AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ethan’s fingers threading through mine pulled me from the sight of Jade smiling sweetly up at Theo, who was speaking softly to her.
“Shae?”
His voice held the smallest indication of nerves, and the look on his face threw me back to sitting with him at Mac’s before he anxiously confessed that it was our pack he wanted to meet.
“Hmm?”
“I know we can’t bond like with the others but I… I love you. I wanted to know if you would want to do something to show the world that we belong to each other too?”
I sat staring at him for a moment, because my mind had gone blank. While I struggled through my surprise, I watched the hint of nerves, evident in how he chewed the corner of his bottom lip, morph into genuine worry and embarrassment. The longer I stayed silent, the more acrid his scent became.
“Never mind, forget I said anything, we’ll be connected through them and?—”
I cut off his sweet ramblings with a kiss, tasting his relieved exhale from as I gripped his shirt in my hands. Pulling back, I pressed my forehead to his.
“I love you, Ethan. Feeling you through the bonds with our Alphas will be amazing but, yes. Whatever you want to do, yes.”
He smiled and chased another kiss that was mostly teeth and laughter. The sound of the doors opening and the light jostling of the car broke our moment but I linked our hands again and pulled them into my lap. Ethan leaned his head on my shoulder and ran his thumb along my knuckles as we started back home.
We’d only been driving for a few minutes when my phone started ringing. I pulled it from my pocket and saw it was Cat calling.
“Hey girl, how are?—”
“Shae, someone broke into my place.” The blood drained from my head and my vision swam but I shook it off as much as I could and switched the call to speaker. “—the guy Jade set up told me to wait in the car while he called it in but, Shae, I’m fucking scared. What if they come back?”
My heart was pounding, and I’d leaned forward, gripping my hair roughly in the hand that wasn’t holding my phone. I felt Ethan’s hand moving up and down my spine but his scent betrayed his worry.
“Are you at your apartment, Cat?”
The tires squealed as Theo braked and crossed the lanes to pull a u-turn. The abrupt change in direction jostled me and I looked up to see Jade’s hard gaze staring back at me.
“Yes.”
My best friend’s voice was thick with tears and my heart broke a bit.
“I’m with Theo, Jade, and Ethan. We’re on the way, alright?”
Jade hissed as Theo twisted his head to speak to me, pulling his eyes from the road for a moment.
“Tell her to have her escort get in the car with her and wait for us to clear the apartment. Any sign of trouble, he should drive her to Drake House.”
“Did you hear what Theo said, Cat?”
“Uh-huh.”
She relayed the message to her bodyguard and I heard doors closing on her end of the call. We were only fifteen minutes or so from her apartment, but the way Theo was driving, I knew we’d get there faster. Even so, it still felt like we were too far away.
Cat stayed on the line with me and explained that she’d left her place with the bodyguard to pick up her suppressants. When they came back, the door was unlocked. The guard noticed scraping around the deadbolt and assumed it had been picked. He’d taken her to the car and had been calling the incident into Drake House for backup and the police when Cat called me.
We pulled into the parking lot of Cat’s complex and Theo slid his SUV into the space next to Cat’s old, boxy Jeep. Jade exited the vehicle almost immediately and Theo turned to us.
“Stay in the car.”
The command in his voice was absolute and, though we knew he didn’t mean to bark at us, a whimper slipped from Ethan. Theo blanched.
“Fuck, Biscuit. I didn’t mean to say it like that. I’m sorry.”
Ethan nodded fast but kept silent. Theo took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut.
