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Which she had. But she’d never admit it.
Cortana stayed silent, her nonverbal stance giving the female wolf all she needed to drag the alpha away. Any vulnerability that’d lingered in his expression was immediately replaced by his customary joie de vivre, his infectious smile lighting his face with an ease Cortana envied.
There was something in his eyes that told her his happiness wasn’t real. It was an act meant to hide the true reaction to her denial.
She had no idea how she knew.
As they turned, Cortana caught the look upon Renata’s face, the emotion it betrayed hitting Cortana in the gut like a two by four: smug satisfaction. Tall, beautiful, and radiant in a way that she never could be, Renata was an uncontested supernatural beauty. If the she-wolf was an orchid, Cortana felt like a daisy, plain and unstimulating.
None of it compared to the way that she clutched possessively at Riaz. There was history behind their relationship, and when it paired with the intimacy Cortana knew they shared, it was enough to make the predator within her rear its head.
For the first time in centuries, jealousy narrowed her sight. A flare of envious anger raged through her blood, pushing her to unleash the wrath that seemed keen to erupt. Lips curling, she exposed fangs that’d begun to lengthen.
Fingers curled around her shoulder, barring her from following them. Cortana turned with a snarl but paused as she found deep blue eyes gazing at her with something akin to pity.
“Wolves need touch, Cortana. You can hardly blame him.”
She straightened her spine. “I’m not blaming him for anything. Who he does in his spare time is none of my concern.”
“No?” Ava chuckled, her deep feminine voice grating on Cortana’s worn nerves. “What is that saying the humans are so fond of? Oh yes, I do believe your pants are on fire.”
Cortana didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.
Ava’s leveled an honest gaze at Cortana. “Riaz doesn’t ever sleep alone, Cortana. His wolf demands he be with a packmate, and right now, Ren fills that role for him. If you don’t like that arrangement, you alone have the power to change it.”
Chapter Fourteen
A scream shrieked through the air. His throat, hoarse and dry, yelled her name once more. Riaz crawled through mire and dried grass, unholy things sticking to his skin, listening for the sound of her cries.
But she’d stopped screaming.
Panic bled to fear, and fear morphed to terror. His muscles quivered with adrenaline while he swung his head around, desperate to locate his mother in the deep black of night. A whimper, slight but substantive, made his heart kick, forcing away the dizziness and the despair.
Swallowing thickly, he ignored the panic that held him captive. He crawled, one hand swinging back and forth in front of him. The darkness mocked him. When his palms met a pool of sticky blood, he realized the truth of it.
Wolf. And the beast wasn’t done with them.
The nightmare never left him. It’d haunted his dreams, infiltrating his sleep and sowing sorrow in its wake. Renata’s company failed to keep it at bay or settle his wolf last night, so he had left his bed after only a few hours of restless sleep. She was a poor substitute for the one his other aspect truly wanted, one who was a different breed entirely.
Once he recognized it, he couldn’t fulfill the yearning for her. Cortana was the sweetest chocolate and the finest wine, encased in a layer of adamantine steel she wouldn’t allow him to easily breach. Her staunch resistance to him riled his wolf to no end.
He chose to chase the dregs of his nighttime terrors away at the pack’s shooting range. Heavy in his hand, the Colt’s trajectory aimed true, the bullets finding the center of his target in quick succession. While Riaz preferred claws to bullets, there was a ruthless practicality to the handgun that he couldn’t deny, especially when he needed to keep his paws clean.
Riaz set the piece down on the surface in front of him, ammunition spent. Beside him, Gadriel rested a shoulder against the wall that separated the two compartments.
“And how’s your pretty little vampire this morning, oh alpha, my alpha?”
“I’m certain she’s enjoying a few exciting hours of undead-to-the-world shut eye.”
“Not joining her, ay?” Ava probed from behind him.
Riaz busied himself checking the Colt, shaking off the internal flinch he’d felt at her words. “Why would I be joining her, Ava?”
“Perhaps because your tail has been in a twist since she got here?” Gadriel offered, cocking his head in an eerily wolf-like way.
Chuckling, Riaz waved off the sharks. “I’ll admit it, I enjoy her company.”
“And why wouldn’t you? She’s a sweet little package.”
