Page 37 of Savage Prince

I roll my eyes. “Lucky us.” I lean against him, taking comfort in his clean, Ford smell. “Good thing we didn’t check out of the room just yet. Looks like we’re going to need a place to sleep tonight.”

“And a quiet place to call the Wolf King of New York,” Ford says. “Let’s go. We can pick up a cell phone and a pizza on the way back.”

I pull back, gazing up into his face. “A pizza? How can you think of food right now?”

“We have to eat, and you said you wanted pizza.”

“Weird optimistic me with no memories wanted a pizza. Real me wants Tums,” I mutter, “And a calzone, which is obviously superior to pizza because of the higher toppings to bread ratio. She would have wanted that, too, if she’d known the difference.”

He smiles and kisses my forehead. “I love you.”

It isn’t the first time he’s said it, but it’s the first time he’s said it in such a casual setting, and it hits differently. But in a good way. A really good way. My eyes are misty again as I grumble, “Yeah, me, too. A lot. I’m not sad about sleeping in a bed with you tonight instead of in a cramped bus seat.”

We start toward the door, Ford’s arm around my shoulders. “Same. And we’ll find a way to get through to Maxim.”

“And if we can’t, I’ll reach out to Agatha,” I say. “She has friends in high places. She might not be willing to back our fight herself, but I bet I can talk her into connecting us to people who are willing to stick their necks out to save an innocent woman’s life. Especially considering she’s the president of our most well-respected shifter university.”

Out in the hall, Ford hits the button to call the elevator. “Agreed. If I were one of the Alphas in power right now, I’d want to nip this in the bud, before important people are killed. At least that way, you save lives, and they’ll have to go to war anyway. They can’t let Hammer get away with this or every other deviant Alpha will follow in his footsteps. It’ll be anarchy.”

“Which is what he wants for some reason. But why?” I muse as we step into the car and hit the button for the ground floor. “There’s no way he has enough allies on his side to win a fight against the united packs. It’s like a chihuahua poking a gang of grizzly bears. It feels…dumb. And Hammer isn’t dumb.”

Ford makes a considering sound. “Unless he’s so pissed at your mother that he’s not thinking straight. Or he thinks Lost Moon will be easy to defend, even against a large force.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But it still feels like we’re missing something.”

“We’ll get a phone with internet capability, and I’ll do some poking around on the dark web tonight,” Ford says as we head through the lobby. “If Hammer’s been hiring mercenaries, there should be a trail. I don’t think he has enough money to hire the amount of people he’d need to hold his own against a united pack force, but maybe he’s come into some cash recently.”

My lips part, but I’m distracted before I can respond.

There’s another shifter in the lobby. I catch an oddly familiar scent a second before Ford does. A beat later, he’s pushing me down onto a couch at the edge of the lobby and whispering, “Keep your head down. We’ll assume it’s an enemy until we know otherwise.”

But it’s not an enemy. It’s one hell of a coincidence, a fact proven when the young guy in gray dress slacks and a pink button-down at the concierge’s desk turns and spots me across the lobby. His soothingly symmetrical features lift with wonder as he says, “Juliet? Is that really you?”

“Who the fuck is that?” Ford mutters beneath his breath, still poised to shove me to the ground and shield me with his body if necessary.

“It’s Chase,” I whisper, lifting an awkward hand in his direction. “My old boyfriend.”

SEVENTEEN

ford

I wantto hate the guy hugging on Juliet like she’s his long-lost best friend.

I want to believe he’s a selfish shit who didn’t care all that much when his girlfriend dropped off the face of the earth two years ago and was probably in bed with her best friend a week after she was declared missing. But that’s obviously not the case.

The guy is a fucking mess and so overjoyed to see Juliet that I can’t blow him off and rush her out of the lobby.

As much as I want to.

We have very important phone calls to make and lives to save. But this guy deserves an explanation. He clearly cared about Juliet and went through the hell of grieving a person he believed had been taken from him through foul play.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” Chase says, after Juliet’s given him the least horrific version of the “my father human trafficked me” story. Anger blazes in his pale blue eyes. “Your dad said you were overwhelmed by your course load and too homesick to stay at Pepperdine, but I could tell he was lying. When he stopped taking my calls, I drove up to Seattle and took the ferry over to Anderson Island to talk to him in person. I wanted to see for myself that you were safe at home like he said, but he wouldn’t let me onto your pack’s property. He sent two big guys out to threaten me. They said they’d make me disappear if I didn’t drop it. I went to the Alpha of Seattle for help, but he wasn’t willing to step in. He acted like he was afraid of your dad, even though his pack was five times the size of Hammer’s.”

“My dad’s a scary man,” Juliet says. “I’m so sorry he threatened you. And I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to let you know that I was okay when I finally got away from the people holding me prisoner. Things were so crazy. I was just focused on surviving to see tomorrow, not things from the past. Even the good things.”

Chase scoots closer on the couch they settled on once all the hugging was over and takes her hand, pressing it between both of his. “You have nothing to be sorry for.I’mthe one who should apologize. I should have kept looking for you, kept pushing for answers.” He shrugs uncomfortably. “But there was this stupid voice in my head that said maybe you had decided to ghost me. I knew from the moment we started dating that your pack wouldn’t like it, especially if it went on for too long or seemed like it was getting serious.” His plush lips twist in a wry smile. “Badger shifters don’t end up with wolf princesses, even ones who don’t have a wolf form. That’s not the way our world works.”

Juliet sighs. “No, it’s not. And my dad is determined to keep things that way.” She gives him an overview of the situation at Lost Moon before adding, “And we only have about twenty-four hours to stop him before he executes the president of the college on the quad.”

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