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Hunter hesitated, and Odin felt it, lifting his head to stare down at him in silent question a second time.
“You…” It was hard to tell if Hunter was struggling to find the right words or if he merely didn’t want to voice what he was thinking.
Odin figured it out on his own anyway.
“Did I not mention I liked you back?” He’d thought that was fairly obvious after he’d explained all the little things he’d done for Hunter back then, but maybe it hadn’t been. Hell, he’d needed Wren to put him in his place where that was concerned; of course, Hunter hadn’t put two and two together.
“You were dating Isa,” Hunter reminded.
“Dating is a strong word.” He’d stopped messing around with other people due to Isa’s jealousy, but the two of them had never been officially a couple. They’d snuck around behind their parent's backs and slunk off into the shadows whenever they’d gotten the chance, and it’d be a lie to say Odin hadn’t been hopeful that, eventually, they would develop into something more, but clearly, what they’d shared hadn’t been enough to keep his mind from wandering.
“I thought about you a lot back then,” he found himself admitting, twirling a short curl of Hunter’s black hair between two fingers as he did. “I asked about you, made sure you were always on my personal detail.” He sighed. “But you’re right. I had something going with Isa, and I wouldn’t have acted on my desire even if you’d confessed back then.”
“Would you have believed me if I told you what Isa planned that day?” Hunter asked, and it was clear from his tone that he thought he already knew the answer.
Maybe he did.
Maybe Odin was fooling himself now just as he’d fooled himself into thinking Hunter meant nothing to him back then.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Lying would be easier, but he didn’t want to for some reason. “I want to say yes, but…”
“You didn’t believe me when I first got here,” Hunter pointed out.
No, he hadn’t. He’d been so certain that Hunter had faked his feelings back then and that certainty had made him cocky, blinding him to the truth.
“Memories are funny, aren’t they?” he said. “For the past decade, whenever I thought about you, all I recalled was the look on your face that day in the woods. Everything else, all those times we spent together, all those times I caught you staring at me from across the room, none of that ever came to mind. It wasn’t until I saw you again, broken and unconscious, that those recollections came flooding back.”
“That pissed you off,” Hunter guessed.
“I thought for sure I was misremembering,” Odin confirmed. “That you’d played me all those years ago, and I’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. I hated that. More so because I’d cared for you. Isa’s betrayal was already a lot for me, but having you turn on me, too?”
He’d carried that anger with him all this time, and it was hard to set aside, even after seeing how Isa had treated Hunter at the gala.
“He wants you back.”
Odin frowned. “This again?”
“Don’t ignore what I’m saying a second time,” Hunter warned, though his words had no bite.
“Whether Isa tried to kill you because you failed and you ran, or because he didn’t like seeing us together that night,” Odin told him, “it makes no difference. Isa will pay for what he’s done, to me and my family.” He let go of the lock of hair. “And so will you.”
“You said you were going to force me.”
He’d done many horrible things in his lifetime, but rape wasn’t one of them, and he had absolutely no intention of starting now. The only reason he’d even brought that up before was to scare the other man, and clearly it had worked since that comment seemed to linger for so long in his mind.
Truthfully, Odin wasn’t entirely sure what he’d planned at the start of all this anymore. He’d thought he could use Hunter to get back at Isa, frustrate and distract the other Dominus while his people continued to buy up the land around his territory. If Hunter had gotten hurt during? So be it, all the better even.
But now…
Odin’s multi-slate went off then, cutting through the tension between them. He considered ignoring it at first, but in the end, he crawled off Hunter and pulled the device from his pocket, answering more gruffly than necessary.
“You should get to Greeting Six, sir,” Corbi’s voice trickled from the other end in a partial whisper.
“Not now.”
“Sir, it’s Isa Frost. He’s here.”
Odin felt his blood begin to boil. There’d been an unspoken agreement all this time that neither of them would step foot on the other’s turf.
