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“I am.”
Her outrage looked ready to boil over as she sat perfectly still, trying to contain the fury brewing under the surface. Derek hoped she wasn’t furious at him but at the situation.
“How? How are you okay with this?”
“Because I put my faith in fate,” Derek said. “In all my life, I’ve seen it only happen twice. And in both cases, they were inseparable.”
Was that a faint glimmer of a tear in Iris’s eye? He wanted to get up and hug her even after only knowing her for a short time.
But as Iris paced six feet in front of him, she was still out of reach. He could feel the concoction starting to take effect, but the slices in his torso still radiated pain.
He figured Iris could sense his aching as she observed him quietly.
“Who did that to you anyway?” she asked.
He smiled despite the incredible pain overtaking him.
“This is nothing,” he said. “Please don’t worry about me. In a few days, I’ll be fine.”
She immediately became quiet and more distant. Well, damn. What had he said now? Actually, whatdidn’the say?
“Okay, if you must know,” Derek said. “The pack had decided to go in a different direction and chose me to champion them, and I won the challenge for alpha.”
He was relieved that his reply had eased some of the tension and that she no longer looked on the verge of tears.
“It doesn’t look like you won,” Iris said.
Derek thought of Iris finding him bleeding on her doorstep. He must’ve been a real mess. She had been brave to take him in while not having a clue as to who he was.
He wished they had met under different circumstances, although he wondered if the bond would have formed any other way.
“Right,” Derek said. “Well, a challenge for Alpha is always fair. You’re brought in to fight each other using only your body with no outside help. Otherwise, it means nothing, and you don’t rightfully become Alpha if you win.”
Iris swirled her hand, gesturing for him to continue.
“But when you found me, that wasn’t the result of a challenge for alpha. As you’ve already discovered, I am the Alpha of the pack.”
“So what was this then? Did you trip and fall on a knife a few times?”
Derek chuckled slightly. “No. As far as I’m able to tell, the guy who lost the fight, Cyrus, didn’t take too kindly to losing. And he sent a few assassins after me, hoping they might do his job for him.”
Iris's mouth fell open, her mind seeming to be elsewhere as though trying to piece something together.
“So, then, if I hadn’t brought you inside,” Iris said, “would they have killed you then and there? But why would they run because of me? I don’t have any authority.”
“All good questions. And I wish I knew. But after the first stab, things started to become a little hazy.”
The conversation faded, and they fell into an uncomfortable silence. The only sounds were the birds chirping. Unable to bear it, Derek breached the quietness by stating the obvious.
“You know, if I’m the pack alpha, and you’re bound to me …”
“I’m sorry,” Iris interrupted. “I know you can’t help that this happened, but I don’t want to think about that.”
“Why not? You’d be the rightful female alpha. Don’t you want to build a strong pack together?”
“I left my pack for a reason, Derek,” Iris said. “I’m not looking to join another one just because tradition says so.”
“A mating bond is so much more than tradition. You must know that.”
