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“Who sent you?” Wilder growls the words, yanking my attention away from Gillian’s body. He stands over a man, pointing a gun in his face.
The guy grinds his teeth, refusing to answer.
Jerking the gun down, Wilder smacks the man in the forehead with it, causing him to holler. My body freezes, my muscles aching. Wilder kicks the man over and steps his boot right into the bullet wound on his back.
“Which pack do you belong to? Who are you working for?” Wilder stomps his foot harder, making the man scream.
But still, he doesn’t answer. He won’t. He knows he’s a dead man already. Even if Wilder didn’t kill him, someone else would. Because he was caught, whoever he works for will automatically assume that he betrayed them.
“Turn around, Kinsey. Don’t watch. Cover your ears.” Wilder snaps his attention to me, his features sharp and frightening. But I’m not afraid of him. I don’t listen to him either. I refuse to.
A part of me yearns to see this asshole get what he deserves. Watching Wilder serve justice on Gillian’s behalf helps lessen the hurt and fear roiling through me.
Wilder realizes my mind’s set, and instead of arguing, he points a gun at the back of the man’s head and pulls the trigger. I jerk at the noise, but I don’t turn away, entranced by the blood pooling across the concrete.
Wilder kicks and turns him back over, showing how ravaged his face is from the close contact gunshot. He rifles through his clothes and pulls out the man’s wallet along with his keys and phone. He tucks the items into his jacket and strides to me, scooping me into his arms without hesitation.
I don’t fight him. All I do is hang my arms around his neck and let him carry me back to the truck. He sets me on the seat only to jog to Gillian, carefully going through her purse until he pulls out a bag of pills.
I dig my fingernails into my palms, counting my racing heartbeats, the thuds so quick that I can’t keep up.
Wilder returns to the truck and shuts the door, not waiting before he hits the throttle and peels out, leaving a cloud of smoke in our wake. Silence fills the vehicle as I try to collect myself. If I speak now, my voice will crack. I might begin to sob. I might get hit with a million emotions.
“Hang tight, Kinsey. We’re going to get out of here quickly. It looks like you were right, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. The guy worked for Madam Tamsin, but it wasn’t Gillian. It looks like her boss set her up, trying to set us up. We arrived a bit too late, though.” Wilder turns down an alley and heads back in the direction of the old shop where he left his sports car. “I’m glad we managed to take care of him though. Word shouldn’t get back to Madame Tamsin about us. I didn’t give any pertinent information to Gillian’s boss either. I think he was trying to find out who we were to blackmail us anyway.”
I bob my head, my thoughts scrambled. Of course, Gillian’s boss set her up. She was a liability. No one crosses a client and gets away with it, even if it was the man in charge that put her up to it.
“What are we going to do now?” I finally manage to spit the words out. My voice fails me like I suspected it would, cracking and shaking, hoarse even though I wasn’t screaming or anything.
“I took her stash of the suppressants along with some other stuff. It should be enough to start us out until we can find another way to get them. I’m going to hunt down her boss and show him exactly what happens when you cross a prince of Gilded Sands. He’s not going to get away with this. Neither will Madame Tamsin. She is still one of our targets. We need to weaken her power a bit more to help us out. She has too many connections to the other territories, and I need to break them. She needs to be seen as unreliable and untrustworthy.” Wilder rubs his big palm across my leg, smoothing out my trembling the best he can. “But I don’t want you to worry about any of that. Let’s get you home.”
Home. For the first time, I feel like it’s the truth. The palace is now my home, and it’s time that I truly accept it. This is my life now. I never expected that I would have to trust a pack that wasn’t chosen for me, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s up to me to choose them.
I just hope that things don’t grow worse.
I just hope that they stay true to their word and don’t change.
But mostly, I hope to survive.
“How’s the water, Kinsey?” Wilder stands in the shower with his back to me.
He had filled up the tub while I was rinsing off in the shower, but he managed to keep his gaze in control without looking at me. But I watch him now, staring the whole time while he rinses the blood from his skin, stained from me clinging onto him for dear life.
And he is absolutely sexy. Hot. It was enough to get me to zone out and just appreciate his perfect body as the water streamed over his muscles in rivulets.
“It’s getting cold. I think I’m ready to get out.” I stand up, splashing in the water.
I catch Wilder watching me in the mirrored wall of his shower, his look of lust sending tingles blossoming through my body. His eyes travel down, following the bubbles dripping from my breasts as the cool air pops them, leaving me bare.
I don’t know what gets into me, but I swallow my nerves and cross the small space to the shower, opening the door and stepping inside.
Hot steam fills the air, and I slide around Wilder and into the stream of water, rinsing off. I leave him standing like stone in silence as I move back past him and exit the shower, stealing his towel to wrap around me. There’s one hanging for me by the tub, but this is the one I want. It looks twice as large and super fluffy.
He releases a deep purr from his throat, the sound striking me in the clit and turning me on. “Careful, my brat. Keep teasing me like that, and you’re going to get yourself in trouble. It’s already taken everything in me not to join you in the bubble bath or block you so you couldn’t leave the shower.” Wilder stares at me, giving in to my flirting and taking advantage of it to drink me in as much as he wants. His hard cock points at me, his desire potent even with the scent of his bodywash and the water.
All I do is smile, his words egging me on, making me want to tease him even more. But I know better than that. As soon as the adrenaline washes away and I have time to think, I know that I will no longer find myself excited. Because the shit show of today was insane. I know it wasn’t his fault, but Gillian died. We stole the drugs from her dead body, and I watched as Wilder killed a man. He’s dangerous, unpredictable. It makes me hesitate and want to build a wall around myself. What choice do I have? I’m still basically a prisoner here with no hope of claiming these princes as my pack. I’ll end up heartbroken in the end and believing in anything otherwise would solidify my naivety.
They can flirt and treat me as if they want me, and I wouldn’t leave, given the chance now, but I need to be realistic. What if we’re caught? What if the king finds out that they’re lying about their sister? What would happen to me then? I need to live life cautiously. The last time that I got my hopes up, they were absolutely annihilated. I almost died because of it. Many others are dead.
