Page 50 of Pack’s Pledge

My smile faded.

“I’m not, no,” I said. “I texted.”

“Conall, sure,” he said, and I wondered for a second how he knew, but—they were pack. Even if they weren’t lovers–if they were justroommates, like Conall had said–they were still pack. “But not Beau.”

I flinched, looking up to see Adrian’s hard, disapproving eyes. The texts were still sitting on read in my messages:

Hey, baby.

Let me know when I can take you out, you deserve a treat as a thank you…

Then,I miss you.

Finally, hours later:

I’m sorry.

So Conall had told him,I’d thought. It was really over.

I’d spent that day brushing up on my cocktails–real cocktails–in preparation for my new job, where I’d be making real drinks again. Dirty Martini. Sex on the Beach. Tequila Sunrise. Manhattan. I’d gotten way too wasted–had sobbed in the shower and had to hide my phone in the back of my cupboard overnight to keep myself from drunk dialing them–and since then, I’d been spitting out all my practice drinks, had been carefully pouring them down the sink and trying not to think about the colossal waste of money and alcohol it was.

“If you’re not ready, you’re not ready,” he said, “But just text him. Let him know.”

It wasn’t me who wasn’t ready,I thought, but I just nodded. “I will.” I would. I had to. If he was sending his alphas after me, I knew it was serious.

“Good. I know you don’t want to see him unhappy,” he said, his eyebrows raised, “and I don’t either. He’s fucking whiny.” I gave him a weak smile. Adrian, for one, hadn’t changed: he was still the same man I’d met that first night. “Now,” he said, and I expected him to… I don’t know what. Ask for a drink, or say goodbye, his message delivered.

Instead, he tilted his head toward the door. The angle made the circles under his eyes stand out in shadow, and my smile faltered.

“You want to get out of here?” he asked. “Go somewhere?”

“What?” I said, my heart rate picking up.

“What are you doing tomorrow? You want to get away for a night?”

“Like a trip?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah, like a trip, like we have a cabin. Upstate. Let’s get out of here. I need a change of scenery.” He leaned across the bartop, and I had a sudden memory not of the first night, but of him peeling off his shirt before Beau’s heat, his body tan and firm and broad and full of possibility. “I bet you could do with a change of scenery, too, and you have some time off.”

“Do you?” I asked, and as he shrugged, I realized I didn’t know anything about Adrian, the other one of Conall’s packmates, orroommates, or whatever he wanted to call them–not his job, not if he even had a job. The three of them had a penthouse, but maybe he came from money, or maybe Beau did.

Or maybe it was just Conall. He always had been smart. Not ambitious, so much, but curious.

I had been the one to text Conall, and had received nothing in return.

Can we talk?

I still wasn’t sure myself what more I could say.

“I can make time.” Adrian’s shoulders flexed under his tight dress shirt. “For you.”

And the alpha’s pack.

I should have said no. It was a terrible idea.

But Adrian’s smile, the earnest, hopeful look in his eyes,something…

I nodded.

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