Page 14 of Dark Sold Mate

“I did what I needed to do to preserve her life.”

“Or what your wolf demanded,” Javi replied. “Quite a distinction, and you are aware of it.”

Silas's eyes flashed amber. “Careful, brother.”

Just as Javi was about to reply, a knock on the door resounded through the house.

“Come in,” Silas spoke up.

More wolves came in. Pack members. Elle recognized some of their faces. When she left, they had been teenagers. Now they were adults.

And they paused in dismay at her sight.

“Is that—”

“The human girl?”

“What is she doing here?”

The whispers began all at once, running through the small crowd like a pestilence. Then more wolves came, attracted by the noise. Word spread fast. The Alpha had come back with a human mate.

Elle felt multiple eyes on her. Their confusion, anger, and condemnation radiated off them like waves. She wanted to disappear. She would have been glad to be elsewhere, instead of the pack that banished her without a second thought.

“Calm down, everybody, please,” Silas' Alpha tone cut through the noise.

“Calm down?” One of the older wolves, whom Elle didn't recognize, came forward. “You brought a human into our land. You know the rules, Alpha. No connections with foreigners. No humans.”

“She's my mate.”

Gasps rippled through the crowd.

“It cannot happen,” somebody said.

“Humans can't be mates.”

“This violates pack law.”

“My father made those laws. I'm Alpha now. So I make the laws.”

“But the traditions—”

“Are outdated,” Silas said firmly. “Elle is my mate. She's under my protection. Those who have a problem with it may take it up with me.”

Of course, no one stepped forward. No one dared challenge an Alpha.

But Elle saw the looks on their faces. The disapproval. The disgust. She remembered the way they made fun of her because she never shifted. They didn't want her here. They would never accept her.

And Silas brought her back here, without thinking about how it would affect her.

“This is lunacy.”

“The Alpha's lost his mind.”

“And now he’s forsaken tradition, now he brings back the human we cast out?”

Elle heard every word. She felt each of them.

She'd rebuilt herself. She had grown tough and self-reliant. But here, in this room full of wolves who despised her, she was back to that frightened seventeen-year-old girl. Small. Powerless. Wrong.