Page 10 of Forbidden Pregnant Mate

I opened my mouth, then closed it, suddenly very conscious of all the attention directed at me. “We knew eachother when we were younger,” I said. “We didn’t get along particularly well.”

“But—”

“Do you remember how you and Drew Blake from school don’t get along?” Georgia asked Elle. “It’s kind of like that.”

“Oh,” Elle said. “As in, it’s more fun to annoy him than it is to get along?”

Georgia’s lips pulled upward, and she glanced at me briefly. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

“Not gonna lie, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Klyte rendered mute before,” Evelyn said, laughing. “I think you at least managed to put him in his place.”

“He deserved it,” I said.

We reached the outdoor bar. Elle waved and ran back inside the house. Evelyn slipped behind the counter, bringing up several bottles and clanking them onto the counter.

“Klyte’s harmless,” Georgia said to me. “Good guy, all in all.”

I gave a noncommittal grunt, focusing all of my attention on the drinks Evelyn was making. It was easier to focus on that than to think about how good Klyte looked shirtless, or how my pulse had doubled when he’d gotten close to me, or how much my wolf liked his scent.

“He’s…interesting,” I finally replied.

I wasn’t about to admit how tempted I’d been to kiss him when we were that close. But any attraction I’d felt for him was undone by how annoyed I’d been. I knew what he’d been trying to do. He’d thought if he called my bluff and I refused to kiss him, then he could pester me until I told him why I’d really cometo Brixton and currently had no plans to leave. But if he thought he could pry those secrets out of me that easily, he had another thing coming.

What annoyed me more than anything else, though, was the fact that I’d been tempted to kiss him, anyway. Just because I wanted to. But that wasn’t something I ever planned to do. Not with Klyte.

There was one time when I might have, back when we were teenagers. There’d been a time when I thought something more might develop between us, and I wasn’t opposed to the idea. But then, he just stopped talking to me. For over a year, until he left to join the Silver Wolves, he’d simply stopped talking to me altogether except when strictly necessary.

At first, I’d just been confused. Then I’d been hurt. Eventually, I was just angry about it. So if Klyte thought he could just come in here and get answers to questions I hadn’t even told my dad, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

***

I was still annoyed when Andi dropped me off at Dad’s house. I supposed if I was planning on sticking around, I’d have to look for my own place. But I would worry about that later.

Dad was lounging in the living room, sipping a beer and watching baseball on TV when I stepped in.

“I never understood why you liked baseball,” I said, flopping down in one of the plush chairs. “Seems boring.”

“Good way to turn my brain off,” Dad grunted. “How was spending time with the girls?”

“It was fine,” I said.

Dad had always been good at reading me, and his eyebrows rose at my tone. “Something happen?”

“Oh, nothing really,” I said dismissively. “Klyte and Alek crashed our lake session, that’s all.”

He chuckled. “Klyte always did know how to get under your skin, didn’t he?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I mumbled, then glanced over at him. “Why did you decide to train him?”

Dad let out a puff of air. “Because he was a good kid and I saw a lot of myself in him. I liked his spirit. One of the first times I met him, I was walking to come get you from school. Saw him fighting a group of kids and getting his ass kicked. I broke up the fight and asked him what had happened. Apparently, he’d been trying to protect some other kid from getting bullied. So I took pity on him and started giving him some fighting lessons. When I realized he had potential, I started training him more seriously.”

I listened to all of this with some amazement. “I’ve never heard that story before,” I said.

“He doesn’t like talking about it,” Dad said, taking a swig of beer. “Not because he’s embarrassed, but because he doesn’t see it as anything special—just the right thing to do. Which was one of the reasons I liked him in the first place. Klyte’s a smartass, that’s for sure. But he’s also got a good heart to him.”

I chewed my lip, not saying anything as I rolled Dad’s words in my head. He wasn’t necessarily wrong, now that I thought about it. Klyte was a smartass, which was usually how he presented himself, but there were other times I’d forgotten about because Klyte had let them slide under the radar as if they were of absolutely no importance. There was that time when he came over to help re-shingle our old house without Dad asking.And every time I had a bad day and Klyte was around to notice it, he’d always leave and come back with chocolate or one of my other favorite snacks, saying he’d eaten too much and asking me if I wanted any of it.

The more I thought about it, the more times I remembered when Klyte had gone out of his way to do something nice, and not just for me. He liked helping people. He also liked to get under your skin if he knew how.

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