Page 19 of Dane's War

“What is my brother doing here?” Raine asks, over the throttling of my bike.

“Don’t know,dolcezza, but we’ll find out,” I shout back. Never before did I ever think to have a helmet, but right then I wish I did so I could speak to her through Bluetooth rather than yelling.

I guide my bike to where I park near my brothers and put the kickstand down. I don’t wait around, giving Raine time to get off by herself. I climb off my bike and pick her up easily from the back of it. Though I take care to be gentle with her.

Keeping my hands on her hips, I hold her in place in front of me, her body pressing into mine, those little hands of hers clenching in my shirt.

Fuck me.

“Your brother tries to take you from me, I won’t let him, Raine. This is the only warning I’m giving you, I wanted to talk about this shit later while we were still enjoying our date, but you gotta know before we go in there. If you leave with him, I’ll lose my mind. It’s a delicate hold right now I have on my sanity.”

“Why?” she asks staring at me, not understanding what I’m talking about.

“It’s because of a curse placed on my family yearsago. I don’t know much more about it than what I found out last night, but my wolf and I are just not connecting. We’re good for now, but I’ll tell you, if you leave us, I’ll lose the fight for my sanity.”

“What does that mean?” Her brows draw up, creasing.

“I don’t know how to fully explain it to you right now, but my wolf and I have evidently been two separate beings sharing our body. We weren’t one with each other, until last night. Now, we’re trying to find the balance between us. If you reject us as your mate and move on. One of two things will happen, I shift and stay that way, or I’ll lose my mind and find a way to die.”

“Whoa,” she murmurs, talking to herself.

“Yeah,” I grunt.

“Well, I don’t want you to do either of those things,” Raine remarks, tugging my shirt. I cock a brow, about to say something else when she goes on. “I mean, we need to be able to see what this is between us, right?”

“Right,” I answer, my lip twitching. Fuck me, she can be damn cute when she wants to be. Okay, I don’t think she can not be cute. But right now, it’s a different kinda cute.

“Youwon’t go insane on me while we’re getting to know each other?”

“So long as you don’t reject us,” I confirm with a nod. “Maybe later, after we deal with this BS, we’ll go out, and I’ll allow my wolf out for you to play with.” I grin. I hadn’t missed the look she’d gotten on her face when she told me about being with her family while they were shifted. I also didn’t miss the fact she wasn’t like everyone else. Where her whole family is shifters, she’s a human.

I’ll wait til later to see if she ever thought about finding out anything about where she came from.

For now, we’ve got to get in there and find out what her brother and the others are doing here. On top of me finding out why we had to come to the clubhouse in the first place.

“Raine,” Bandit calls, nostrils flaring, eyes blazing with fury. “Why did you leave the house with him?”

“Mom knew I was with Dane, Bandit. You can calm down before you give yourself an aneurysm,” Raine snaps, not moving from where I placed her at my side, my arm wrapped around her shoulders. “Isthat why you’re here? Are you mad I didn’t stay or let you know I was leaving the house?”

“Raine, baby,” I murmur, smelling the anger rolling off her. “Calm down.”

“I don’t want to calm down,” she says, tilting her head back to look at me. “I want to know why my brother is here, ready to do his dictator impression.”

“Dictator impression.” Cyrus snorts. “Sounds about right.”

Bandit shoots Cyrus a glare before returning it to me. “You wanna let my sister go.”

“Considering she’s my mate and she’s not rejecting me, the answer to that is no.” I wasn’t going to let her go. My wolf refused to let her go. He was on high alert and didn’t like what was going on here.

“Raine,” Bandit growls and looks to my mate once again. “You wanna step away from him so that we can fuckin’ talk?”

“Bandit, just tell me what it is you want to tell me. We were going to be eating pizza and that got interrupted. I’m hungry, and I want to get back to Dane’s so we can watchMeg 2. If you want to talk, then let’s get on with it.”

This time, it was Corbin and Justice who both snort and chuckle.

“For a human, I gotta admit, she’s ballsy,” Abel states and laughs.

“Well, you grow up with a big brother like Bandit, and you learn to be.” Raine huffs, not taking her glare away from her brother. “Well,” she draws out.

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