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“Then perhaps you’ll listen to what we have to say,” Raleigh says.
He is clearly still groggy and seemingly pissed off that he was drugged. Iris ducks her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair, effectively avoiding him.
“I don’t care what you have to say,” Iris says softly. “I can’t trust either of you anyway.”
“We never lied to you,” I point out.
“Neither did I,” she snaps back, glaring at me.
“Well,” Sayer says casually, taking a seat beside her. “Neither of us drugged and tried to kidnap you. So, I think we are a little more trustworthy than you.”
“Whatever,” she mumbles, looking out the window at the dark night sky.
“This will go a lot easier if we can just be civil about this,” I say, handing her a cup of steaming hot tea. “The fact is we are all in this situation together and nothing is going to change that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Sayer,” Iris says angrily. She slams the cup of tea on the counter, sending hot liquid sloshing out of the cup. “You aren’t being held captive by the same monsters that killed your only brother.”
Chapter Eleven
Raleigh
Waking up after being drugged is a pain in the ass. Your mouth feels like it has been stuffed full of cotton wool and tastes like someone used it to dump their garbage. My tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth, and I want nothing more than a gallon of water to finally drain this horrible thirst.
Rolling off the unknown bed I woke up on, I take in my surroundings. Beige walls, white bedding, white curtains, and not a single personalization of the space. Where the hell am I?
It’s then that the familiar scents hit me. Sayer has been here recently. And Iris is nearby, though this isn’t her home. No, the underlying scents of the rest of our pack members are faint but clearly discernible.
I hear their voices as I walk out of the room and my feet carry me forward without a single thought. I want to see her again, be near her, and perhaps even lay her across my knee and spank her sexy ass for drugging me. Although, that is mostly my own fault. If I wasn’t so preoccupied with my mate, I would have realized sooner that she is a hunter and I could have saved myself this narcotic hangover.
Sayer and I try our damndest to get her to listen to us, but she simply doesn’t want to. She has been raised to believe that we are monsters, and I don’t know if anything we say will ever change it.
It doesn’t matter that she calls us monsters, but what cuts me open is the hurt in her tone when she accuses us of killing her brother.
“Why do you think one of us killed him?” I ask. I remembered her sadness at the bar when she originally told me about him.
“My father told me everything!” She is standing now, screaming at us, her entire body heaving from the exertion of her rage. “They came here a year ago to scope out the pack and you animals killed him. We didn’t even have a body to bury.”
Her voice breaks on the last word and a single tear trickles down her cheek. I want nothing more than to go to her and hold her, comfort her, and take this terrible pain away, but I can’t.
“That wasn’t us,” Sayer cuts in. “We’ve only been in Katu Falls for six months. And the only people we’ve killed in the past three years have been rogue wolves.”
His words have her snapping out of her sadness to face him. “You’re lying.”
“No, Iris,” I say softly, stepping closer to her. “We are also hunters. We hunt rogues and outlaw shifters.”
She looks confused as she sits back down. I leave her to process everything we just said. I share a look with Raleigh, hoping he understands that we need to be careful proceeding with Iris.
“Then it would have been someone else in the pack,” she says loudly.
“I can’t answer that, Iris,” Sayer says. “But if you want, I can find out.”
“I can answer that question,” Max says from the doorway, flanked by Caine. “I killed him.”
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that descends around us. No one moves, I don’t even think anyone breathes. Until a cup goes sailing past my face and crashing against the wall, sending porcelain flying everywhere.
“Fucking monster!” Iris roars, charging at Max.
Raleigh grabs her around the waist, lifting her off the ground and running around.
