Page 123 of Rejected By the Shifter King
Death before surrender.
And let no outsider wrest control of your heart.
He had never told her about those rules. But he realized now that he didn’t have to. She would have read them from his thoughts. And had proceeded to manipulate him from there.
Damn her.
Did she have fun pretending she wasn’t aware of how hard he had been struggling to control his need for her?
He had thought her presence at the training ground that day was unplanned, but now?
And that moment last night—her mumbling “love you” in her sleep. Had that been real? Or just another calculated move in whatever game she was playing?
****
THE WALK BACK TO THEIRsuite took four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
He counted every step.
Used the familiar discipline to keep his thoughts ordered. To prevent himself from shifting and destroying half the corridor in his rage.
No.
Not rage.
Humiliation.
Even now, it killed him to think that she had heard his every desperate thought and knew his every moment of weakness.
It killed him to know that she had been aware of how he had been struggling over his decision to form a treaty withL’Alliance—
But not once, damn her.
Not once had she told him!
His hand touched the suite door. Inside, he could hear the shower running.
And in the past, such a thought would have his body hard with need in an instant.
But now, it just left him cold.
Because this time he knew the truth about her.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a thought emerged. It questioned his absolute certainty about her deception. Proposed the possibility that he was jumping to conclusions because of his pride, which had always been his weakness.
It was a very reasonable thought.
But when she emerged from the bathroom that moment, hair damp and curling, and dressed in nothing but his shirt—
All he could think about was how she had to fucking know what it used to do to him, to see her dressed like this, and surely, dammit—
Surely this was yet another ploy to play him like a fool, and all because she had gotten drunk with her power over him and she want him completely enslaved?
