Page 19 of Wolf's Claimed Mate
“What’s wrong, Sasha?”
Her lips dug into her plush lower lip, holding back another sob. I raised my hand to cup her face, but she batted it out of the air, her sobs now turning into a snarl.
“Get away from me,” she snapped. “The office is a bust; nothing’s here. The basement was clear?” She was already walking out the door. “Let’s go. We can find better leads.” Her voice disappeared as she stormed away, leaving me to pick through the rubble of the Sasha tornado she’d torn through the room.
Chapter 9 - Sasha
Conall didn’t follow me out. Not after two minutes, or five. When it reached ten minutes, and he still hadn’t come out, I rammed an elbow into the hood of his car, muffling a scream into my jumper sleeve. I needed to shift. I needed to run. I needed to hunt every single man from that pack down and make them admit everything I’d just read.
Tears as hot as my anger burned slid down my face as I choked on a sob. I closed my eyes, crouching down into a ball on the sidewalk. There was nobody for miles. Nobody would see my breakdown, but there was nobody except Conall, who would offer me a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen.
And Conall was not the man whom I wanted to shareanypart of my discovery with.
And yet…
Hurt crowded into my heart, whispering that if he cared the way he kept showing me glimpses of then he would have raced out after me after seeing evidence of my crying. But I could still see his shadow moving around the room, poking through the damage I had wrought.
My lip curled; I hoped he found everything he was looking for.
I whipped out my phone and texted Thalia:I told you I did not want to do this.
She wasn’t the object of my true anger, but if she hadn’t pushed, if she’d just found some way for me to work alone and relay the information to Conall, or if she’d picked a different person to work with him, I wouldn’t have opened up a web of lies.
My breath came in short pants. I closed my eyes, my fingers sliding into my hair. I was distantly aware of hands on my wrists, tugging my hands away.
“Hey, hey.” Conall’s voice, deep and concerned, broke through my haze. I opened my eyes, meeting his bright green, his eyebrows narrowed in worry. “What did you see in there?”
“Leave me alone,” I mumbled. “Take me home. Please.”
“Whatdid you see?”
“Nothing!” I snapped. “Nothing of worth to your pack.”
“Anything in that office could be useful. I think I know at least one of their other locations.”
Fear gripped me. “Where?”
“I’ll tell Fenrys.” He shrugged, nonchalantly, holding back on me as a petty payback for doing the same to him. Except it wasn’t the same. Itwasn’t.
“Fuck you, Conall,” I spat, baring my teeth. He blinked at me, barely contained anger moving in his expression: the tightening of his mouth at the corner, the twitch of his eyes, the muscle ticking in his cheek. I smiled slowly, too wide, not genuine at all. “You want to unleash it all, don’t you? Your anger is. Just. Like. Mine.” I cocked my head. “We both want more than the positions we’re forced to uphold, the roles we need to play for others. What about the shit we do for ourselves? Who cares aboutthat?”
Before I could go on, Conall pinned my wrists behind my back, crowding me against the car. I got my feet under me, collapsing us both onto the floor. His eyes bore into mine. For a second, I couldn’t think, not as he let me feel the full weight of him. He let go of my hands, bracing himself over me.
“You feel that?” He asked me quietly. “I’m not weak, I’m notless. I serve an alpha, but I was picked for that because of everything I have worked foralone. He’s my best friend, and no matter how much you try to throw me off, I won’t fail him.”
The unspoken words lingered:like I’ve done before.
Ignoring how my hand shook, I dragged one fingertip down his chest, feeling every hard muscle and ridge of definition through his thin shirt. His pulse picked up speed, fluttering away in his neck.
“And what about the dominance you have over your own life?” I purred. “What does it take out of you to submit to him every day?” He grabbed my hand, linking it through his, and I reminded myself how, when he took over the pack for Fenrys throughout the year, we had been trying to make something of whatever was happening between us.
He pulled my hand up to his mouth, biting gently around my fingertip. I hissed and pulled away.
“Take me home,” I demanded again.
“Tell me what you found in that office,” he told me again. “No deflections this time.”
I gritted my teeth. When I blinked, I saw the words on the paper behind my eyes.
