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“Maybe so,” Paige agreed, collecting her cards and putting them back in the bag she kept with her. She turned her gaze up to me then, smiling. “I assume you came to get me.”
I felt myself swallowing nervously, my eyes locked on the perfect curve of her lips—images of everything I wanted to do to that mouth. “Yeah,” I forced out. “I figured you’d like to get unpacked in our room now.”
“Yeah.” She stood up, looking around my legs. “Where are my other bags?”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “They’re already in our room. I slipped them in before going into Alexander’s office.”
“Oh good.” She looked back at Madilyn, the she-wolf smiling at her. “It was nice to meet you, Madi.”
“You too, Paige.” Madilyn waved as I led Paige from her room. I caught her flopping back and squealing into her pillow before I fully closed the door, smirking at how excited she was at the prospect of meeting her mate.
“So, my room is upstairs?” Paige asked, pointing to the staircase that Madilyn’s room sat under.
I nodded, pressing my hand to her back to lead her to our shared room. I smiled at the way she had phrased her question.Her room. As if I would allow her to be alone in a house full of werewolves willing to kill her just to have her out of the way of what they want.
Entering our room, I watched as she picked up her bags, setting each on the bed and pulling out stacks of clothes to put away in the drawers. I did my best to hide my smile when I watched her pick up the pile of jean shorts first, walking over to my dresser to open the largest drawer at the bottom. She paused and stared at the filled drawer, her face going through an array of emotions. From confusion to embarrassment, her face twisted from a deep frown to a bright blush. She stood up quickly, looking back at me with widened eyes.
“I thought you were bringing me to my room.”
I nodded. “I did.” I walked over to her at the dresser, bending down and reorganizing the drawer to make room for her clothes. “Put those here. I’ll make room for your shirts next, and you will have your own underwear drawer all to yourself.”
She stood straighter, her eyes scanning the room, landing on the bed and searching again before returning to the bed. I remained kneeling by the dresser, watching her as she took in the entire room. A small part of me felt terrible for her as she realized the obvious.
There was only one bed.
“So…” she drew out the “O” of the word, still clutching the jean shorts in her arms. “This room is going to be for the both of us?”
I reached up, took the shorts from her arms, and placed them in the drawer where I had made room for them. “That’s right. I told you at your house. We would do this the right way. That includes sharing my room at the packhouse.”
“You didn’t say we’d have to share a room,” she argued. “You only said I would have to come live with you here.”
“And you said you would agree to anything for this arrangement,” I reminded her. “Did you really think there would just be open rooms for you to settle into while pretending to be my mate?”
“Don’t you have guest rooms for visiting Alphas?”
I let out a dark chuckle, returning my stormy grey eyes to her. I could hear the breath catch in her lungs. Her heartbeat picked up in tempo, but thankfully not from fear. I didn’t want my mate to fear me. Respect me, sure, but fear? Fear was meant for enemies, not mates. No, another emotion was causing her heart to race, driven by the look in my eyes. I could smell the excitement wafting in the air.
“How would I explain to the pack why my mate, whom I gave up my station for, wasn’t sleeping in my room?” I asked her, standing to my full height and looking down into her dark chocolate gaze. She swallowed hard, reflexively taking a step back.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was little more than a whisper as she fought to breathe.
I had always known she had a slight crush on me, but she had never seemed to be as affected by our bond as I was. Now, with my mark coursing through her veins, she was beginning to feel precisely the kind of torture I had endured since the day the bond had sparked inside me.
“They would be suspicious, Paige,” I answered for her. “And packs talk to each other.”
“Shit,” she whispered, understanding what I was hinting at.
It wasn’t that I was worried that the wolf who chased her last night would find out. I knew he wasn’t her mate and would never be able to track her as a mate can, but she didn’t know that.
“Yeah,” I said, smirking. “Shit. Now go get your next stack of clothes while I make more room in the dresser for you.”
She frowned but did as I said, returning to the bed and retrieving the stacks of shirts she had unpacked. I placed them in the drawer with my shirts and began to clear out one of the smaller drawers for her to put her socks and underwear in.
“When we finish the drawers, you can take any of your bathroom supplies through those doors to the en suite,” I told her, pointing to the double doors that led to my private bathroom. “Oh, and Paige,” she paused to look at me, her arms reaching inside her suitcase for the remaining clothes.
“Yeah?”
I let myself give into an amused grin, the expression deepening her frown as she looked back at me. “I sleep on the right side of the bed. So, you can take the left side and put whatever you need near you at night on that nightstand.”
