Betrayed Forced Mate (Rosecreek Special Ops Wolves #4)

I shake my head, staring down at my slippers and trying to ignore the dizzy, lightheaded feeling. It could be from the interaction with Byron, from watching myself collapse in the video, or from the low blood pressure.

I’m about halfway back to the pack center when I feel a presence behind me. I glance in the windows of the shops I’m walking past and see a pair of headlights approaching from behind. I immediately think of how Veronica was kidnapped during the Halloween party.

Wrapping my arms tighter around myself, I walk a little faster, but the car picks up speed, coming up the road so the passenger’s window is in line with me.

“Listen—” I say, turning and holding my hand up but stopping short when I see who’s in the driver’s seat.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Rosa says, leaning over and hanging out the window. Bigby sits in the driver’s seat, his head forward, like this isn’t any of his business. I appreciate him for that. “Get in this fucking car. You’re going to be the death of me.”

I roll my eyes at her, but hoist myself up into the backseat anyway. The first time I was ever in this car was when Bigby came to take us, but that feels like a million years ago.

Bigby clears his throat and starts to drive again, and I realize they’re using their mating bond to communicate with one another. Rolling my eyes, I turn and look out the window.

For some reason, immediately after closing his apartment door, my mind flashed back to the moment I learned that my parents were dead. Living under Amon’s rule meant that none of us were strangers to tragedy, but it didn’t make the knowledge of my parents’ deaths hurt any less.

When we lived in the little cottage next to the sea, Rosa would spend most of her time making these little perfumes, and I’d load them up, taking seashell jewelry and other little trinkets we’d make together to the farmers market.

In the beginning, things were really tight. We had to rely on our garden and what we were able to hunt near us. The cottage was paid for, but the utilities weren’t. Kaila needed clothes, books, and medicine, and it added up.

Selling at the farmers market was a way to make a little extra money, but it was also a way to get news from the outside world. Rosa’s mother would send someone to approach my stand and purchase something every Saturday. When they handed the money over, a note was always stacked there with the bills.

“How did we do?” Rosa had asked, the moment I pushed through the door. We’d done amazing—selling all the perfumes and almost all the necklaces.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I’d pushed the money into her hand, numbly, then turned and sat on the couch, feeling outside of my body.

“Oh,” she’d said, and I realized I’d left the note tucked into the day’s earnings. The note that gave good news and bad news. The good news was that Amon had no idea where we were—the scent cover was working. The bad news was that, in his fury over our escape, he’d gone on a rampage, killing several members of the pack, including my parents.

We had never gotten along like other families. My parents were traditional, and didn’t understand why I wanted to go to college. Didn’t like my pink hair. My mother constantly begged me to spend less time gaming and tinkering around on my computer, and more time attending tennis lessons with her at the country club.

They hated what I chose to do with my life. But they gave me the space to do it. They were stubborn, at times snobbish, and hovered over me for my entire childhood.

But they were my parents. And I loved them anyway.

The couch in that cottage was a scratchy green fabric with white flowers peppered over it, and I can still feel it under my bare thighs sometimes when I close my eyes. I feel the way that the knowledge of their deaths flowed through me, filling every gap between my organs, weighing me down, saturating me with grief.

Rosa had sat on the couch with me, cried a bit herself, hugged me, put a blanket over my shoulders. When she pushed me down onto the couch and told me to nap, I closed my eyes but never fell asleep.

She made dinner that night while I lay there on the couch, alternating between staring at the ceiling and staring at my hands. It took weeks for me to shake away the comatose feeling, and months for me to laugh or smile again.

And Rosa was there for every moment of it. Took some of the responsibility in her hands, apologized for involving me in her problems, sobbed, and grieved for my loss.

“Rosa,” I’d said, one night when she was crying to herself quietly after we put Kaila to bed. “It’s not your fault. It’s Amon’s fault. And someday, when we can get out of this cottage, we’re going to stop him so he can never hurt anyone else like this again.”

Now, as the Jeep turns into the Vandenberg driveway, I glance up at Bigby, whose face is illuminated in the faint yellow glow from the streetlights. He came and got us, brought us back here to Rosecreek, and reignited our lives.

Getting away from Amon felt like proof that we were supposed to make it. That someday, I would have the family I’d always dreamed of. I hated being an only child, wished I’d had siblings running around to fill the house with life.

I thought I could have that with Byron.

“Hey,” Rosa says, after Bigby climbs out of the car. “Come inside. I’ll take your blood pressure.”

I follow her in. Bigby pays the babysitter, eagerly takes the cash before whispering good night. I watch as Bigby lays out some blankets on their bed for me. When he grabs his pillow and heads for the guest room, I shake my head, taking his elbow.

“No, shit, I’m sorry—” I say, “I’m not gonna kick you out of your own room—”

“My wife wants a sleepover,” he says, grinning at me. “Besides, it will be nice to sleep without her snoring for once.”

A pillow hurls at us from Rosa’s side of the room, and she crosses her arms defiantly.