Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“Oh, it was a curious thing,” she mused, her kitten heels click-clacking on the tile as she casually led me through the halls of the old alpha wing. “The gates responded to his touch immediately, so you weren’t needed to open them.”
My heart shotgunned into my throat.
“Do they recognize all of your fates?” she asked. “Or just him?”
“That—that doesn’t matter,” I rasped. “You should have told me about Orion. You said you and I were working together, but that was a lie. What else did I expect from a council stooge who cares more about licking their boots than obeying Luame.”
She whirled on me, pulling me up short. “How dare you. I haven’t betrayed our partnership, or Luame, in the slightest. I will not have your slanderous tongue say otherwise!”
“Orion—”
“—is under my sole purview,” she barked. “Which is what you agreed. He is your classmate and your classmate alone. As for the secret police, you were the one who announced to a crowd of people that they were welcome back any time to investigate in the fullest. Was that a lie?”
“No, but—”
“There is no but,” she sliced in, “and no more to discuss. Good evening, High Priestess.” With that, she strode off to her chambers, leaving me wrestling with the urge to bite off her head.
Fuming, I stormed back through the halls. Bursting through the entryway doors, I spilled out in the grand hall, and came face to face with him.
Orion leaned against a statue of Sir Issac Woolfe, wrapped head to toe in scuffed boots, ripped jeans, a beat-up baggy leather jacket, and no shirt. Every hard, sculpted, tattooed inch of his rippling chest showed on full display, and it revved my wolf up like a Formula One race car. Even with the extreme and mutual hatred festering between us, she wanted to slip-n-slide down his pecs till she was forced off the ride.
My nose wrinkled, lips curling at his cigarette. “Put that out.”
“Make me, Headmistress.” Orion sucked in a long drag. “Punish me. Put me in detention.” He smirked. “Go on.”
I stiffened, growls bleeding from my teeth. I didn’t need to ask. The shameless glee on his face said it all. Ash helpfully informed him that I had no power over him at all.
“What do you want?” I asked, voice flat. “Don’t tell me, you’ve got a few more irreplaceable tokens of my late mother you’d like to burn in front of me?”
“If only.” Orion flicked his cigarette somewhere over his shoulder. The jerk didn’t bother to put it out. “No, I’m here to ask you if you’ll be able to restrain yourself from framing me for more of your murders? I may look like a rebel loner bad boy, but I didn’t quite take to prison.” He shrugged. “A man likes to pee in privacy.”
“If I come across a man, I’ll ask if that’s true,” I replied, skirting around his question. Edric taught me my lesson. I wasn’t confessing to anything when anyone anywhere could be listening or recording. Wind wolves had the right idea—be careful with the spoken word. “As for you, dainty princess, you shouldn’t try so hard to stay out of prison. I’m sure all those inmates got a good laugh out of watching you bawl your eyes out while your lily-white ass hovered over the seat. It’s important to keep their spirits up.”
It was Orion who laughed. Throwing his head back, he howled—making those slip-n-slide pecs shake. I literally slapped my hand away when it tried to touch.
“You are funny. People don’t give you enough credit for that.”
“What do you want, Orion?”
“Want to know why I’m here, Volana? I’ll tell you.” Orion closed the distance between us. Leaning over me, his lips hovered barely a centimeter above mine—tickling my mouth with his warm, exhaled breath.
Heat rose beneath my skin. Goose bumps prickled at the nape of my neck, and my wolf stretched and howled within my chest, calling for her mate. But despite that, I sensed her weakness. She was hot off finally completing a strong soul bond between her and her mate, Edric. She should’ve been shredding through my hatred and tackling him like a Christmas ham, but this was all she could manage.
As much as I wanted to live in denial, Nyx hadn’t lied to me. The medicine was only masking the pain, it wasn’t saving her life. Our life.
I gazed into Orion’s hate-filled orbs. Now was not a good time to be too weak to fight my enemies.
“All of this ‘bringing Wolf Nation into an era of peace and equality’ bullshit is just that,” he growled. “You don’t care about omegas, you don’t care about putting alphas in their place, and, if we’re being real, you don’t give a fuck about being queen of the world either.”
“Then what do I care about?” I asked, a bland smile plastered on my face.