Page 63 of The Wolfing Hour
“You’re in a relationship with me, aren’t you?” He pulled me in for a kiss. His lips were soft, and he tasted like lime and citrus hops. “I’m also saying that of all your less-than-wise choices, this might be the least dangerous.”
“You think the spelled-wine, drive-in movie escapade was themostdangerous? Ha.”
“No. I think falling in love with a lone wolf shifter about to usurp a powerful alpha leader who tried to assassinate him is the most dangerous thing you’ve done. And I worry that I didn’t give you enough of a choice?—”
I covered his mouth with mine and slid up his lap. He wrapped his arms around my back and hugged me like he had when I’d worried him earlier. We melted into each other—soaked in the feeling of complete acceptance. Of love. It was a deeply emotional moment, and I was wildly excited by the knowledge that it was only the beginning of our life together. And if it was the true beginning then I needed to be honest.
I sat back and cradled his face, my thumbs stroking his earlobes. “There’s more.”
He blew out a long breath. “Lay it on me.”
“I think Floyd’s been following me around town—or having his people follow me.” I told him about the black SUV. “I can’t prove it was him.”
“But your gut tells you it was.”
“Yeah.”
“My gut says the same.” He stroked one palm down my side and up my thigh. “Thanks for being open. I know it’s not easy for you.”
“I should have told you sooner. You and I aren’t the kind of people who need to lie to protect each other. We don’t need pretty little feel-good half-truths.”
His expression softened. “We’re the kind of people who need complete and ugly honesty.”
“Yeah.” I swept my hands to his jaw and cradled his face. “I love you. It’s wild how much.”
“I know.” He put everything he felt for me in his gaze. The force of it had me trembling. “I love you, too. Uncontrollably.”
“To your earlier point, no one knows how deadly Floyd is better than I do, Ronan. I’ve got a literal blackmail file on him. Maybe loving you is dangerous, but you can’t say I went into it uninformed.”
“Speaking of, you ready to show me all the files?”
“Yeah.” It was past time to get this stuff out in the open. “Access to the cloud files is on my phone. I’ll text you a link. Rest assured, I have hard copies of some of this stuff, another cloud storage service not accessible through my phone, and USB drives with people who know to release them upon my demise.”
“Whoa. You weren’t messing around.”
“This is Floyd Pallás we’re talking about,” I said drily.
“Betty, what the hell’s in those files?”
Nothing I wanted to ever see again. “Read them. It’s … dark.”
“Everything Floyd does is dark.”
“No,” I said. “Not like this.”
Ronan scrolled through the text files first—transcripts of conversations, receipts for the purchase of silver and smelting equipment, guns, and explosives. He murmured the words, “dirty bomb” at one point but didn’t look up. Not until he got to the photos.
“This is Zuri. Rory’s mom.”
“There’s, uh, a video in the next file. You should lower the volume.” No one would want to hear screams like that played at full blast. No one decent.
He tapped theplaytriangle.
When the video was over, he played it again. On mute this time.
“He killed her. His own wife.” Ronan’s voice shuddered with rage—or sorrow. Or a tragic mix of both. “What’s more, there are pack members who knew and did nothing. Theyfilmedit, for gods’ sakes.”
“Yes. At least, that’s how it seems,” I said. “Although the person filming had to be the one who sent me the footage, so maybe thatwastheir way of doing something.”
