Page 27 of The Piece You Stole

Only the best for Claudine Olio.

In short, a spoiled pack princess whose parents gave her everything she wanted until they realized what kind of monster they’d created and tried to control the beast, but it was far too late for that. What Claudine Olio wanted, Claudine Olio got.

Her beauty is still brilliant. Time hasn’t changed that. But it doesn’t dazzle me the way it once did. My focus lingers on her scent—spicy cinnamon and bitter orange. The impact of that smell hits me hard enough to bruise.

I’d prepared myself for seeing her again, but her scent?

Something in me twists. Hard.

I fucking hate myself that even now, there’s still something inside me that will always respond to her. That she will always be my mate.

Conscious that Leandro is staring into my face as Claudine sinks into the seat beside mine, still apologizing for being late, I smile and nod as I lower one hand below the table to hide the prickle of claws sliding free from the tips of my fingers.

My wolf snarls at me to shove the woman beside us away.Faraway. She isnotours, and he wants nothing to do with her.

I’d expected my wolf to settle down, to lean toward her, draw in her scent and return to the calm, in-control wolf I’d been before. I’d expected her to heal us. Not this.

Is my wolf so feral now he no longer recognizes his own mate?

I recall my response to Saige, a woman with haunting beauty, a ravaged throat, and shadowed blue eyes that felt like she was staring right into my soul. Her beauty isn’t as bright and dazzling as Claudine Olio, but it—she—grabbed me by the throat and forced me to pay attention.

A small, soft, female hand closes around my arm. As I study it, I envision savaging it before I tossed it—and the remains of the woman into the room’s corner. And then I turn to Claudine with a smile I hope is convincing. “Yes?”

She blinks. “I said, what about the Lucas house near the golf course? It’s the only one with a heated outdoor pool, and I’ve always wanted one.”

Should I have been paying more attention to the unceasing flow of words pouring out of her pink rosebud lips? Yes. But it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. The conversation couldn’t have jumped this far, this quickly, not when she sat down less than five minutes ago.

This is just Claudine.

To her, it makes perfect sense that I would walk out of a cheating seventeen-year-old girl’s life, later come to the sudden realization I had made a terrible mistake, and return, expecting to pick up where we left off twelve years later.

“The house near the golf course?” I repeat, wanting to be sure, trying to ignore the hand burning a hole through my shirt and to bare skin.

My wolf doesn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.

Nodding, she finally peels her hand away to pick up her wine from the table.

I let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Only for her to drag her chair a little closer so the curve of her breast presses against my arm.

My wolf rakes at me because he wants to get toher.

If I don’t get control of myself soon, the duck swimming in orange sauce won’t be the only dead thing at this table.

“Yes,” Claudine says, leaning even more of her breast on my arm. “I thought maybe we could—Dariel?”

I put my glass down on the table and push my chair back from the table before rising. Turning my back to her, I head for the door.

“Where are you going?” Claudine calls after me in her high, sweet, cultured voice.

Too high, too fucking sweet. False.

Not like…

“This was a mistake.” Whatever is wrong with my wolf, he’s not going feral because he misses his mate. The only thing I feel for this woman is rage.

“So, you’d rather share a woman with those friends of yours?” Father's voice makes me halt feet from the doorway.

---