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I gave him a salute and turned toward the door.
“I’ll update Charlie,” Levi said as he followed me.
“No,” Kane barked. “I will. She needs to hear this as a command rather than a rousing pep talk.”
I shared a look with Levi, who had his mouth open to presumably argue, but Kane was already out of the door.
“Kane is flame to her accelerant,” I said as a way of an explanation we both didn’t really need. “Maybe he’ll rile her up the right way.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’s been working out for him just great during training.” Levi rolled his eyes.
It wasn’t uncommon for us to poke at each other, criticize the way brothers do, but Levi’s sarcasm hit differently.
“What the alpha wants…” I shrugged, trying to redirect.
“I just hope he’s ready to step down when it’s time for her to step up,” Levi mumbled as he pushed past me. It was the first time in a long time that I’d heard him doubt Kane’s leadership. It was the first time in my life I’d heard him do it behind Kane’s back.
By the time I stepped out of the den, Levi was gone, so there was no opportunity to dig into his statement. It made me wonder, though, if our brotherhood was strong enough to withstand the Charlie selection process. As time went on and she didn’t choose one of us—never mind all of us—to mark her, the bigger the rift between us would grow.
We each wanted her, and she continued to call us into her dreams, so the feeling was mutual, at least when she had her guard down. I understood her hesitation to take on a harem of wolves, brothers on top of that, but she had been the first to call us in and now our innate competitiveness was rearing as it became clear that she was stalling, unsure what to do.
Was the harem idea off the table? No idea. If it was and she was in the process of determining which of us she wanted as a mate, then things were going to get ugly.
Charlie needed to decide…soon, or we wouldn’t make it to the grand finale and take down Sal. We’d be too busy taking down each other.
Chapter Eleven
Charlie
I wasn’t expecting Kane to be on the other side of my bedroom door when I swung it open. His knock wasn’t what I’d expect from a hulking control freak like him. It was tentative, soft…respectful.
“Oh…it’s you.”
Kane had his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed.
When he looked up at me, his eyes radiated heat, like moving lava that seared me straight to the gut. “We need to talk.”
“You…talk?” I shrugged, trying for cool when he gave me a raised eyebrow. “I thought you only barked orders.”
There was a lump in my stomach that made me instantly nauseated. What the fuck did he want to talk about now? Was he kicking me out? Had he decided that this was all a waste of his time?
It wasn’t like I’d been completely successful with adapting to his training and melding to my beast had been difficult. She was still in a cage most of the time. I was too scared to give her free rein, even if I could now tap into her mind and understand her motivations. Her desires were full of rage and chaos, and rationalizing with her only worked in fragments. I couldn’t accept her need to bite any of these men. Not even Kane deserved her ferocity.
He narrowed his eyes and thinned his lips, and it made me wonder if he did, in fact, come here to bark some orders.
“Well, come in then. Let’s talk.” I gestured to my room, which was way too big for one person. It was a suite, complete with a private bathroom, jacuzzi tub included, a bigger-than-king-sized bed that I could starfish on and still not reach the edges and a sitting area with a double-wide plush couch that I’d sunk into after many sparring sessions. There were other amenities that made this place hard to even think about leaving, like the impossibly high thread count and laundry service. In all, the entire place was twice the size of my whole apartment in Toronto but a lot less homely.
Kane didn’t sit on one of two loungers in the seating area. Instead, he leaned against the back of one, forgetting—or maybe not knowing—that they were rockers. I stifled a laugh when the forward sway caught him off guard and he stumbled a step.
So not graceful. Made me wonder if he was nervous.
I frowned. Why would Mr. King Alpha be nervous talking to me?
The rock in my gut grew twice as big, and I was tempted to run to the bathroom to puke or at least lock myself in there so I didn’t have to hear what he’d come to say.
“What’s up?” My voice sounded strangled, despite my forced calm.
He didn’t seem to notice.
