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“I—”
“You don’t actually know me.” Now that the dam has broken, I can’t hold back the flood of rage I’m feeling. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I’d like to get to know you,” he says, too baffled to shut me up.
“After we’re mates, right? When you can rearrange all the little bits of me?”
“Of course not!”
I shake my head and keep my voice low and neutral so we don’t cause a scene. Not here, at a restaurant owned by a pack member. It’s too full of eyes and furry fucking ears. “If you knew me at all, you’d know I don’t spend hours upon hours in libraries. I hate libraries. I hate reading. I’ve tried to do as little as possible since we left school.”
“Noted, then,” he tries to appease me.
But I don’t stop there. “You would know that Negril is the last place I would want to vacation because I sunburn through eighty SPF sunblock, and I loathe sand. And the thing that would make me happiest in my life? Would be staying as far away from my parents as possible.”
“Negril is far away,” he says, trying for a joke. When I don’t laugh, he immediately changes his tone. “I’m not interested in a mate intent on arguing with me at every turn.”
“Then break the fucking pact,” I shoot back.
For a second, I wonder if he’ll smack me right there in the middle of the restaurant. He certainly seems like he wants to. The fury on his face terrifies me to my core.
I square my shoulders and glare right back. “I don’t want to be with you, Ashton. I don’t want to be your mate.”
His laugh is crueler than any words he could hurl at me. “What you want doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter when your father and I signed the pact, it doesn’t matter now, and it will rarely matter in our future together. Do you understand?”
I say nothing. Knowing that there is no future between us is cold comfort when I’m faced with someone who won’t acknowledge that I’m a person. I feel every moment of those miserable hypothetical years crushing the air from my lungs like the spikes of an iron maiden.
“We will be mated at Lupercalia,” he says, his knuckles going white as he balls his hand to a fist on the table. “You will be a faithful, obedient mate to me. You will bear our children, you will raise them, and you’ll have anything you desire, within reason. If you misbehave, however—”
“I’ll be grounded? I’ll lose my privileges?” I’m pushing him. I want him to yell. I want him to embarrass himself, the way he claimed I embarrassed him by dancing with Nathan. I want to shout every single filthy thought I’ve had about Nathan, I want to make Ashton hear about all the places on my body Nathan put his hands and his mouth. Instead, I demand to know, “Why me? When you don’t know me? When you know I don’t want you?”
“Because I can have you.” There’s such mean triumph in his voice I’m glad the wine hasn’t arrived because I’d cut his face up with the broken stem from a glass. “You were so beautiful. And you never looked at me. Not once.”
“Then you should have known I wasn’t interested!”
“I don’t care if you’re interested.” He sits back, both palms flat on the tabletop. “I want you, and I can have you.”
I shake my head vehemently. “No, you cannot.”
“The laws of the pack say otherwise.”
“I’ll leave the pack.” I expect him to get angrier. Maybe shout at me, or stalk out of the restaurant.
Instead, he scoffs. “You’re not going anywhere. The pack practically owns this city. There isn’t a train or a bus, certainly not a plane that leaves with you on it.”
I laugh in his face. “That’s preposterous.”
“It’s the truth. Whether or not you believe it.” He leans back and folds his arms. “You really think you’re going to escape.”
The fact that he’s thinking of it with the same vocabulary I am is chilling. He knows I feel trapped. He knows I am trapped, and he relishes my fear and despair.
“We have thralls everywhere. You won’t make it out of Toronto before they drag you back.” He nods toward the door. “Get in your car and try it. Try to drive to the airport. See if you’re not stopped by the OPP on the road or detained by the RCMP at the boarding gate. If you’re even able to purchase a ticket, once your father cuts you off.”
“You’re sick.” Tears rise in my eyes and I try to blink them away because I know, deep down, that he’ll love seeing them. “You’re just trying to, what, prove to me that I should have paid more attention to you in high school?”
