Page 78 of Mortal Shift
When I turned my attention back to Blaine, he was tucking his phone back into his pocket, and gestured to the mugs.
“I’ll wash, you dry?”
“What, you don’t have people to do that for you?” I asked, hiding my curiosity beneath a layer of sarcasm. I hadn’t expected the steely eyed shifter to be the washing up type.
“Everyone pulls their weight around here,” he said, carrying the mugs to the sink. “Pack is about hierarchy, sure, but it only works if everyone pulls together. Even when it comes to domestic chores.”
“Kind of like a commune, then, except for the whole dictatorship thing you have going on,” I said dryly.
Blaine tossed a cloth in my direction and it thudded into my chest with maybe a touch more force than necessary. I snatched it up before it could fall to the floor.
“You enjoy trying to get under people’s skin, don’t you?” he observed. “Interesting hobby, for a fragile human.”
“Human, yes,” I said, ignoring his implication. “Fragile, not so much. I survived the last four months at Darkveil.”
“That you did,” he conceded. “Of course, that’s no real accomplishment, given that students slaughtering each other outside officially sanctioned events has been outlawed for over fifty years.”
“It has?” My mouth popped open in surprise and the towel almost slipped from my hands. “But Cole said— Fuck. The asshole.”
He’d played me. This whole time he’d had me running around terrified, jumping at my own shadow, and it had all been a lie. Dickhead.
“Are you planning on shredding that towel, or using it to dry up with?”
“Undecided,” I ground out, but took the first mug from his hands and started drying it.
“Maybe you should cut Cole some slack?”
“Maybe you should mind your own business,” I countered, polishing the mug with more force than strictly necessary.
“He’s the alpha heir of my pack. You’re his mate. Itismy business.”
“Ew, it really isn’t, trust me.” I set the mug down and took the next one from him, drying it in intense detail and trying not to picture Blaine poring over the details of my dysfunctional relationship with Cole.
“Relax, it’s nothing like that,” he said. “Do I look like cupid to you?”
I couldn’t help flicking a glance in his direction, and the image of him with wings and a little bow was just too ridiculous to keep a straight face.
“Seems like you’d make a much better alpha that Cain,” I said, setting the now very dry mug down. “You haven’t threatened to kill me even once.”
Blaine stiffened at my words.
“Careful what you say,” he said. “Alpha Cain is my alpha, and those words you just spoke are treason.”
“Treason implies he’smyalpha.”
“He’s your mate’s alpha, it’s the same thing.”
“Again with the whole dictatorship. I thought humans were dysfunctional until I met shifters.”
Blaine cricked out his shoulders, making a visible effort to force the tension from them. “I thought you’d been at Darkveil for four months.”
“I have.”
“Then you know packs are more complex than that. Anyone has the right to challenge Alpha Cain for his position in the pack, and he cannot refuse.”
I canted my head and leaned back against the counter behind me.Thathadn’t been part of our lessons.
“Anyone?”
