Page 43 of The Forbidden Wolf

“Four moons.” Yara set the diaper-like bandage aside. “It is Friday morning. Would you like some water?”

I nodded, and Yara helped me sit up against a mountain of pillows, carefully keeping the comforter tucked under my armpits because I wore nothing underneath. She handed me a glass of water from the bedside table, and I greedily drank it all down. With each slurp, a dull pain throbbed in the hollow behind my ear and jaw, but other than that, I felt shockingly reinvigorated. There were some benefits to not being human, after all.

I touched the tender spot and felt smooth new skin. “What happened?”

“Their Beta attacked you, and then the whole pack fled. Don’t touch that yet.” Yara tugged my hand away from the wound. “You’ll have to ask my Bastian if you want more details. He made sure I was locked in the bunker during the whole affair.” She smiled placidly but also somehow a little sarcastically.

I raised one eyebrow. “The Plaza Hotel has a bunker?”

“We do.” She motioned upward with her eyes to the penthouse level I presumed. “That’s where they’ve stored the Beta for now.”

My other eyebrow joined the first. “They took him alive?”

“We follow the rules of engagement here in Manhattan,” Yara took the empty glass from my hands. “Even when others do not.”

The weight of my father’s crime sank me into my nest of pillows. I stared up at the domed ceiling, wishing I could just go back to sleep. Forever. I didn’t know my family at all anymore. I was pretty sure I didn’t really have a family anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know what possessed Father. Is Mateo… is he…?”

“He will make a full recovery. In fact…” Yara placed the glass on the table and tapped a cream-colored card envelope lying there. “He wanted you to have this.”

“Me? Why?” I shook my head. “We barely know each other.”

Yara laughed softly. “That’s very important to you, isn’t it? Being known?”

“I guess.” I eyed her warily. “Why? What did Sebastian tell you?”

“Nothing. He only asked if I had been bothered that Max didn’t really know me on our mating night.

I looked down at the same comforter under which Sebastian had intended to mate with Kiana. At least the rose petals were all gone.

“Were you?” I asked. “Bothered?”

“Of course. I was sent to him as part of an agreement with my home pack in Puerto Rico, with only a matronly helpmaid for company. If it weren’t for her, I might have gotten on a different plane! That’s how unjust I felt it all was.”

I bit at a flap of loose skin on my very chapped lower lip. “But you feel differently now?”

Yara shook her head. “No. It was terribly unjust, and for months, Max and I resented each other. I wanted to go home. He wanted to run free. But then…”

“Sebastian came.” I tried not to roll my eyes. I had heard versions of this story a dozen times before, always to justify rushing young wolves into mating without searching for their fated. The first pup changes everything, they promised. Love at first sight. You’ll see.

“No.” Yara snorted. “That boy was a stubborn romantic before he ever existed. Max and I have often said that Bastian waited until his absence made us fall in love.”

“Huh? How?” I sat up straighter, unable to resist a good plot twist.

Yara folded her elegant fingers together in her lap. “Max and I had one job, as the pups today say. But we couldn’t do it. Our fathers became quite angry after a year, accusing us of purposefully sabotaging the alliance. It became the two of us against the world.” She paused, watching the rain patter on the window. “When we finally became three, we promised things would be different for our son.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “And yet…”

“Here we are. I know.” Yara offered an apologetic smile. “We tried. We gave him four years to travel the world and search for his one true love—with the caveat that if he did not find her in that time, he would return home and settle down by the time he turned twenty-five. And so he did, but nobody in our pack suited him, so when your father broached the idea of an alliance, forged by a single dual heir…”

“He gave up.” My gaze drifted to the window and the spookily muted mid-morning sky. I couldn’t decide if I felt for sorry for Sebastian or even more frustrated by him. He could have stayed gone. He should have stayed gone. Gods, I wished he’d stayed gone.

“He accepted his duty,” Yara said. “And now he’s learned one of life’s greatest lessons.” She touched her fingertips to my chin. “Sometimes what we seek is right in front of us.”

“But I’m not…” My face fell into the palm of her hand. “I’m not his fated. I’m sorry. I don’t know why he thinks that. I don’t feel—”

Yara’s fingers stiffened against my cheeks, and I cringed, expecting her to rear back and strike me for my accusation against her son. But instead, she let out a guttural moan and toppled backward across my knees. Screaming, I lunged forward and grasped her thrashing arms as Sebastian had done in the Palm Court. She tossed her head from side to side, eyes rolling white. Froth appeared on her lips as the moaning phased into an agonized howl.

---