Page 32 of Ryder

“No.”

She darted past me and stabbed the elevator call button.

“What the fuck?”I grabbed her arm and hauled her ass out of the way.“You don’t even know where to go!You can’t go wandering about the fucking building.”The mulish set to her jaw said I’d need rope and a ball gag to keep her ass locked down, which was definitely on the table as far as my dick was concerned.“Fine, I’ll go and check, but if they’re fucking busy, you need to deal with it.And by deal with it, I mean sit your ass down and chill until your sister is ready, which might be a few days.”

She nodded once.

“Emma,” I said, voice dropping.“Give me the fucking words.Tell me you’re going to wait like a good girl while I check if you can see her yet.”

Her eyes flashed to mine, and her pupils dilated.My dick perked right up at that little tell.She was still interested.Perhaps I hadn’t fucked things up beyond recovery.Still, there was Jace to consider.Was Emma now officially under Jace’s protection?While he knew I’d been with her, it was kind of an unwritten rule.Just like neither Dane nor I put our hands on Ella, touching Em felt much the same.

The more I thought about it, the more it fucking rankled.

“Emma?”

“Fine, yes,” she said, although she wouldn’t make eye contact anymore, and there was a slight flush to her cheeks.“I agree—I’ll wait, like a good girl.”She layered on the sarcasm, although the pulse thudding in her jaw told a different story.

One thing at a time.

“Take a seat,” I said.“I’ll be right back.”

* * *

My conversation through the apartment door with Jace went about as well as I’d expected it to.

“Handle her,” Jace had roared at me.How the fuck was I supposed to handle a bratty beta while keeping my hands to myself?

As I exited the elevator and was assaulted by a sharp bony finger in the center of my chest, all that went out the window.

“Where’s Sloane?”Emma demanded.“You said you were fetching her.”

“I said I was going to check on her,” I replied, feeling that calm settle over me—the kind that usually foreshadowed someone getting fucked up…or a brat getting the spanking of their life.“And she was pretty busy.”

I didn’t point out that Jace sounded like he would rearrange my face if I didn’t fuck off.

“It was implied,” she snarled, giving another sharp poke.

“For fuck’s sake, Em, stop poking me in the damn chest!”

“Don’t ‘Em’ me, tough guy.I’m not afraid of you.”

On the other side of the room, the entire crew was in attendance, omegas poised with food halfway to their lips, the guys looking on with amusement.Dane chuckled, the fucker.

Why had I let Emma in the gates again?

Yeah, that was right—she’d been shaking the mesh like a madwoman, looking straight up at the surveillance camera, demanding to speak to the manager.

The fucking manager?!Like this was some kind of holiday resort.

She was batshit crazy.It had been a case of bringing her in or having another damn riot on our hands when the rest of the deadbeats in this zone roused themselves to come and check what the fuck was going on.

“Are you even listening to me?”I asked.“You get that your sister is newly mated, right?And from the sounds of things, they were busy alleviating their newly mated needs.”

The frown faded, her eyes went round, and she opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before spluttering, “Newly mated needs!”Her scowl was back in an instant, little chin tipping in a defiant tilt that might as well have been a red flag to the alpha side of me.“I demand to see my sister, this instant, before yourbrother,” —she air quoted with an exaggerated roll of her eyes— “gets any notions of breeding her.”

I rubbed my jaw as though pondering this.I was confident Jace was already balls deep and well into the process of breeding her formerly sensible sister.I offered Emma a fake smile.“How about no?”

Then she poked me one time too fucking many.

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