Page 6 of Defiant
If I had been a shifter longer, it wouldn’t matter. Jonah tells me you get used to the nudity since it’s just part of pack life. But my existence up to now has been very nearly human. I’ve only ever seen the pack from a distance, or some members when they come over for barbecues. We certainly aren’t high-ranking enough for me to meet the pack alpha before now.
While Black is incredibly hot, he’s also intimidating, twice my age, and annoyed as fuck with me for freaking him out and making him think I was an enemy wolf. Even now, he side-eyes me as we stomp through the trees.
This is a great way to make a first impression on the number-one wolf in a pack of thousands.At least I’m memorable,I tell myself sarcastically.
I sigh as I wonder just how many miles we are from campus—I have a feeling this is going to be one long walk of shame. At least it’s growing darker every minute. I’m about to ask how much farther when a rock catches me off guard and I trip.
Before I can fall, two rough palms slide along my hips and catch me, fingertips digging into my hipbones and yanking me backward.
Hot breath fans across the back of my neck and my nipples tighten as I right myself, careful not to push backward against the pecs I know are just behind me.
Shit. No more falling, Elena,I scold myself. I don’t need to mix the humiliation of this encounter with weird-ass fantasies about the pack alpha. Alpha wolves don’t mix well together anyway. Too much struggle for dominance. And he’s not even interested. He’s probably rolling his eyes at me for being even more annoying than before.
“Thank you.” I force myself not to sound as fluttery as my stomach feels and my words come out kind of sharp instead.
“Watch your step,” he replies, his hands sliding slowly backward on my hips until they disappear.
Yup. See? Definitely thinks I’m a stupid ass little girl,I tell myself.
I feel absolutely zero disappointment when his warm fingers leave and my nipples only pucker because of the chill. The dampness between my thighs isn’t something I can explain away, so I just ignore it as we continue to wind our way back to campus.
I grab onto small tree branches and trunks, determined to keep my balance as the silence builds between us like a wall and I can only speculate about the kind of judgment Black is hurling over it in my direction.
“Don’t touch shit,” Black growls, confirming my very thoughts. “You’re scent-marking everything.” I turn back to look at him as he grabs a leaf I just touched, rolls it between his palms, and then shreds it before dropping it to the ground.
My cheeks flame in embarrassment. I didn’t even think about that. Fuck.How stupid am I?“I’m sorry.” I pull my hands in close and try to step while avoiding every little branch. Mortified, I’m also irritated. He knows I’m a new wolf. I told him. So, couldn’t he have said that a bit nicer instead of treating me like an idiot?
Part of me wants to reach out and grab a branch just to tick him off. But the sane, logical part of me knows that he’s already at his limit. If Black was a kettle, he’d be simmering. I don’t want to make him boil over.
“Anything else I should know before you yell at me again?”
“Don’t get smart,” he retorts.
“I’m not.” I say, even though some tiny rebellious sliver inside me is being sarcastic as fuck despite knowing better. “I literally just shifted once, and I clearly know jack shit. How about you help me not piss you off?”
“Not possible.”
“Not possible for you to help?”
“Not possible for you to stop pissing me off.”
Okay then. On that horrifying note, I slip into silence and walk through the forest, avoiding the inky fingers of tree branches and the feathery silhouettes of the ferns.
Instead of thinking how badly I’ve screwed up my interactions with the pack alpha, I focus on my messed-up connection with my wolf. Did I make her angry too? Why did she leave?
What kind of shifter’s wolf appears and then abandons her? Am I defective?A trickle of worry whispers that I am. Otherwise, she’d reappear. Otherwise, Black Maddox wouldn’t be so angry with me.
Does he even believe that I’m who I say I am?
The wind changes direction and I shiver in the cool night air and suddenly Black’s body is up against mine, his front to my back, his forearm wrapped around my waist as shock rolls over me like fog.
“Fuck,” he growls. Alpha Maddox lifts me up off the ground as if I’m nothing more than a doll and runs five feet to our left. My arms have barely had a chance to grab onto his forearm, to block the bounce of my breasts against his arm, before he stops beneath a huge sycamore with branches far above my head. He boosts me up in front of him, ordering, “Climb, now.”
“What?” I’m so dazed by the press of his smooth, warm skin to my chilled back that I don’t process what he’s saying for a second.
I feel his fingers dig into my hips as he shoves me up higher along the tree, bark biting into my skin. “We have company. And it’s not the human kind.”
“But, we’re in Lobo—”
