He hugs me so tightly, I almost can’t breathe; his arms are rock hard at my back. Leaning down close, he says softly, “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come back.”
Alarm bells go off in my mind. I step back from him and tilt my head, pretending to check my immovable hairdo to avoid looking him in the eye.“You’ve been gone for five years,” he says, suddenly pragmatic. “You might not feel the same way toward me that you did before you left.”How do you know what I felt for you? I almost snap.My memory drifts back to the day he knocked on my bedroom door, startling me with his presence in my house, startling me more with the announcement that my father signed a mating pact. Ashton and I barely knew each other; though we were both educated at the private academy all children of the Toronto pack attend, we weren’t friends. We barely spoke to each other before he approached my father.To this day, I’m still not sure what Ashton truly sought from our engagement. Maybe it was a rash decision made under the influence of a young, unrequited crush. He wanted a job from my father, so maybe Ashton thought a marriage would secure that position for him. Whatever the reason, I barely know this man standing in front of me, behaving like we’re long-separated lovers.My feelings for him haven’t changed. Because they never existed in the first place.“I thought you would have called off the mating pact by now,” I say, praying “hope” doesn’t replace a crucial word as I speak.“Never.” He shakes his head firmly and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together.Somehow, in the five years that I’ve been gone, completely cut off from communication with the pack, I’ve been involved in a grand romance with my fiancé, a man I barely know.“I appreciate that.” What else is there to say? “My mother would be humiliated.”“I wouldn’t do anything to embarrass your family. When they’ve already been through so much.” He cuts himself off and his pained expression stops just short of a wince.“It’s all right,” I reassure him. It’s not all right; I don’t like to be reminded that I’m a black sheep in a den of wolves. “I don’t want to do anything to embarrass them, either.”And I realize too late, as he puts his arm around my waist, that he could take that as a declaration that I won’t be breaking our engagement. That I will accept the transformation and stay with the pack for the rest of my life. I might as well have sworn fealty to him, with that remark.He leads me toward the dance floor, saying, “Come. We never had a chance to make our debut properly.”I’ve been home fewer than twenty-four hours and I’m already right back to the world I left behind. All I did by leaving was delay the inevitable. I was a fool for thinking I would ever truly leave the pack.My stomach roils as Ashton leads me onto the dance floor, where couples float and twirl to a waltz from a string quartet. I feel eyes on us from all the other pairs; he’s handsome, he’s suave, and he dances with such grace it extends to me. I tell myself that’s why everyone is staring, why I see so many smug faces and tight-lipped whispers happening all around us.But I’m not optimistic enough to believe it. They see Baily Dixon, who exploited an ancient rule to leave her pack. Who ran out on a mating pact, who rejected the transformation and in doing so made her family a subject of gossip and derision. They’re all wondering what I’ll do next to fuck up.I want to vomit, and the twirling of the waltz doesn’t help. I close my eyes and hold tightly to Ashton’s shoulder, praying for the music to finish. Mercifully, it does, and we step apart to politely applaud the quartet.I know an exit when I see one. I turn to Ashton to tell him I need to go out for some air, but before I can speak, I see the king striding toward me, his mouth bent in a mildly crooked smile.He stops in front of us and inclines his head toward me. “Miss Dixon.”He knows my name. Not only that, but he doesn’t even acknowledge Ashton standing beside me.“Pack Leader,” I whisper, curtseying.I keep my eyes downcast and see his hand, with the heavy royal signet ring, reaching for my own. He’s the king. I let him take it and rise, praying my palm isn’t as sweaty as I fear. The strings start up a tango.He doesn’t release my hand. “Will you honor me with a dance?”Nathaniel Frost, King of the Toronto pack, guides me smoothly from my fiancé’s side. It’s that easy for him to simply overwhelm me and render me helpless. It’s dizzying, almost exhilarating, definitely terrifying.“I haven’t tangoed often,” I manage to warn him as he pulls me far too close.“It isn’t my strong suit, either,” he quips, though his feet prove he’s lying as they somehow manage to avoid my clumsy ones. “Don’t expect any dips or fancy footwork.”I snort; I can’t help myself. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, that’s about ninety percent of the tango.”“You’re wrong,” he informs me. “And while we’re dancing, call me Nathan.”My mouth drops open. I quickly compose myself and try to shock my brain into remembering what, exactly, my body should be doing. Step, step, step, close. Step, step, step, close. Maybe all those dance lessons Mother forced us to take really were a practical choice. If Vivianne Dixon ever imagined that her daughter would be tangoing with the Pack Leader
“Please,” I whisper as his lips tease my jaw.“Grovel before your king,” he commands, and I fall to the floor with a cry as pain shocks through my knees. He offers me no comfort. “I said ‘grovel’.”He plants his shoe firmly on my shoulder and exerts steady pressure, until my burning skin meets the freezing marble. Then he strolls in a circle around me, every second of silence building my anticipation. What will he tell me to do next? What will he make me do next?And when, oh please, when will he make me do it? I can’t bear the wait, can’t stand the way the stone warms as it leeches the heat from my body.He kneels behind me and grips my hips, pulling them back, sliding my upper body along the floor with painful resistance. He grinds against me, still fully clothed, and I know my juices are smearing across the front of his trousers. He’s so hard and so big, and I’m totally at his mercy. Only a zipper and his self-control stand between us.He jerks a fistful of my hair and I let out a
Ryan, however, has changed. When I left, he was a chubby, baby-faced Black kid with a penchant for blue lipstick and metal band t-shirts with illegible fonts on them. He grew up into a broad-shouldered dad-type who, yes, is wearing a band t-shirt, but who is also comfortable cooking dinner at a stove with twelve burners.If they saw how people live outside the pack…“So, it’s a marriage of convenience, then? Just to dodge the Dave?” That’s a little depressing. “You know, I always thought you were gay, Ryan. I just thought you were afraid to come out.”“Oh, I am,” he answers without hesitation. “It’s not just a marriage of convenience for Hannah. She’s helping me out, too.”“And the fertility clinic helped us out, as well.” Hannah picks up her half-empty beer bottle and tips the neck toward me.“The gay dude and the asexual woman somehow had trouble conceiving,” Ryan says with mock regret.“Wow, I feel like an asshole for not knowing any of this,” I admit.“You’re the one who invoked t
“They are! I don’t even know what’s going on in the pack. I haven’t talked to anyone for five years. I come back and there’s all of this political scandal happening, and now my best friends are accusing me of being a spy or something.” This is too much. I rise from my stool. “You know what, I’m gonna pass on dinner. Thanks, though. You have a lovely home.”“Don’t be like that,” Hannah huffs.Ryan holds up a plate. “But it just got done.”I stop at the kitchen door. “Why do you even want me in your house if I’m so suspicious?”“Because you’re our friend, dummy.” Ryan puts the plate on the island. “But you’ve been gone for five years. You’re out of practice.”“Out of practice?”“The pack is a different now. If we don’t know who to trust, you don’t, either. And one stray word…” Hannah’s expression falls. “I’m not afraid you’re going to run out and betray us. I’m afraid that until you’ve been here longer than a week, you might get yourself—or someone else—in trouble without even knowing y
“…And that’s what they were talking about at the—Bailey!” Clare snaps, waving her hand in front of my face.“Sorry. Too many mimosas.” That’s a lie. I’m not even tipsy after two of them. I try to focus on what she was telling me. Something about renovations on her master bathroom. “You were saying something about how they couldn’t take a wall down?”“Are you okay?” Tara asks me with genuine concern.Do I admit to them that my head is all over the place after the ball? That I’m not sure where I belong in the pack? Because if my best friends don’t trust me after that, there’s no guarantee that my sisters will. Plus, their husbands don’t seem like big fans of the new king.And it’s impossible to feel like my sisters’ mates aren’t an invisible presence at the table with us.“I’m fine. I just…” I laugh and shrug. “I don’t really get the renovations thing. Or the domestic stuff. It’s not that I don’t care. I just can’t relate.”“Yet,” Clare reminds me. “Have you gotten an event planner? Lup
“It’s been great getting together,” I say, summoning up my best impression of our mother’s passive-aggression. “But I have to go.”I push my chair back and stand, and a crackle of energy pulls my attention to the restaurant’s doors.I feel him before I see him. It’s unnerving. But I look toward the door knowing that Nathan Frost will be there. And when our eyes meet as he enters, it’s clear that he feels my presence, too.Five years ago, I would ask my sisters if that magnetism were real or if I’m just imagining it. But I can’t do that now. I can’t trust that they won’t tell their mates on me.The maître d’ is leading Nathan in our direction. At least, the maître d’ is trying to lead; Nathan is actually a step ahead. It’s too late to avoid him. Our paths will cross.I don’t want to see my sisters’ reactions, so it doesn’t matter that I can’t tear my gaze away from Nathan’s. He doesn’t try, and I know I’m not imagining this anymore. I can’t walk away from the table because if I walk to
“Why wouldn’t they—”“Because they’re afraid that what you did will spread!” Mother snaps, loud enough to be overheard, so she immediately lowers her voice again. “You were the first werewolf in a hundred years to reject the transformation and invoke the Right of Accord. Everyone was terrified that you’d opened the floodgates. People wouldn’t speak to us because they were afraid of losing their young, too!”It never occurred to me that by invoking the Right, I might inspire other teenagers to take a break and consider their futures with the pack. I don’t see how it’s a bad thing, but I do see how my parents would interpret it that way.She isn’t done lecturing me. “You put your sisters’ futures at stake, as well.”“They did all right for themselves,” I say under my breath. I’m the youngest. They had already undergone the transformation and their mating pacts had been arranged. “And it’s not my job to live their lives for them.”“It’s your job to behave in the interests of the pack. No
I take a seat across the big coffee table from him, on the other sofa. I would rather chew my own foot off to escape a snare than get close to him. “Well, I’ll have to take your word for it. I didn’t have any contact with other werewolves while I was there.”His expression totally changes to one of utter mortification. He puts a hand to his chest. “Oh no, Bailey. I hope you don’t assume that I was accusing you of anything. I just wondered if you’d chosen to…try it out on your own.”“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” The thralls oversee the magic that lets us control whether we shift our forms on the night of the full moon. I have no idea how to accomplish the change without the ceremony. “It sounds like that would be stupid and dangerous.”Still, his sad, apologetic eyes seem so sincere. “I would have thought it very brave.”I don’t know how to respond to that, so I nod, and we sit in unbearable silence.“I think we should clear the air, Bailey.” His tone is gentle, oddly intimate