Page 50 of Sold to Three Alpha Kings

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The carriage still smells like her.

Slick and heat and that impossible thread of scent underneath it all, thick enough that even now, minutes after, my hands haven’t stopped wanting to reach for her again.

I don’t understand what just happened to me.

I’ve had women before. Plenty of them over the years, none of it ever meaning much beyond the moment itself.

This was different in a way I don’t have words for yet. I felt, and I still feel, deeply connected to her. The connection is strong, and it keeps pulling me in like steel to a magnet. Stronger. It seems as though touching her without marking her and claiming her only proved my body wanted the claiming more.

I sit with that thought longer than I want to.

It doesn’t help that she isn’t speaking with any of us.

She sits alone. Not far. Just enough—shifting to the far side of the carriage seat, wrapping her arms around herself. Her face is turned toward the window, and she won’t even look at me. Won’t look at Sinth or Wayne either.

I notice, with something sharp twisting in my chest, that she turns away from me first.

“Charlize,” I call softly.

She doesn’t answer.

“Is there something on your mind? Did we do something wrong—”

“I’d like to be alone.” Her voice comes out flat, careful. “Please.”

I don’t know what to do with that. I open my mouth to press further, some instinct insisting I need to understand what just went wrong, and Sinth’s hand closes around my arm before I get the chance.

“Not now,” he says, low enough that only I catch it.

The carriage travels down the road, and the entire time, no word is spoken. Not a single sound is made.

Sinth pulls me aside the moment we’re back at the palace, waiting until she’s been ushered off toward her nest with Wayne trailing after her.

“I need to talk to her, Sinth,” I say, my quiet voice laced with a hint of desperation and urgency.

“No. You need to leave her be tonight,” he says.

“I want to understand what happened,” I insist. “I want to know what we did wrong so we’ll avoid it next time.”

“Listen, I want that information too. But right now, she’s not in the right frame of mind to speak with any of us.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, maybe because we all rejected her once and almost had her beheaded only to fuck her the moment her heat flared?”

I rub the back of my neck with one hand.

“Chris, you spent the better part of two weeks telling her she wasn’t worth wanting,” he continues, “and tonight, being in heat, she let herself want you anyway—want us. The Kings who once rejected her as their mate.” His voice stays even, but there’s an edge under it I rarely hear from him. “Do you understand now why she’s keeping her distance… why she can’t even look at us?”

I don’t have an answer. And a part of me envies how he gets her so easily.

“Before that, she was taken by traders. Drugged, sold, nearly executed on our orders within the same day. Then swindlers grabbed her tonight, and would’ve done God-knows-what if we hadn’t arrived on time.” Sinth’s jaw tightens at the memory. “That’s the summary of the last two weeks of her life.”

Silence.

“Tell me, Chris, do you even understand what those words you’ve said to her cost her?” He studies me, almost pitying me. “She let three strangers into her body tonight because her newly awoken body can’t help but react to us. That’s not the same as trusting us. Don’t confuse the two.”