Page 135 of The Piece You Stole

DARIEL

The bottom of the garden should have been far enough.

It would have been if moans hadn’t followed me to the darkest corner.

I should be keeping an eye out for any sign of Rylan through the laptop security system because he’s alive. Hours spent clicking through news reports after news reports failed to deliver any news Kade hadn’t already shared, namely that Rylan’s private land was now an expensive charred bit of land, and firemen had discovered several wolf bodies when they’d arrived to put out the fires.

One of those bodies could have been Rylan Treveiler, but my instincts warn me he’s out there plotting his attack. We must have wiped out half of his pack, but he’s alive, and he’s not going to let that stand. And we have Saige. His mate—if I can believe what Saige said. No alpha will let his mate go. No alpha but me, apparently.

Another soft moan floats in the wind.

The first nearly drove me to get up from the laptop, strip off my clothes, and follow Kade into Aden’s room because I knew what Aden was doing to make Saige moan like that. I knew exactly what I would walk in and find.

Saige, naked, laid out like an offering on Aden’s bed as he feasted between her thighs.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I rub the heels of my hand against my closed lids as my cock throbs at the thought of what she might taste like, of how it might feel to have her hands clenched in my hair as she moaned out my name.

Pull yourself together, Dariel.

I’d thought I could shut my ears to what was going on in Aden’s room.

I could ignore Saige using my name as a safe word.

I could just about ignore the soft moans she made as Aden tasted her.

Barely.

But I could not ignore the hungry gasps and groans as Kade slid his cock into her ass.

I had to get out before I followed them into the bed.

Kade cuts off a groan, the sound overly loud in the dark garden.

I twist my head toward the house, take a step, and then force myself to stop.

I plant my feet.

Fuck, Kade hasn’t made that sound since Monica. And Iknowthat he’s close. That being inside Saige is almost too much for him to take. He’d barely started pushing into her before I walked away. He shouldn’t be so close to coming already. Not after he’d already come minutes before.

Feeling—knowing—that my place is there, that I could be sharing that bed with them if I hadn’t fumbled my apology in one of the worst ways, is torture.

She snarled back at me. I hadn’t expected her anger after my wolf had lunged at her. Twice. Monica had been so terrified after I’d done the same just once that she’d kept her distance from me for nearly a week. Coming face-to-face with me should have sent Saige running from me.

But that hadn’t been the biggest surprise. Saige had defended Kade—protectedhim the way I would have. Protected him from me.

No one has ever protected Kade but me and Aden.

I should have apologized properly. Not just for the way I’d treated her but for Leandro, who evidently had a death wish for daring to touch her.

“She’s ours,” I snarled in his face as I pinned him to the wall beside the front door. “Come near what is ours again, and I will rip your arms and legs off.”

I yanked open the front door and shoved him out of it.

And then it hit me what I’d said.

What I’d done.

I’d claimed Saige, and it had felt…right.

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