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“I’m willing to say yes just to prove you wrong.”
“Same, mate. Same.” He grinned.
Armand had no intention of backing down. I looked at the crew with wide, desperate eyes. “We’re still filming?”
“It’s no longer being broadcast live,” Bibi said. “But yes, we are filming.”
“And you’re not letting me out of this.” It didn’t hurt to ask.
“You picked me,” Armand repeated, like this decision wouldn’t haunt me until I fixed it. “I deserve a chance to prove you’re my mate.”
He wasn’t backing down. It was probably an admirable quality. “I’ll give you one date. Then I go out with Lars. If I decide I want him, you have to let me go.”
“What if I decide I want to keep you?” he asked.
“The only reason I’m giving you a chance is because I chose you by mistake. But you don’t get to keep me. We’ve left the stone ages. I’m not property.”
“She’s right.” Thank the moon Bibi had my back on this one. “Even if she went on all three dates with you, she could decide against the mating ceremony. Those have always been the rules of the show. We don’t force anyone into anything they’re uncomfortable with.”
Except for making me go on a date with the wrong dude. But she was right, I had picked him, and those were the rules.
Even if I hated them.
“But you’re here to let a beast claim you,” Armand said. “Sounds like that beast gets to keep you.”
“Can I talk to Lars? He needs to hear this from me.” Thinking about him made me want to burst into tears. “I need to tell him—"
“Hannah! Bibi!” Zoe ran toward us with the rest of the ladies in tow. She was out of breath as she held up her phone so we could see the screen. “Reports say that Lars left HQ, and the squatch hunters are hot on his trail. There’s a million-dollar bounty for whoever can catch him, dead or alive.”
seven
Lars
Hannah didn’t pick me.
Was everything I thought about her a lie? Were all those sweet words she whispered fiction, like the story she wrote for her online friends? Did she fake the way her body reacted to mine?
No. It wasn’t. She didn’t. She couldn’t.
“I need to go back out there.” Didn’t know how Hugo and Bjorn coaxed me off the stage, but they’d managed to get me inside Headquarters. The moment that Armand had the nerve to smirk at me as he went over to greet my mate, I could’ve torn the whole damn thing down. Shattered the wall, ripped through the wires that broadcast my predicament to the entire world.
Still couldn’t wrap my head around that. After spending centuries in this mountain range, now humans all over the world knew I existed. Their stunned silence wasn’t the reason I was so uncomfortable on stage.
But I didn’t destroy anything. Not because I cared what all those people thought of me. I could read their lips. They were saying things likemonsterandbeast. At the time I was expected to act the most human, I was feeling anything but.
“Lars, I understand. I’d want to do the same thing. But it’s best you stay here. With us. Until we decide the next move,” Hugo said. His muscles were tense, and he smelled like he was about to shift. Bjorn was near the door. He was the only one who was even close to me in size, but if I wanted to go back to that stage, the bear wouldn’t be able to stop me.
I wished both of them would shift.
“Who decides?” I asked.
“Hannah, Armand, and you. I assume Bibi and the production team will have some pull.”
“Hannah’s my mate.” It was a bold declaration. I’d already had a mate. But Hannah made me feel things I hadn’t felt since Tanyth had taken her last breath. Hannah felt like home.
To have Armand be able to put a paw on her… No.
“How did he even get on stage?” I added.
