Page 30 of The Forbidden Wolf

“Your loyalty to your family is admirable.” He grinned, biting his lip with his own protruding fangs. “Exactly what I’d hoped for in a mate…”

Rage bubbled in my chest. “We are not mates.” I shoved the knob into his ribs. “Not now. Not ever. Go away, or you’ll have nothing left to mate with.”

Sebastian tilted his head. “Are you threatening yourself or my…?”

“If I meant myself, I would have said no one. I’m a person, not a thing.”

“I know that, Elyse.” He grasped the doorknob and pushed it from his side. “And I promise you I have no intention of entering this room uninvited, so please just open the door all the way so we can speak without so much sweating?”

I scoffed. “This is making the Alpha Heir sweat?”

“I’m not ashamed to admit another Alpha Heir can test my limits.” He lifted his elbow like a chicken wing, revealing a damp spot in the armpit of his white shirt.

A musky wave of pheromones washed over my nose, and I hid my face behind the door, gagging somewhat melodramatically. “My dude, if that’s your idea of seduction…”

He lowered his arm with a cheeky little grin. “Your dude? Then you admit—”

“It’s an expression of condescension.” Behind the door, I bit my lip, punishing my flesh for some involuntary reactions it was having to the combination of his pheromones and the lingering effects of the Elder Wolf’s call to primal action. I licked away the blood and then blurted out, “Have you really never mated?”

Sebastian’s resistance faltered, and my weight plunged the knob into his stomach. He grunted so pitifully that I momentarily forgot myself and yanked back the door. He leaned against the frame, clutching just below the right side of his ribs.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “That was too far. All of it.”

Sebastian shook the curls from his eyes and looked fervently into mine. “Do I smell like I’ve mated?”

My cheeks burned. His pheromones said no, but I found that hard to believe. I’d never met a male over the age of eighteen whose pheromones hadn’t changed to reflect a mated status regardless of what the paperwork might say. No one spoke of it. The rules were just different for them. But Sebastian… well, he smelled like he could light the black flame candle and wake the Sanderson sisters from the dead.

“You do not,” I admitted.

“Because I’ve been waiting for you.”

I flattened my brows. “We’ve known each other two days.”

“For my fated.” Sebastian didn’t break eye contact. “I knew I would find you, and that when I did, I would give myself to you as wholly as you would give yourself to me, and the joy of our perfect union would be so far beyond any temporary pleasure I might find—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I held up my hands. “Let’s just, uh, lower our expectations for a first encounter, first of all, and then I’m going to need you to explain how agreeing to mate with my sister counts as waiting for your fated? Which I am not, by the way.”

Sebastian growled and pushed his fingers through his thick hair. The veins along his forearm bulged, and it was stupid, really, why anyone would feel the urge to lick another person’s circulatory system…

“I was never on board with mating to merge our packs, but I am not Alpha yet, so my opinion didn’t really matter. But then I met you. And I felt so triumphant that I came straight home and woke my parents and told them I had met you and could not wait a moment longer—”

“To marry my sister?” I raised one eyebrow.

Sebastian dragged his fingers down his face. “To marry you, Elyse.”

We both inhaled sharply, realizing we had used a word we weren’t supposed to. There may have been some similarities in how we conducted our ceremonies, but wolves did not get married. We did not become husbands and wives. We mated, plain and simple, for one purpose only: making sure we didn’t die out.

Flustered, I crossed my arms over my chest, which felt terribly exposed in the single piece of clothing I now owned. It was just my luck to get kidnapped in a pink dress.

I shook my head. “But what in the name of Chann and Marrak would make you think I was Kiana? Did you get to see a picture? Because we had no idea what you might look like.”

“No.” He gave a small rueful smile. “I knew nothing either. Certainly not that the Bronx has two Alpha Heirs.”

“You clocked me as an Alpha Heir? Ha! Now I know you’re nuts.”

Sebastian frowned. “But you are an Alpha Heir. That was obvious from the start. So of course I assumed. And I wasn’t wrong.”

“Uh-uh. Nope. The Bronx has one Alpha Heir. Kiana. I’m just the spare.”

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