Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
People are saying hello to us. Cain makes introductions. I wish he wouldn’t. I say hello as politely as I can, and do my level best not to show any annoyance at the way every social interaction prevents me from eating my bacon while it is still hot. This isn’t easy.
Cain seems to be happy, more or less. He carries plenty of conversations on while I eat.
All is well, until a very particular woman approaches. I feel her before I see her. Her energy is a lot like Cain’s. Dominant. Impressive. A little scary.
“Not now, Isabella,” he says.
That piques my interest. Cain has been nice to everybody. But he’s practically rude to this woman.
“Oh, but I have to have the honor of meeting your mate. The woman off the streets who became the most important female in the entirety of the pack.”
I swallow my mouthful and look at her, not sure what to do. She’s very pretty and very mad at me, and I guess I know why. She’s jealous that I have Cain and she doesn’t. But that’s not my fault.
“You have beautiful skin,” she says to me.
“Thank you,” I reply, nervous.
“Must be the effects of your mud pack,” she smirks at me, her tone indicating that it’s an unkind dig and not a joke designed to diminish the tension in the room. “Where you come from, is it common to skulk around in filth? Ow!”
I stare, shocked as Abel smacks her quite literally sideways.
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, Isabella.”
If anybody finds that to be a strange interaction, they don’t seem to react. I’d say a good seventy-five percent of the pack here are as focused on breakfast as I am. Maybe they are my people after all.
This interaction is drawing eyes, though. I can feel people looking at us, judging the entire situation. This woman is challenging us all. I kind of admire her, in a reluctant sort of way. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to not worry about making a scene.
Just as I have that thought, she sets about truly making one hell of a scene.
“I’m just saying what other people won’t, because they’re scared of Cain. This pack has needed a breeding alpha pair for years. He’s refused to take any of us as his mates, because we’re not good enough, and now he’s fucking some completely random double dilute who might not even produce actual pack members. She has a fifty-fifty chance of spawning something basically human. What’s the point?”
Isabella doesn’t seem to be afraid of pain. Abel’s blow would have flattened me physically and emotionally, but she has already shaken it off. She is a very striking young woman, a little older than me, but with so much more presence. Her eyes flash with intensity, and her thick raven locks fly with defiance as I feed another stick of crispy bacon into my mouth.
Now people are really paying attention.
“She’s a puppy,” Isabella continues. “She’s domesticated. She’s cute, and she’d be a fine mate for one of the deltas, but she’s not alpha mate material, and everybody here knows it.”
Now I sip my hot chocolate, hoping that it makes me appear unbothered, even though I am actually extremely bothered.
Abel doesn’t just smack her again. This time he picks her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and spanks her curvy rump hard enough to make her squeal.
Every eye in the room is on me now, and the silence is so intense that the sound of my chewing seems like the loudest noise that has ever been made by anybody ever.
“I am sorry,” Cain says to me. “That was absolutely unacceptable…”
“I think I’d like to go,” I say as politely as I can,
“You may go up to our room,” Cain says. “I have a few things to address here. Are you okay to get there yourself?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Cain
I wait until Kira is out of earshot before unleashing my fury on this ungrateful pack of mongrels.
“It has been some time since our last conclave, so perhaps it has been forgotten,” I say, addressing the rest of the pack, sans Abel, Isabella, and of course, Kira. I am not pleased with how she has been treated. Abel defended her honor, but with past alphas’ mates, that sort of talk would have resulted in a reaction from all present.
The fact that they stood and stared instead of setting on Isabella and making it clear her behavior was inappropriate tells me that they have not accepted Kira, and that is not acceptable to me.
“Who an alpha selects as his mate is not a subject for debate, nor is it subject to the approval of the pack. I don’t answer to you. You answer to me.”
My voice is relatively calm, but underneath the controlled tone is a rage that is beginning to simmer ever closer to the surface. My protective instincts toward Kira are fully developed. I sound like a tyrant, but I do not care. I would enact all manner of tyranny if it meant keeping my mate safe and happy.