Page 98 of Just One Bite
The image is seared in my brain. Olivia falling into someone in a blurry shuffle.
“I’d choose your next words carefully.”
“Maybe she should be careful how much she drinks. She’ll embarrass you.”
It’s like my skin is peeling off my body. It’s physically painful not to act on the instinct running through me.
But I need proof. I need something.
“So it was you.”
They’re still circling.
“Prove it,” Barrett says.
“You wanted to play,”Astersays.
Olivia was right. This is about me. They’re playing this game with real people as their pawns. My people.
They don’t know yet that she’s my linked mate. ThatImarked her.
What will they do when they know? It just makes her a bigger target for them.
“Maybe you should keep a closer eye on her.”
I lunge. Teeth bared and claws out. I’m going for his throat but get his face. A long, deep gash sprays dark red across the dirt. My teeth stay at his neck, and an intense growl shakes my whole body.
“Stay the fuck away from her.”
They are denying it. It doesn’t absolve them. I know it was them. I’ll have to find my proof another way.
Their growls are accompanied by a deafening howl. Their packs will answer and be here in minutes.
That’s a fight I wouldn’t win.
“See you at the podium. Might want to cover that up,” I say.
That gash won’t heal easily, but it sends the right message. I’m finally starting to feel it. It has always been in my blood, but now it is singing to me.
Maybe I do want to be an Alpha. Bad news for them.
Chapter Thirty-One
Olivia
“This place is …”
We stop at the entrance of an abandoned atrium. Parker wouldn’t tell me where he was taking me, only that it was a surprise.
I stare at the last remaining support wall that’s worn from the weather and elements. The glass is broken, but the towering stone arches stand high into the sky that’s growing dim in the twilight. It’s a part of the wood now. A silent sleeper that blends into the surrounding trees and growing vines and flowers threatening to cover the stone completely.
“This is familiar …” I say, staring at the floor that is one with the woods.
It’s a bed of moon nightingales that stretch all the way to the wall in a blanket of periwinkles. Some are darker, more violet, and others almost a full baby blue.
Parker and I stroll into the opening, and he waits patiently for me to get my bearings. I protested when he insisted we come into Lost Lake Woods. What was this place used for?
“How did you find this place?”
