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But it was just damned distracting.
Strangely, though, I agreed with Rook. I had thought—for just the faintest moment—I could feel her. Impossible. Except, unlike Rook’s wishful thinking, I hadn’t the imagination to conjure up what a force like Vex might be like in this bond. Yet, I could still feel her like light burned behind my eyelids upon a blink.
The phone on my desk buzzed.
A text from Vex’s phone, the one I’d copied.
I read it and reread it a dozen times, grappling with my side of the bond so that neither Love nor Drake would feel my fury.
Pack Lead: If you ever let something like that happen again, I swear I’ll find a way to kill you myself you filthy rat.
Adeaththreat? From her own pack lead? There was no way it was real—even if he could kill her, it would be suicide for his pack bond.
No.
I didn’t think this was a true threat at all. It was an alpha’s aggression. He was angry—furious—at something that had just happened.
I stared at the text for far too long.
There were a few things about it that stuck out as odd.
The first, and most obvious: the language made it clear he wasn’t a rogue, or there wouldn’t be a question as to whether he could kill her.
Second, the phrase ‘something like that’ didn’t fit if he was referring to her being intimate with us.Sex, they had to have anticipated between scent matches. They would either accept it, or they would have given her commands surrounding it. This text was referring to something unexpected.
What could Vex, Love or Drake have done to get a response like that?
Finally, the last thing that stuck out was the death threat itself. The part that turned my world red with every re-read.
‘I’ll find a way to kill you myself’.
Those words held a darker truth: Vex’s execution had already been discussed.
After an age of staring at it in silence, I took a breath, then screenshotted the text and sent it to Leighton. She was creating a bullet proof legal defence for my actions protecting Vex. A death threat on my mate was just another thing added to the arsenal of things to justify what I might be forced to do if it came to it. It was becoming more clear by the day, how necessary that might be.
I was about to forward the message to Vex’s duplicate phone, when I hesitated.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the flash of colour and life and freedom that I’d thought, for a moment, hadbeenher in this bond with me.
Slowly, I tucked the phone back in my pocket.
I would forward it—Ihadto.
But it could wait until the morning.
VEX
When I woke up in the morning, my pack bond with the Lightning pack was still… off. Like an open live wire that occasionally sparked.
Last night, after Love had pressed his teeth to my bite, I stood, trembling in the bathroom, fingers gripping the counter, warring with fury. It had been white hot, frightening, and absolutely not mine: Zeus’s furor was such that it was as if he was physically present beside me.
It had been unconscious, but when Love’s teeth had found my neck, I had reached out to him. Like a bird taking flight as if there were no bars in the way, I had tried to say yes to his offer.
To his bond.
To his pack.
And the following collision had rattled my cage with a ferocity I was still feeling the tremors of.
