Page 32 of Defiant
“Fuck. I didn’t get to speak with her mother.” My hand slams onto the dash and I hear Pluto suck in a breath because this car is his baby.
“You can do it tomorrow,” Pluto suggests as he floors it and takes a corner and I have to use my feet to brace myself so I don’t grab onto the bitch handle as my stomach slides into my ribs.
“Stone wants to get her tomorrow,” I retort, fury filling me at the thought of his grimy old paws touching Elena’s soft skin. My wolf snarls and my vision changes for a millisecond, sharpening, before I wrangle him back into a corner of my mind. Stone will never touch her so long as I’m still breathing. No way.
She’s ours,I tell my wolf.
His lips still peel back and reveal a deadly set of teeth, his white fur still expands
“Well, those fucking rules about trading omegas are outdated. I already told you that during our elite meeting. There hasn’t been one for generations … not since the fucking purge. We can’t just give her—”
“We?” I turn to glare at him, feeling my wolf so close to the surface that I’m surprised fur doesn’t erupt on my arms. I turn in my seat so that my shoulder is pressed against the back and stare at the man I’ve thought of as a best friend for nearly a decade as dark thoughts swoop through my heads like black crows.
One of Pluto’s pale hands lifts off the wheel and he holds it up, palm out, trying to placate me. “Calm, man. I meant the pack. Not we as in me. Trust me, I smelled you when you came out of that forest. You’ll fight to the death for this girl, which means I’m not interested.”
“You’d better not be,” I growl, unable to let it drop. He hasn’t shown me his neck or dropped his eyes to the ground. The logical side of me knows that he can’t—he’s driving right now, but the feral side of me wants to smash his nose in and make sure his wolf matches his words—submissive, compliant, backing the fuck away.
“I’m not. She’s gorgeous, so don’t rip my dick off if you scent shit. But you know I’ve got a lockdown on my wolf better than that. Better than yours.” He couldn’t help the jab, an ongoing thing.
My wolf growls but I tell him to shut the hell up because we’re home. I see my house through the trees, and while my eyes normally roam to the upper windows and my room whenever I return, tonight they’re drawn to the base at of the front stairs as if I can peer beneath the stone steps and see her. The porch light is on, waiting for me, a little tradition Matthew has always kept, that I’ve never appreciated until this moment.
"Look up options." I bark at Pluto before hopping out of the car that’s still moving, ignoring Pluto’s curse, and hurrying inside. Matthew meets me in the foyer, his brow wrinkled in consternation.
"I want a raise—"
"Done," I reply, even as my eyes stray to the basement door, which is locked again, now with a chair shoved up against it. A book sits on the floor beside the chair and I have no doubt that my human butler placed himself in harm's way to protect my girl from Cody. That lights my heart up in a way it hasn’t for years, not since my mother passed away.
"Well done, Matthew. Double your salary. And take a couple hours on the jet. Go somewhere nice with one of those flexible ladies you like."
Matthew snorts but I shake my head, marveling both at the set of balls Matthew's got and the fact that the issue with Elena is so damned precarious. I’m pissed that I let it come to this, my butler protecting my mate. He's human and as such has nothing to fear from my shifters; a Lobo who attacks a human forfeits not only their own life but their entire family's. Cody knows that. The strong aren't meant to exploit the weak—that's been the motto for generations here.
I can't help but feel a twinge of sour guilt thinking of that because I definitely want to exploit every weakness Elena has to get her to bow to my will, turn that ferocity burning in her eyes into a different kind of fire, the kind stoked by my fingers, my lips, my dick.
I need to mate her, marry her, and mark her soon. My wolf howls in approval at all those thoughts, an image of Elena's little wolf racing beside mine underneath the moonlight appears in my head. She needs to become mine in every damned way. Or else I won't just be worried about Stone—one of my own alphas might challenge me for her. Tonight proves it. If Cody came down here with sedatives still in his system, then the call of her scent is more dangerous than I realized.
My teeth grow slightly sharper, nicking my tongue, and my wolf threatens to come out at the thought of anything jeopardizing our claim on our Elena. I want to shove him aside, but that will only end up in a battle for dominance over this body—a fight I've lost before. So instead, I soothe him.
I tell my wolf, "You can smell her right? She's safe down there, slathered in bubble bath crap." I speak in front of Matthew but not to him, walking just a few steps away from him and closer to the basement door, letting his senses eclipse my own for a second so that the smells become sharper. Cody's scent hits my nostrils first and a tiny growl escapes my throat at the blatant musk of interest he emitted.
After that, Matthew's scent—some awful combination of fresh soap and anise from his cologne, which I always tell him smells like he mixed together Brussel sprouts and black licorice. Does he care? Of course not, the man just grins, knowing he cooks well enough that I'll keep his stinky old ass around no matter what. He probably buys that nasty shit on purpose.
I sniff again and finally detect Elena's scent, that smell that hits my sweet tooth just right. But there's a salty note of fear to her scent and, for some reason, my dick hardens at that—probably because that was how she smelled during our chase in the woods earlier—though I absolutely hate the thought of anyone else scaring her.
She's so damned young. And innocent. Part of my mind wants to add corruptible to that statement but another part chimes in first with precious. God, this omega is twisting me up … I need to fuck her and erase this angsty bullshit from my system.
My wolf gives a pant of agreement before retreating and letting me bolt up the stairs two at a time as Pluto enters the foyer from the side, having parked his precious car in the garage. I hear the soft thud of his footsteps behind mine on the carpet runner as he follows me. He's always got my back.
I walk through the hall confidently without flicking on the light but realize perhaps I should have when I hear a thud and Pluto curses, having stubbed a toe on a vase.
“Motherfucking dammit! Why the hell are we being stealthy in your own goddamned house?" he curses, never one to hold back when he gets hurt, a tendency that makes him easy to tease, but a habit he just can't seem to break no matter how much I jab him.
"Well, we aren't stealthy anymore," I mock as I try the knob on the third bedroom down the hall. I'd tried to have Cody put farther back so that Elena's scent wouldn't be as prevalent, but I should have known better. Maybe I shouldn't even have brought him here at all, but I always have my wolves recover here—always give them the best care, especially if they're hurt in service to the pack. It would have been wrong to deny him. A new lock system might be in order though.
I push open the door to the gold room—the damned decorator themed all the guest bedrooms by color or some such ridiculousness. There's a dark four-poster bed dominating a massive shag rug. I spot Cody laying in bed shirtless, the white-and-gold striped covers shoved carelessly down to his waist, the bandages on his ribs in full view. He's shoved aside the curtain so that the moonlight shines down on his face, which is relaxed and peaceful, a little smile edging the corners of his mouth. I realize that Matthew has strung up some thin silver wire around all four posts—not a ton, but enough to force a wolf to think twice, enough to make them try to jump over the wire, a feat that would be difficult with broken ribs. Something Cody doesn’t even know about yet because he’s dead asleep, a snore escaping from his lips.
Dammit.
I realize that part of me had been hoping he was still awake so I could rip him a new one, lay into him for trespassing, for scaring my fucking mate—now all the tension buzzing around inside me like a swarm of hornets has nowhere to go. My fists clench as I glance over at Pluto.
