Betrayed Forced Mate (Rosecreek Special Ops Wolves #4)

“What?” I ask, still breathing hard. “Are you okay? Did I hurt—”

“I told you I’m on the pill,” she says, her chest rising and falling, face tipped down. She looks furious, like a supervillain about to strike. I hate that it makes me hard again.

And then it clicks. What she’s saying.

“Yeah, I—”

“What? You thought I was lying?”

“No, I mean—”

She stalks toward me, face twisted in a grimace. She looks like she wants to shove me, hit me, but keeps her hands to herself. I almost wish she would hit me, get some of that anger out in a way that I understood. Instead, tears spark in her eyes, and I drop my hands, trying to figure out what I did to take us from being closer than ever, to her expression looking like this in a matter of seconds.

“You thought—what? That I want so badly to have your babies that I would trick you into it? Is that the kind of person you think I am?”

“Olivia, no, I—”

When I reach out to take her wrist in my hand, to kiss the inside of her palm, she rips it away, and I feel like I’m falling in midair with nothing to hold onto.

“Don’t fucking touch me, Cox. Ever again.”

She turned on her heel and started marching in the direction she was going before I found her the first time.

“You want to find who cursed you, right?” I ask, my voice ringing out after her. She stops, her back to me, but I can still see that she’s breathing hard. “I’m your best bet. I’m working on it, and I’m getting close. And I think I have some answers about the mayor.”

Slowly, she starts to turn back to me.

“Olivia,” I say, voice choked. “I know things aren’t…right. Between us. But I want to keep you safe.”

“—yeah, because if I die, then you die, and you’re scared that there are no video games in the afterlife.”

I want to laugh at the idea of that, but I know it’s not the time. I know that if this was two years ago, when she first came to Rosecreek, we’d be rolling over the idea, wondering if you could play against Elvis or Julius Caesar. Instead, she’s staring at me like she wants to rip my face off.

“I just want you to be okay,” I say, hands up, “please—please come stay at my place. We can—”

“You know what’s going to happen if I stay at your place,” she says, her voice flat, “and I am not doing that again.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I say, hands up, “or, you can lock me in my computer room. I just—I’m going to feel a lot better if you’re at my apartment with me.”

She stares at me for a long time, her arms crossed, but the vampire attacks must have freaked her out, because she eventually lets her arms fall, nodding. When she looks up at me, I can see the fear there, in her eyes, and it pisses me off.

Why Olivia? Why not target someone else on the team? Why do they have to make her afraid to sleep at night?

Is it because she was close to uncovering something?

“Okay,” I say, nodding. I start to hold my hand out to her, then realize she definitely doesn’t want that, so I keep it at my side. “Okay.”

Olivia is missing, Bigby sends, a moment later.

Her scent leads into the woods, Percy adds.

I have her, I send back, before they can come looking at catch a different scent—one that will tell them exactly what we were doing out here. The last thing I need is for them to make any assumptions about us.

“Come on,” I say, and she follows me through the woods and to my building.

After bringing Olivia inside my apartment, I get to work ensuring my new security system is engaged at every single exit and entrance. I set up motion-detected lights and cameras and even go so far as to calibrate lasers to detect movement in the hallway, in case the vampires try to be sneaky.

I made a note to talk to Triste about what she could add to this set-up.