Page 44 of My Ruthless Alpha

“No reason,” he shrugged, putting on a nonchalant air. “Just curious. Does she always blush so much?”

I scoffed and shook my head. “She wouldn’t have been blushing if you were just normal with her. What did you think would happen when you pointed out her hair color?”

Ethan chuckled, feigning innocence. “I thought she’d take a joke, y’know? She seems pretty sensitive.”

“Even if she is, that wasn’t your smoothest move,” I told him directly, not mincing words.

“What, Ethan not having a filter? That’s not surprising,” Sebastian chastised him with a faint grin.

“And he wonders why he’s still single,” Levi poked as he lifted a brow, gauging his reaction.

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I’m single by choice. You should’ve seen how mushy Beau was with Faye earlier. It’s sickeningly sweet.”

“By choice, my ass,” Jacob returned, laughing to himself. “Maybe if you tried being sweet for once, you wouldn’t be forced into bachelorhood.”

Unable to help ourselves, the rest of us chuckled, well aware that it was at Ethan’s expense. He may have been our good friend, and we’d all be willing to do anything for him, but sometimes he did deserve the ribbing.

“Gah, you guys are the worst.”

We laughed more at his vaguely annoyed reaction, forgetting about the game until I caught the sound of footsteps behind us.

Glancing over my shoulder, I found a handful of bigger guys looking down at me. They were all wearing dark jeans, heavy leather boots, and some sort of leather vest or jacket with an insignia I didn’t recognize. But regardless of that fact, it didn’t take a genius to realize they were bikers.

“You guys mind keeping it down? Some of us are trying to watch the game on that shitty tv there,” the one in front said in a gruff voice as he pointed to the screen.

Realizing we had been a bit loud but nothing egregious compared to the rest of the patrons, we all brought it down and nodded.

“Yeah, no worries, man,” Ezra said before taking another swig of his beer. “Busy night.”

The guy gave a low grunt in response, nodding a few times. “Yeah, it is. I’m surprised to see the lot of you pretty boys here tonight. Doesn’t seem like your type of crowd.”

At once, a mutual bristle moved through the table at his words, especially at the sight of his amused grin.

Paying them a bit more attention since he made the comment, I looked over the group again and realized there was a handful of wolf scents mixed in with the humans. That immediately caught my interest as my brows furrowed slightly.

What were wolves doing with humans? And why were they all at the bar that night in particular?

It wasn’t unusual for shifters to try blending in with human crowds, yet I couldn’t help but wonder if they knew. If they were aware, or if it was just them sinking into the background and using their biker image as a cover-up.

“I don’t think you know much about our crowd to speak on it,” Levi interjected, giving them an assessing once-over.

Even if those guys were big, I didn’t sense a single alpha between the few shifters there, and their strength wouldn’t hold a candle to the group of us. They had no idea what tree they were barking up.

“No? You seem more like the type to drive fancy sports cars and get weekly manicures,” the ringleader taunted, to which the others broke out into belly laughs as if it were comedic gold.

Ezra’s gaze became more heated then, and I knew it was taking him a lot to hold back. “Do you guys have a problem or something?”

The guy in the front chuckled and took a step forward. “…or something.”

There was a moment—a brief pause—when nobody moved. Nobody said a thing while we assessed the situation, gauging whether things were really heading in that direction.

“All right…” Sebastian said, putting his hands up in an attempt to diffuse the tension building. “There’s no need to escalate anything.”

The man chuckled and gave us all a once-over again, grinning beneath his greying mustache. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For us to all hold hands and compliment each other instead, right?” He laughed again while the others egged him on, voice gruff. “Pretty boys like yourselves must come here to make you feel all manly before you go back home and take turns—”

Ezra’s fist clipped the man’s jaw hard as he stood in the blink of an eye, sending him reeling back with a loud grunt. His eyes were dark with barely restrained anger as he stood his ground.

Once the shock left the other guys, they zeroed in on us and rushed forward.

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