Page 19 of Never Submit

Alpha, whatever.

“The Moonstone,” Mathis continues when Torin stays purposely silent.

“Yes, I understand from your call. You want towork togetherto retrieve it.”

The desperate need to roll my eyes is a twitch beneath my skin. An unscratchable itch.

“Is it so crazy?” Mathis bites out.

Torin is calm on the surface. “It’s insane. We’re rivals. We don’t work?—”

“We’ve done it before, even if briefly. So repeating it isn’t going to make it any less real. We’re already here,” I interrupt.

Torin slowly lifts his hands to his hair, pushing back the wisps that have escaped from his back knot. The movement hides the truth. How he’s ready to erupt beneath the layer of ice.

We’ve known each other since we were boys, grew up alongside each other, both training for some kind of high pack status we didn’t want.

Torin always supported my dreams, and more–he had paid for my parents in their nursing home. Things change. Life shifts on a dime.

It’s as inevitable as taxes and just as shitty when you realize it.

Torin stares at a smudge on his cufflink. “Perhaps it would have been better to erase the Grey Valley off the map back when your beta chased Kelee off a cliff.”

Hearing my sister’s name sends ice along my spine.

I had wanted blood. I’d wanted a war, even though Torin was the new alpha and right in the middle of a transition period. He’d refused to attack, claiming he was too weak of an alpha to do it, and we hadn’t spoken for years.

“The best thing we can do is to focus on a future where we collaborate rather than fight,” Mathis replies.

He stands straight, but I see his hackles lift. Dax snarls out a warning.

“I already have. I’m simply wondering what your angle is.” Torin drums his fingers on his thigh before slowly throwing his shoulders back. “You know I would never willingly help you find the Moonstone only to give it up. If we do get it back from our enemy, then I’m not going to just hand it over to you. So why do you need us?”

The unspoken name clangs between us even in the silence:Ren.

She’s the angle.

The one neither of us is willing to talk about, not since I told Torin about our mating bond and he lost his goddamn mind. There are feelings there, unspoken, bubbling beneath the surface, and they seem to piss him off more than anything else.

Bitterness rises up to choke me.I never thought that someone who claimed to be my best friend could be jealous of me.

“Perhaps there are more important things to focus on than a war that never happened and an artifact we both want.” My vocal cords constrict, my mouth going dry.

I’m only here because of my duty to Torin. Every other piece of me wants to go back out to follow the energy connection to my mate.

“Eager to find her, but I’m the one out there doin’ all the work,” Dax says, speaking at last.

I focus on him. “Excuse me?”

“What the hell are you doing to locate Red? Not a damn thing.”

Dax’s eyes light with a feral glee at my approach, and I swear he’s salivating, already a half second from shifting. My fingers claw at my sides.

I’m gonna tear you apart, asshole.

Torin stops me with a harsh command, thrusting his arm out despite the feet separating us.

“Look.” Mathis is the first to break. His expression remains hard, his eyes like two pieces of coal and his mouth a thin line. “Cards on the table. Ren and the Moonstone are our top priority. Dax has been tracking her, but we haven’t had any luck and the seriousness of the threat is growing. Andras has targeted my pack. We are losing people almost daily. We need help.”

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