“You have nothing to be scared of,” I tell myself.
“Uh, what?” the alpha still standing with me asks and I realize I used my inside voice in the most outside of ways.
I look at him. “I’m nervous. It’s my first dance.” It’s not a lie. It is my first dance and I’m nervous but not for reasons I want to tell an alpha whose name I don’t even know.
He gives me a sympathetic look and then holds out his elbow to me. “Then why don’t I escort you in? We can even have a dance.”
I don’t want to touch him or dance with anyone else but Thorne, but I’ve got no good reason to tell him no when he’s been perfectly pleasant to me so I take his arm.
“Sure, thank you.”
“My pleasure escorting a beautiful omega like you into the Autumn dance.”
My skin starts to prickle at that. When I look up at him I see that he’s looking me over, eyes on the slit in my skirt that makes me wish I’d maybe gone with the big ball gown option. I tug on my skirt and don’t answer him. I just keep my eyes ahead and speed up my pace. The second I’m through the doors I’m going to make a run for it.
“Oh, wow, you’re eager!” The alpha chuckles and matches my step. I don’t answer him, just power-walk towards the doors and push my way inside. Inside the meeting hall the lights are low, orbs that I know Clover had a hand in creating bob along the ceiling and in the corners of the room, casting varying shadesof shifting ambient light. Pinks, purples, golds and greens wash over the room and everyone in it. All the seats have been cleared from the room to make a dance floor in front of the dais where a band now plays under a spotlight.
“You’re beautiful but you probably already know that. Still, it’s my duty as an alpha to tell you. I’m a Defender too, you know. It’s a really respectable job, lots of rank in the pack.”
“Uh, that’s nice.” I try to tug my arm away from him but he just keeps his hold on me. Shit. I need a quick exit. To the right of us there’s tables along with chairs and sofas where some of the older pack members are relaxing. There’s a few families too with little ones running from chair to chair. I scan all their faces and sadly I don’t know a single one. That means the dance floor is the only place I’m going to lose the alpha that’s now giving me the creeps.
I pull my arm and back step towards the dance floor. It seems better to face him than walk with him. “I think I see my friends over there,” I tell him, jerking a thumb over my shoulder. “Thanks for escorting me in but I’m okay now.”
The alpha stays in step with me. In fact, he speeds up and gets closer to me. “Oh, no, I can’t do a half job. I’ll take you to them.”
“No, really, you don’t have to do that,” I tell him. “I’m fine. Really.”
“I insist.”
“No, really, I want to go alone.”
“Alone is no way to make new friends,” he says and pulls me towards him. “Don’t you want new friends?”
I open my mouth to tell him no but I don't have to say no. Someone else does for me.
“She’s full up on friends, you pushy shit.”
It’s Thorne.
Chapter
Fifty
THORNE
Aaron McCourt has been a little shit since I first got stuck watching over him when he was ten and I was fifteen. I drew the short straw that summer and ended up pulling babysitter duty while my friends spent their days down at the river.
“He’s not so bad anymore. Little dumb, but you know,” Lucian had told me when he’d joined the Defenders. That had been the last time I’d thought about Aaron McCourt until I saw him doing something that moved him from little to very, fucking, dumb.
He had his hands on Cordelia.
Hand on her arm and eyeing her up and down in a way that let me know exactly what he was thinking. I didn’t think then, I just walked through the crowd and straight for Cordelia. After getting in from a patrol that gave us zero leads, the meeting hall had been the first place I’d come after I’d washed up and put on a clean pair of clothes. She’d be here, I knew it. Could feel it in my bones. Plus, there was the note Clover had left at my house.
Bringing her to the dance. Look alive, lover boy.
PS: I really like her and so do you. Don’t mess this up.
In true Clover fashion she’d made her thoughts on Cordelia and I known. Guess I was doing a worse job than I thought when it came to hiding how I felt about her. She’d been the only thing I’d thought of the four days I’d been gone. For every mile and hour that I ran with the others, she was the reason for it all. Even when we’d run the length of the border and back to find no hint of Moonshadow she’d been the reason I’d swallowed the bitter pill and come home.
