Page 39 of The Piece You Stole

No.I narrow my eyes. His whole goddamn face is flushed. All rosy and red, like an alcoholic. And there I was, handing him the bottle for him to drink more?

You blind fucking idiot.

“I’m not that bad,” Aden mutters.

Shaking my head, I turn back to Dariel.

“We need to talk. All of us. And then you need to make a call.”

“We can talk here.”

Dariel gives Aden a significant look. “No, we can’t. We need three working brains, not two and a half.” Turning his back on Aden’s yell of outrage, he grips Leandro’s shoulder and shoves him out of the room. A heavy thud confirms he wasn’t even close to being gentle. “I’ll wait outside in the car. Two minutes. After that, I’ll assume that I’m doing this on my own.”

I watch him go, a taunting smile curving my lips. “Running to the rescue of a girl you couldn’t give two shits about a few days ago?”

Leandro’s lips part.

Dariel shoves him even further down the hallway, and he disappears from view. “Two minutes.”

I let my taunting smile fall away since Dariel isn’t biting. Not even a little. Which means he’s serious. Really serious about this.

“He goes on a family reunion and comes back, looking to play hero,” I breathe. “Something must have happened.”

But what?

Aden circles my arm with one hand and tugs. “Let’s go.”

I plant my feet. “And we’re just supposed to forget he’s the reason she ran in the first place, or that he was getting ready to rip your throat out? And mine?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Aden says, his voice low, persuasive. “He knows more than we do, and Saige needs us. She needsallof us.”

I snort. “I’d say she could do without the guy with the feral wolf inside him.”

He drags me to the door. “Now I know you’re just arguing for the sake of it. You don’t like that he knows what we don’t.”

My wolf snarls, but I don’t fight Aden because he’s right. Idon’tlike that Dariel has swooped in like some kind of fucking hero. I’ll take the help, but I don’t have to like it. “And the next time he tries to rip your head off?”

“Well, from what we just observed, it looks like he’ll be going for the brother first. While he’s busy ripping Leandro apart, we can take the opportunity to run.”

I choke out a laugh. “Right. And the mate? You think that’s what he went to do? Rip her apart? Fuck her?”

Halfway down the hallway, Aden releases me and disappears into Greg’s black and red bedroom, a space I don’t dare enter. It still carries enough of Saige’s sweet jasmine scent that if I walk in there, I’ll want to wallow in that bed. For hours. White fabric hits me in the chest. I grab the t-shirt before it falls but don’t put it on.

Aden emerges from the room with a shrug. “Don’t know. But it looks like it didn’t help him regain control of his wolf.”

“So, he went to fix his wolf and when he got there, his wolf reminded him that actually, he much preferred the girl he was so eager to rip to pieces?” I snort.

Dariel, you are seriously fucked up.

“Looks like,” Aden hedges. “Whatever happened, we’ll deal with it after we get Saige back.”

We jog down the stairs and into the destroyed bar that has seen more wolf fights in the last week than it has in the entire four years we’ve owned the place.

“Maybe it’s a good thing his mate didn’t fix him,” Aden says.

I glance at him. “Why not?”

And what the fuck did this mate do to him that he would not only walk away from her but never speak of her again?

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