Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Paxton cut me a sideways look.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think you’ve been locked away in your ivory temple too long, Princess Priestess. Only reason you can say all that bullshit with a straight face.”
My smirk froze on my lips. “What?”
Paxton laughed in my face. “Stand up for myself? Use my voice? Condescending bullshit that only an epsilon would say.”
“Mmmhhm,” Nia sounded, earning a glare from me. She shuffled off whistling like she didn’t say anything.
“Let me tell you what it’s like in the real world, Volana. Take you on a little tour in the life of an omega,” Paxton hissed, dropping his voice. “In the real world, an omega who says no to an alpha is punished—hard. They’re made an example of so that they never get it into their heads to say no again.
“When I was eight, I refused to do Liam Maddox’s homework, so he commanded me to jump off the top of the jungle gym.”
My eyes popped. The little sadist made him do what!?
“I broke both legs,” Paxton dropped without inflection. “They healed too fast and not properly, so the nurse had to break them again. And before you ask, no, she didn’t give me pain meds.”
I winced. Just because wolves healed fast didn’t mean we didn’t feel pain. To have both your legs broken twice in the same day, I couldn’t imagine going through that at only eight years old.
“Afterward I complained to the teacher, and you want to know what the bastard did? He punished me for disrespecting an alpha, and made me stay late every day cleaning the school with the janitor for the rest of the year.”
“Paxton, I—”
“When I was ten,” he gritted, plowing on. “Stacy Franklin had a crush on me and decided I was her boyfriend. She stole my first kiss under command, but when her daddy found out she was kissing an omega boy, she got scared and said I forced myself on her.
“I was kicked out of school the next day.”
My stomach churned. I thought I heard every variation of every horrible confession from my time in the temple, but sexually assaulted and falsely accused before your eleventh birthday? That was a new level of awful.
“When I was eighteen, a couple of alpha boys stole a rich guy’s car and crashed it. I saw the accident and ran to help them. I pulled them out of the twisted fucking heap and dragged them clear before it blew up.
“And how did they thank me?” he spat. “They forced me to walk into the police station and say I stole the car of a man I’ve never met in my life. With the car burned up and their bruises and bones all healed, it was my word against theirs. Guess who the cops believed?”
I didn’t have to guess.
“And then when I was twenty-three,” Paxton whispered, leaning in close, “I was beaten within an inch of my life and thrown out of my pack because Luame gave me an honor that a worthless fish like me didn’t deserve—my pack alpha’s words, not mine.
“So don’t walk in here, looking down on me, and saying I need to stand up for myself. Omegas learn early when to fight, and when to survive, and Badr’s not the fight I’m gearing up for.” He jerked his chin at the guy. “Believe it or not, he’s one of the rare good ones. He’s never forced me to do something I don’t want to do.”
“No, he just knocks you out and leaves you drooling on the floor,” I shot back.
“Oh?” He arched a brow. “Oh, I see what’s going on.” Inexplicably, a smirk spread across his lips.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You were worried about me. You got yourself all twisted up in knots last night, stressing and worried and wondering if I was okay. Aww.” He cuffed my chin. “How cute.”
“Excuse— I—I didn’t—!” Outrage strangled my tongue tighter than arousal. Blast my fucking wolf! She liked him smirking at me with that wicked, wolfish grin. She liked it a lot. “I didn’t say any of that!”
“Look, yummy, you don’t have to worry about me.”
I gaped at him. Yummy? Did he just call me yummy? If I thought my wolf liked the smirk, it was nothing compared to her reaction to that nickname. My body flooded with such heat, my core melted and dampened my panties.
“I can take care of myself, and I can damn sure take a little punch,” he said, erasing so much distance between us a gnat didn’t have space to shift into a grain of sand between our chests. “But if it’s that important to you that I tell people what I want, then let me tell you, and make this very clear, I am more than interested in those sexual benefits”—Paxton kissed the shell of my ear, making me whimper shamefully—“so I’ll take that truce and I’ll take you—I mean, it hard.”