Page 70 of Sweetheart: Part One

Was he in shock?

He kind of looked like it, though he was gathering himself quickly. “Where is it?” he growled.

“You’ll have to win it back another way.”

He stared at me, eyes glittering as if my words truly mattered. I saw the flash of fury, his grip tensing where he held me, and my lungs turned to stone.

There was nothing in this world I wouldn’t believe him capable of.

Then he he shifted back, gaze recalculating.

He…wasa rule follower, then. He would respect the game I’d set.

Another laugh—this one much more manic—bubbled up as I realised I’d baited him into this, and truly hadn’t known the answer.

Desperate fucking idiot.

“Why did you have a cleaving iron in your room?” I asked, needing to shift him further from whatever had just possessed him. “And why does it lookused?”

His smile was quite genuine, and in that it was terrifying.

“The alpha whousedthat was on his knees before me as I forced him to cleave from his pack.”

I shuddered at those words. They were dark. Impossible. Sick. I could see the victory dancing in his eyes as he said them.

He was broken, and I shouldn’t find that beautiful. Yet that, it seemed, was what the universe had destined me for. So when Ebony kissed me again, pressing his tongue between my parted lips, exploring my mouth like a man starving, I groaned, wrapping my legs around his waist. I sank into the moment as if there were no others.

As if there was no pack, lurking on the other end of a bond, their claim already staked.

There was no threat.

No pain.

No hiding behind scent blockers and contact lenses.

Just me and the alpha fate had decided I belonged to.

And that was enough.

Until the kiss broke and his breath was warm against my ear. “I’m not signing you, little beta.”

I drew back, still captivated by his storm-cloud eyes. I swallowed, trying to fix my expression, as if he wasn’t crushing my last hope into a million pieces.

I forced a smile on my face—as if it meant nothing at all. “Then I guess you’ll never get it back.”

TWENTY

ROOK

I slipped down to the office in the dead of night.

Madness gripped me; an instinct I couldn’t shake.

Vex would be gone tomorrow.

But I wasn’t done.

I couldn’t bear the idea that she was going to leave this house the victor. She’d rejected me, threatened me, ignored me, and then… last night.

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