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The plate in the hallway is gone.
I don’t smile often. It’s not something that comes as easily to me as it does to Ky or Rune. Being forced to grow up so young played a part in that. But seeing the plate gone and knowing Everleigh won’t go through the morning with a hollow, rumbling belly draws a small one to the surface.
Chapter13
Kylian
“You dance,” I say the moment Cian appears in the dining room doorway.
“Yes,” Cian agrees as he returns to the table and his unfinished breakfast.
“You dance better than most of the people at the Wentworth ball. Want to tell me why you suddenly need dancing lessons?” Rune sets his fork down and reaches for his coffee.
I dance too, but Cian was always the more determined to scrub all traces of his past self away. Looking at the serious, green-eyed alpha, no one would guess his dad was a POS gambler who chased off his mom and left him destitute on the street.
Cian shrugs and picks up his fork. “I saw an opportunity.”
“To?” Rune prompts.
“Everleigh views alphas as someone who would cage her or abuse her.” He cuts into his sausage. “She needs to know we’re not like that.”
“So you intend to convince her we’re all bad dancers instead?” I snort.
“No,” Cian says distinctly. “I intend to convince her to stay with us. That she issafewithus.”
We all stare at him.
“I understand why it might not be a good idea to tell her right now that she’s ours,” Rune says slowly. “But if she knew, then she’d understand that we wouldn’t hurt her. No scent-matched mate would.”
“That you know of. I don’t have your faith.” Slowly, I shake my head. “Anything that even hints at permanence, and she’ll run.”
If anyone knows about not wanting to be tied down to anything and anyone, it’s me.
Rune gives me a long look. “I really wish you were wrong about that.”
But he doesn’t deny it.
“So we convince her that she can trust us before we reveal she’s ours. Then maybe the idea of staying won’t terrify her. She’llwantto stay,” Cian says.
“Bydancing?” Rune lifts a brow.
“By any means necessary.” Without taking a bite of his breakfast, he returns his fork to the table. “Ways that convince her she’s safe, she’s with her pack, and she’s where she belongs.”
I’m not sure what else she said upstairs. Rune and I only caught fragments of their conversation. Whatever it was, it’s left Cian antsy and off-center. For Cian, that’s rare.
“What did she tell you up there?” I ask, setting my breakfast aside in favor of our conversation.
Cian meets my gaze for several seconds in silence. “She wants me to help her find her sister, even though she isn’t sure she trusts the sister isn’t involved in whatever this is. But the mom must be. There’s no way she’d have had a front page spread like that this soon.”
Rune sits back in his seat. “Lawrence Wentworth and the newspaper owner connection that got him on live TV last night?”
Cian nods. “Must be. I don’t know about the sister yet, but I hope not. Everleigh loves her. She tried to hide it from me, but it would kill her if I find out the sister played a part in serving her up to Lawrence.”
Hali and Nancy murmur to each other as they continue poring over the newspaper they took back from Rune.
Rune had lost all interest in the paper after Cian followed Everleigh upstairs with her breakfast. Like me, he’d been straining to listen in on the conversation between Cian and Everleigh.
“Her mom is a beta,” Hali says.
