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)
My jaw cracked, hanging open as a reply stuttered through my brain before making it to my mouth. Since when did men talk like this? Had I missed the entire era of men getting sexy as hell while I was locked away playing princess priestess?!
“B-b-but—” I felt my badass status burning up and flushing down the drain, never to be found or scented again. “But what about Castor?” I blurted. “All of a sudden you’re okay with porking your homicidal fiancée?”
Paxton chuckled. “Twelve hours ago I wasn’t. I was fighting my wolf harder than I ever have in my life, but that was before it spread through the omega wing that you saved Nia from an alpha.”
I stilled, sliding a sideways glance to Nia, who was in a corner talking with her friends. “What do you know about that?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “Only that after I was forced to take my nap, they got tired of torturing you, and decided to torment the fish, and even though you were hurt and messed up, you came to Nia’s rescue.”
I just nodded. If that’s all Nia chose to share, I wasn’t going to fill in the blanks.
“Not the first time they’ve treated omegas like party favors,” Paxton growled. “But it is the first I’ve ever heard of an epsilon risking herself to save one of us. And of all the epsilons in Wolf Nation... it was you.”
Still, I said nothing as his gaze turned assessing.
“I don’t know why you killed Castor, but it occurs to me that an evil, twisted sociopath with a crater where her soul should be, doesn’t go around saving omega girls she barely knows.” The finger sending shivers up someone’s thigh was his, and the odd sensations it was causing in my stomach was all me. “You had a reason for killing Castor. I’m sure of that now. I’m also sure I can wait until you’re ready to tell me. But I’m not so sure I can wait another second to bend you over and take you like a wild animal.”
I’d never been happier to be Black than I was right then. No one could see me blushing.
“Truce,” he whispered into my ear. “We’ll seal it with a kiss.”
Unbidden, my lips puckered and my eyes fluttered closed.
Something bonked me on the nose. I opened and saw it falling. Quick reflexes snatched it out of the air as Paxton strolled off laughing. Lying on my palm was a Hershey’s chocolate caramel kiss.
“Soooo...”
I wiped away the smile that snuck onto my lips. “What?” I snapped at an approaching Nia. Her knowing grin pissed me off even more.
“Did that go the way you thought it would?”
I flashed her an obscene gesture and walked off to the tune of her howling laugh. As good as it was to hear her laughing after her ordeal, I wanted to kick her in the throat for doing it at my expense.
The answer was no, that did not go the way I thought it would, but whose fault was that? I picked Paxton out as the weak one. The one I could exploit. And part of that, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, was due to my own prejudices about omegas. Of course the omega had to be the weak one in a group of alphas. Of course he was eager for any crumbs of affection, because he wasn’t going to get it anywhere else.
Well, that shockingly slick, seductive wolf just threw my stereotypes back in my face hard, and it was... sexy.
Yes, okay! It was fucking sexy, and not just my horndog wolf thought so. That kind of in-your-face, take-charge confidence was my weakness all day, which was not good.
I wanted my fates under control, but I could not go to bed with them. I couldn’t complete the bonds. Every woman knows you have all the power in a relationship when he’s chasing you. You have none once you’re caught.
I went straight to the window to put in my order. Just to give me something to do other than sit around listening to everyone whisper about me, and they were whispering. I heard comments about my stolen angora sweater dress, and matching blue boots. I heard them whisper about Hall, if I killed him, and who’d I go after next. I heard Castor on a hundred lips.
But what I didn’t hear was a single word about Mason, Nia, or what my fates and I interrupted the night before. Even though the omegas knew about it, they weren’t uttering a word in this room full of alphas.
Interesting.
I wasn’t used to this as an epsilon. There wasn’t much sisterhood, community, or all-in-it-together among the epsilons. We were the definition of every woman for herself. But for omegas, they appeared to have their own rules, their own bonds, and their secrets among themselves.