Page 143 of Defiant Beta

“I got rid of the dress,” Everleigh says, as I’d expected, given the choice I just gave her. “But I have a couple of others you could borrow. You’re shorter, so they might not work.”

Kylian’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “We can hit the shops if you want. My treat.”

Everleigh turns to face Kylian. “Shopping can wait. She still hasn’t told us what she was doing at Haven Academy.”

Yeah. I’d hoped Everleigh would forget about that.

Before I went AWOL, I bought out a fragrance store's cherry and praline perfume. I know my sister. She loves me. I love her too, so I get why she wants to look out for me. But no one at Haven Academy is looking out for the omegas there. And River… I just disappeared. She’d be worried.

“It’s important.” I smile at Everleigh. “My Cinderella moment.”

Except, I won’t be looking for a prince at the end-of-year ball. I’ll be stopping omegas from winding up with frogs instead of the princes they deserve.

“I know a place,” Kylian says.

Everleigh gives him a warning look. “No going crazy in the store.”

He winks at her. “Me?”

Chapter 42

Della

“Kylian is truly a gobig or go home guy, huh?” I eye the mountain of designer shopping bags on the backseatandon the floor.

So many bags that I have a couple wedged behind my right knee, and Everleigh had to sit in the passenger seat instead of the back. There was no room beside me.

And that’safterKylian had a store assistant fill up the trunk.

Everleigh massages her forehead. “I knew I should have set a budget. But this isn’t a house. I thought, how bad could things be?”

“This bad, apparently.” I once again eye the shopping bags as Kylian drives us to their mansion. I’d say he easily did about ten to twenty grand worth of damage when he whipped out a black credit card, demanded the manager, and said he needed things. He needed themnow.

A blonde woman in a pencil skirt and a silk blouse camerunning.

Private changing room. A metal rail with clothes pre-selected and wheeled right to me to try on. Champagne and strawberries dipped in chocolate. The manager even sent someone out to get us lunch—lobster and endive salads.

I have never seen anything so insane in my life.

Fortunately, Everleigh was too overwhelmed to enter the dressing room with me. The scars on my back are slowly healing, so I only tried on dresses with high backs. If Everleigh saw them, she’d want to talk, and that’s not what I need right now.

At the Pack Ashe mansion, it takes Kylian, Everleigh, Nancy the housekeeper, and me to bring all the bags into a house filled with yummy smells.

Rune pokes his blond head from the kitchen wearing a white apron splattered with red sauce, proving he’s responsible for my stomach rumbling. “Hey,cher. Della, good to see you. What’s with all the shopping?”

“Della has a date,” Everleigh explains.

Rune eyes the bags we’re all loaded down with. “Just one? Or will there be a series of them for… say a month?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you,” Everleigh grumbles, but she smiles at Kylian. “He is way, way too generous.”

Kylian drops a kiss on the top of her head. “What you need, baby, you get it. And Della is family. She gets the special treatment too.”

A pang hits me low in my belly, and I put my bags down and walk away so no one will see my eyes welling up. I always thought I was too cynical, too realistic, too damn ordinary to have the kind of love Everleigh shares with her pack.

That I didn’t want it.

But I think I always wanted it. Why else would I have been so obsessed with Everleigh having a Cinderella moment in a big, poufy dress where she declares her love for her pack and they swear they’ll love her forever?

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