AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Because she told me. She explained how it goes. Explained how obsessed you all are about status. Told me how the unranked and more vulnerable pride members reside near the border of your territory—they’d be the first to be slaughtered in the event of an attack, and everyone else seems fine with that.”
Shocked mutterings came from his pride members who were nosily observing from porches or front yards.
“The unranked are considered expendable, plain and simple. So maybe you get why I’m thinking you have some balls to act concerned over the idea that this pride might not be making her safety a priority. It was never a priority in yours.”
Zaire swallowed. “Black-foot prides operate differently—that is true,” he said, the words stiffly spoken. “But all our members are considered important.”
Havana huffed from her position a few feet behind Tate. “You sure have a weird way of showing that.”
Agreed. “The fact is, Zaire, that you never gave Quinley’s wellbeing a second thought before—”
“I didn’t know she was meant to be mine,” the black-foot upheld.
Isaiah shot him a skeptical smirk. “I don’t buy that. Not anymore.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Isaiah inwardly smiled at how Zaire stiffened. Bingo. “Hearing the shit you say and the way you say it… I think you figured out some time ago that she was right. But I also think you did your best to ignore it, because you cared about Nazra and were too set on being an Alpha of a pride.”
It was what the guy had strived for growing up, what he’d likely been groomed to be, what his inborn nature would have demanded of him. And with the way black-foots operated, he could never have ruled with a submissive at his side.
“Not true.” The hard protest held a shaky note that betrayed its lack of genuineness. “I didn’t know.”
His cat snarling at the lie, Isaiah forged on, “You bonded with Harlan’s daughter instead, who I think you do love. You thought you’d be happy with her; happy to rule alongside her. And maybe you are to some degree. But there’s a strain on your relationship. I’m standing close enough that I can tell your imprint bond is chipped at the edges. What caused it?”
Zaire’s eyes flared. “That’s none of your—”
“Let me take a guess.” Really, it seemed pretty obvious. “At some point, you realized your personality is better suited to a submissive than a born-alpha.”
The black-foot pulled in a sharp breath.
“You and your cat need things from Nazra that, being the complete opposite of a submissive, she simply can’t give. In the beginning, you may have been able to gloss over it. But it steadily began to eat at you and your animal, and you soon started to wonder if maybe you should have made different choices. Still, you stayed on the path you’d put yourself on.”
As someone who’d never been able to exercise the full extent of his dominance until Quinley, Isaiah knew how it felt to have to hold back. It was like boxing away a part of you. It meant leaving certain needs unmet. It stopped you from feeling completely fulfilled. And there eventually came a point where that lack of fulfilment nagged at you.
Isaiah suspected it had been nagging at Zaire for some time. The black-foot had likely ignored it, sure it would disappear once the position of Alpha became his; sure that was what he needed.
“My relationship with Nazra is none of your fucking business,” Zaire hissed.
“And my relationship with Quinley is none of yours. Doesn’t stop you from coming here and expressing opinions I don’t give a shit about.”
“The only reason I’m here—”
“Is that you’re hoping you can push me into starting a brawl,” Isaiah finished. He’d picked up on that pretty much straight away. It was why he hadn’t planted his fist right in the black-foot’s face. Isaiah was feeling no inclination to give Zaire anything he wanted. “Then you get to have an excuse for why violence broke out—you were just defending yourself.”
Zaire’s nostrils flared. “I’m not here to challenge you.”
“But you want a full-on duel. So does your cat. I can feel his rage. He wants to gut me open. I have what he thinks belongs to him. Only he’s wrong. Quinley’s mine.”
Zaire’s eyes briefly flashed cat as an animalistic growl eased out of him. “If you give such a damn about her, why has she been shot twice while under your watch?”
Isaiah didn’t point out that the second shooting had resulted in a bullet-graze, not a full-on shot. He didn’t owe this male anything, regardless of what the dick seemed to think. “Pride business is pride business. You’re not entitled to know shit. You never were, where Quinley’s concerned. And yet, you’ve kept an eye on her through others.”
Surprise rippled across Zaire’s face.
“It was an easy enough guess,” said Isaiah with a slight shrug of one shoulder. “You ‘overhear’ far too much. Having people report back to you anything interesting regarding her all these years—that’s where you fucked up. By indulging your need to know what happened in her life, you kept her in your mind’s eye; in your cat’s mind’s eye. It would have been better for you to go on as if you’d never met her.”
Not that it would have been simple. Isaiah knew that personally—he’d kept watch over Lucinda, unable to help himself. The difference here was that he had stopped once he claimed Quinley. Zaire hadn’t done the same when he claimed a different female.
