her mate bond clicked in with Mathis, it’s true, but something strikes me about the scene now. The alpha calming his mate, the beta still lost to hisown demons, and me. A mate, the first, watching fate itself unfold.

Watching the woman I’ve come to care for choose to protect a monster.

Is that what Torin means?

Then I remember how awful he’d been to me hours ago. Remember the fight, and him throwing his wealth in my face. How he paid for my college, how he’s still paying for my parents’ nursing home when all along I thought that money came from wise investments on their part.

I turn and glare at him.

“It shouldn’t even be possible.” Torin sounds incredulous now, and his eyes have a faraway quality that tells me he’s lost in the labyrinth of his mind. As he so often is these days. “I mean, I’ve never heard of such a thing. It’s rare enough for a wolf to find a mate, but more than one?”

I don’t want to fucking talk to him.

“Go on,” I tell the others. “The show is over.”

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