Now, my mind was laden with our family’s dark secrets. My father’s confession had sent my thoughts into a tailspin, ultimately leading me to break things off with Liza, which hadn’t quite gone as planned.
After the coffee shop incident, I was conflicted. On the one hand, I needed to break things off with Liza to protect our family’s future. Dad had made it perfectly clear to what lengths he’d gone to in erasing our family’s past. No wonder he had looked like he’d seen a ghost when Liza and I spotted each other at the mating ceremony.
I’d been resolved to breaking things off with her—reject her as my mate—but her scent was irresistible. The need to claim her was overwhelming. Everything I had planned on saying to Liza had been forgotten. I couldn’t reject her.
Watching the other shifters catch wind of her pheromones had been like a scene out of a movie. It was an immediate reaction as their cocks hardened and their breaths quickened. I shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if I hadn’t gotten Liza to my car. It was something she’d need to protect herself against. Or I would.
Even more surprising than their reactions to Liza’s presence was the shock and confusion that had marred her beautiful face. When I’d asked her about it, she claimed that her hormone pills should have kept that from happening. It must not have been the first time her pheromones had caused men to react in that way.
I shook my head as I started my convertible. It was a gorgeous day, so I put the top down and let the fresh air fill my lungs. Maybe a little sun on the drive into work would help clear my mind. The elements of nature often calmed me, and since I couldn’t go for a run right now, this was going to have to do.
I pulled up in front of Bryce’s house at the usual time. Since we were business partners, we carpooled when the morning was filled with meetings.
Once every quarter, we brought all of the branch managers under one roof to discuss the companies that were shielded under the umbrella of Keller Enterprises. Although eachbusiness was a separate entity, we wanted to ensure that they all complied with the Keller Enterprise mission statement.
The meetings were notoriously long and sometimes boring but necessary to keep our businesses operating at optimal levels.
I turned off the engine and got out of my car, inhaling deeply to clear my mind. I needed to focus on work, not Liza’s pheromones or my family’s secrets. But now that I knew what I knew, everything was connected—the businesses to the history and the history to the secrets and the secrets to Liza—there was no shield I could throw in place to make it easier to focus.
“Hey.” Bryce was already waiting outside, staring at this phone. “Are you driving or am I?”
“Let’s take the convertible.” I stretched my arms high over my head and hopped back into the driver’s seat. “I haven’t driven it in months and figured it was about time to bring her out into the wild again.”
Bryce buckled up—he was a nervous nelly and not a fan of open-air vehicles—as I pulled out of his driveway. “What’s new? Any new developments with Liza?”
I sighed. Talking about it wouldn’t help me clear it from my mind. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Bryce shoved his sunglasses over his eyes. “Try me.”
He had a myriad of crazy female stories from his many escapades. He was a known womanizer who didn’t even try to deny it, and he’d made his way around the block more than once with multiple women in town. There was probably no better person to ask about pheromones.
“Have you ever gone through a rut?” I glanced at Bryce out of the corner of my eye, wondering if he’d laugh immediately or give me a chance to explain before he laughed in my face.
As if on cue, he chuckled. “That’s something teenage boys experience when girls are going through heat. You know… when their hormones are raging and it’s difficult to hide the scent.”He explained it to me as though I was unfamiliar with the phenomenon. I, too, was a teenaged wolf once.
“Yeah. I know. Have you seen it happen in grown men?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know many grown men who have experienced it. Actually, I don’t know of any. Why?”
How much did I want to share with Bryce? Finally, I decided to tell him exactly what had happened at the coffee shop. Hopefully, he’d have some brilliant insight I hadn’t already thought of.
I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat. “Yesterday, I met up with Liza for breakfast. As soon as she walked into the coffee shop, every guy in the place turned and stared at her.” Fury heated my blood just thinking about it.
“Well, she is an attractive woman, Ty. You can’t expect other men not to notice her, even if sheisyour fated mate.” Bryce took a sip of water from his stainless-steel water bottle. If it had been just a couple guys, I could’ve bought that because she was pretty. “Really, Ty. I never took you to be so naive about attractive women and how men react to them.”
I shook my head. I loved Bryce like a brother, but he had a tendency to be an asshole. “No. I don’t mean they wanted tolookat Liza. There was a vibe.”
“A vibe?” He cocked an eyebrow like he was unfamiliar with a vibe as a concept.
“Yes, a fucking vibe. They wanted to fuck her.”
Bryce scoffed. “I know you have an everybody-wants-what-I-have complex because you literally have everything, but I’m gonna need some more information before I can tell if you’re right or if you’re just being you. You start reading minds all of a sudden?” Yeah, he was an asshole.
“Her pheromones were so strong that every guy immediately reacted. Even I was caught off guard. In all my life, I’ve never smelled such a potent and blatantly sexual scent in my life.” Ipaused, trying to think of a way to describe it in a way he’d understand. “It was like I didn’t have any control over my own body. I was starving, and she was dinner. All I could think about was stripping her naked and fucking her brains out on the barista’s countertop.”
Bryce’s eyes widened. He knew me and knew the control I exercised every minute of every day. “Sounds intense.”
“Intense is the fucking understatement of understatements.” I could still feel that… intensity. “And it wasn’t just me, it was all of them. And I meanallof them.”
