Page 23 of Sweetheart: Part One

“I wanted tokillher…” There was just the slightest echo of uncertainty to his voice, the faintest flicker of what might have been fear. “Just one more squeeze, and I canhearthe snap of her neck.”

I ran my tongue along my teeth, prodding the bond just enough that he'd feel me doing it.

“I can’t get it out of my head.” His voice dropped to a faint rasp.

Still, I waited.

“I think… I need help.”

And there it was.

More likely because he was impatient, and not because he'd give himself up so easily. The fact was, there was no way in hell Ebony would ever ask for help.

Fundamentally, he didn’t think anything was wrong with him at all—in fact, he thought I was the mad one for constantly trying to keep him in line.

A sneer finally cracked my expression. “Dovin?”

Dovin Lionard was a villain he’d played in a movie a few years back, and he was regurgitating lines from it. He was messing with me, and hecertainlydidn’t want help.

“Had to dig that one up.” His smile was, perhaps, more genuine than his usual.

Ebony played villains more often than not—made it easier for us to keep him out of the way of as many other actors as possible. Omegas, especially, as they were love interests to the heroes in almost all the movies we’d ever been in.

How the world would blanch if they knew he was worse than any character he'd ever plastered across the big screen.

“Didn’t dig enough,” I said. “Dovin didn'tthink.Heknew.”

The faint smile straightened to a line on Ebony’s face, and I’d be lying if I said that didn't bring me immense satisfaction. He was the best actor out of all of us at the end of the day, but for one skill: the prediction of behaviours out of the norm.

When he read his scripts he could nail every trait, every movement and tick; each burst of rage, or tone shift. But ask him to replicate what they'd do off the chartered course? He floundered. He’d stopped attending our improv classes a while ago.

It’s why we were sought after as a pack, because me, Rook, and Drake, were opposite to Ebony in nearly every way. Ebony delivered the script, and it was brilliant, terrifying, and everything the producers wanted. We delivered the flavour.

Improv was my strength, not his.

“What really happened with her?” I asked.

“I decided I didn't like her.”

“Why?”

“Her voice was irritating.”

“Liar.”

This time his grin was wider. “Am I?”

Right. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

Ebony was trick after trick after trick, and he found satisfaction in discovering buttons he could push that we had no choice but to react to. Living with him was like living with a beast that never slept. One that constantly tried to smash down the walls of the cage that held it. I couldn’t blink or look away for one moment, or it found another weakness.

As pack lead, and his brother—and the one always vying to protect the rest of the world from him—I was target number one.

He hated not having power.

“Do you want her here?”

He leaned back just slightly as if caught off guard by that question, but he didn't answer straight away. As the seconds passed, he cocked his head and this time I thought the uncertainty might be real.

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