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“Who’s it from?” he asks when he returns to my side.
“Who do you think?” I scowl at the crowd. “Aramin visited me earlier today, warned me that I’m not theonly alpha around.”
Frank shakes his head. “Was that before or after she tried to stake a claim?”
“Rejection never looked good on her.”
He laughs, but it’s void of his usual mirth. “Now what?”
“Put out a pack alert—only to the hunters for now. If Aramin is spotted, she’s brought to me. I want to know what her game is.”
He presses his lips together, stroking his beard with one hand. “Detain? Not eliminate?”
“I don’t believe she’s working alone,” I growl.
Raising his brows, he turns to face me. “Who would join a suicide mission against you? You aren’t thinking Kilch would be this stupid?”
“That’s exactly what I want to figure out.”
“He’s all bark, boss. I doubt he has enough balls to bite, especially against you.”
Scoffing, I shove off the wall, making my way to Adara and pulling her into my arms. “We’re leaving,” I whisper into her ear.
She quirks a brow at me. “I have tables—”
“I don’t care.” I lift her into my arms, walking from the bar and setting her in the passenger seat of my truck.
“Gideon,” she glowers at me.
“Not now.” I climb into the cab and start the engine, peeling out of the parking lot and driving home, staring straight ahead at the road and ignoring the questions I know are on the tip of her tongue. But I can’t deal with those right now because if I focus on anything other than getting her back to the house in one piece, anything other than the woman sitting in the seat beside me and keeping her safe, I’ll force Kilch’s hand and make him regret ever running his mouth. You can’t talk up an alpha challenge without waking the beast, and if anyone should know that, it’s him.
Chapter nine
Adara
Gideon’s knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel, his eyes searing through the windshield at the road before us. “What happened?” I ask after a few minutes of silence, unable to hold back my questions any longer.
He scoffs, his jaw ticking as he runs a hand through his hair.
“Don’t ignore me. You just ripped me away from four tables at the start of a good night. I could’ve—”
“I don’t care how much money you could’ve made, Adara,” he says, his voice low and full of authority. “I don’t care how many tables you had or how shitty it was of me to rip you out of there. I don’t care about any of that. So, just sit there, let me take you home, and for once in your life, be quiet.”
Every other question lingering on my tongue dies in my throat. It takes every ounce of control to keep my wolf inside through the anger and frustration coursing through me. A voice in the back of my head suggests being patient, that he must have some reason for doing what he’s doing, but I don’t want to be patient right now. I want to be angry.
Pulling me out of the bar means I just lost all the tips I was making, and could’ve kept making. It means I’m set back from paying Jules’s tuition—again. Because first, I lost the money in the bar when Gideon bit me, then Monique found my totes.
The truck pulls into the driveway, and I throw the door open before he puts it in park.
“Adara,” he calls after me, but I’m halfway through the front door.
I don’t stop, walking straight through the back door into the yard, aiming for the tree line. My wolf itches to get out, to shake out her fur, to chase the moon where it sits high in the sky. We need to run, to breathe, to get some space before we do exactly what Gideon always says we will—burn everything to ashes.
“Addy?”Kaylus’s voice is filled with concern, as he flies from the treetops onto a lower branch.“What’s wrong?”
“Adara!” Gideon storms through the backdoor and into the yard, grabbing my arm and spinning me to face him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Me?” I scream, shoving him with both hands. “What amIdoing? I don’t know, I guess it depends what I’m allowed to do as your prisoner!”
