Page 36 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
“Look, I know nerdy is hot, alright? But I wasn’t raised in neighborhoods where it was and that shit sticks with you,” he said. “I slept around because I wanted to seem like a man. I talked shit behind people’s backs, pretending I didn’t care about anyone or anything to seem like a man. To be hard… Jesus.” He huffed a laugh. “I have a wolf in me right now. I can hear it growling. Like it’s challenging me, and it’s not that it wants me to fight it or fight myself… It just wants me to be fucking honest with myself.”
“About what?” she asked.
“About what truly makes an alpha into a pack leader,” he said.
“An alpha, huh?” she asked, a little surprised at his use of the term. As far as she knew, he had never met one. Still, she was curious to hear what his conclusion was.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s what Michael is. An alpha.”
“And what makes an alpha into a pack leader?”
“Knowing the difference between when it’s time to fight and when it’s time to retreat,” he said. “When you asked me out… I fought you off like you were the enemy. And for the past six years I retreated away from that moment. I didn’t ever want to do that to anyone ever again. I shut down because of what I did to you.”
She’d seen it.
She’d known that she could see it.
But because he’d rocked her trust in herself, she’d not believed in what her instincts were telling her about him. About the cool control he kept at all times, the professionalism, the lack of anything that might resemble actual human interaction.
But that it had everything to do with that moment in the cafeteria…
She hadn’t known that. She couldn’t have seen it.
“You weren’t the cause, though,” he said. “It isn’t your problem. It’s mine. I was the cause. And I wanted to let you know that the only reason I pushed so hard was that you scared the shit out of me. You still do.”
“Why?”
“Because you were so… real,” he said.
It was her turn to huff a laugh. She couldn’t believe that was the word he chose. “I wasn’t,” she said.
“You were.”
“No, because I only approached you out of me being so sure that I was right in how you were as a person. That’s not real,” she said. “It was this made-up idea. My convictions were entirely based on stupid fantasies, like you said.”
“Did I say that?”
“Well, you said ‘delusions’,” she admitted, and he made a face. “Yeah. It was bad. But you weren’t wrong. I still do it… As a scientist I never do it in the work that I do, but in my personal life? I just go with that first impression. It’s what got me here. I didn’t get any red flags from Cora when she came to Chicago. She made me believe that I was important to the work they were doing here. Not a single alarm bell went off in my head. And look at where that led me.”
“For what it’s worth, you’ve always seemed very real to me,” he said. “And Cora did me a favor.”
She didn’t quite know what to say to that. It had just been sex, right? So was he looking to get lucky again? Here?
“Maybe we should talk about this later,” she said, proud that she didn’t stutter once.
“Okay,” he smiled. “What’s our next move?”
She dug into the pocket of her jacket and brought out the USB memory stick.
“Inspired,” he said, a little too loudly, both of them ducking down as though that would keep them out of sight in case someone rushed through the door.
No one did.
She plugged in the memory stick, crossing her fingers that the computer didn’t have a security system installed that would alert anyone to any sort of unapproved activity. And even if it did, they didn’t have much choice.
This was the evidence they had come for.
They weren’t walking out without it.
