Betrayed Forced Mate (Rosecreek Special Ops Wolves #4)

Chapter 20 – Olivia

All night, I dream of Byron.

I dream about running my palms over his back while he’s on his stomach, touching the softest part of his chin, and sinking into the bath with him. I dream of waking him up by climbing in his lap, begging him to open up to me. I dream of touching every part of him with my lips teeth, and tongue.

But when I wake up, he’s gone. I step out of the bedroom tentatively, exploring, calling his name, and after I check the bathroom and his computer room, it’s clear that he’s not there. Why would he leave me alone in his apartment? After all this talk of me not being safe?

I get into the shower, thinking as I scrub my hair. Luckily, I still had some of my shampoo and conditioner here under the sink. Luckily, Byron didn’t throw any of my things away, just left them here. The thought is bittersweet.

There are pieces of me all over this apartment, like he couldn’t bear to let them go, and yet, right up until the apartment fire, I hadn’t been here for an entire year. No matter how I try to distract my head from the moment, I can’t stop thinking about being in the woods with him, feeling him inside me.

It was, hands down, the most intense sex of my life. And then he ruined it by pulling out of me. Maybe it’s a problem—perhaps it’s perverted to wish, but I wanted him to stay until the end, release himself inside me.

I grind my teeth together, shaking my head as I step out of the shower, wrapping a towel around myself and taking a deep breath. I just need to find a way to get him out of my head.

Which is pretty difficult to do, when I’m standing in his apartment.

I find a microwave meal in the freezer and make it, then carry the food to the table. My tablet was in my apartment when it went down, so after eating my food, I head to his computer room, standing in the doorway for a moment.

Back when Byron and I first met, I’d imagined a little army of gamers in here, kids with headsets, all talking to their dad. I pictured us playing together as a family and having game nights like Byron and I talked about.

“There’s just something about a gaming marathon,” he’d said, when we first met, holding his hands up over his head, making shapes with his fingers and thumbs. “I used to—well, I used to stay up all night playing Mario Kart. It was a lot of fun.”

“It’d be even more fun with more people,” I’d said, rolling over and putting my head on his shoulder.

Now, I push through the doorway and force myself to sit down in front of the computer. Byron is smart—he wouldn’t use a birthday as his password. In fact, if anything, he probably has a password that resets every ten seconds, interlinked with his other technology, or something like that.

On the off chance that it works, I lean forward, clear my throat, and punch my birthday in. Of course, it immediately rejects it, and informs me that I only have two more tries, unless I want to use the bio log-in.

I accidentally hit the button for the bio log-in option, then blink when I realize the computer has unlocked for me. Did Byron program my bio-optics into his computer?

It takes me a moment to recover from that, then I click over to his files, pulling up the video from the night that I was cursed. I’ve watched it over and over, and still, I can’t find anything that helps me remember anything about the man who cursed me.

Something else draws my attention as I’m watching, and I click in closer, zooming in on the mayor’s wrist. It’s a different color than the rest of his body.

I zoom in even closer, straining my eyes to see better.

His wrist is dainty, and small. Like a woman’s. With a tiny golden bracelet.

Rearing back away from the computer, I put my hand to my chest. What the hell? Why would he look like that? Pulling my phone from my pocket, I call the one person who might be able to help me with this.

***

“Interesting,” Rafael says, leaning back and pushing his glasses up his nose. “You know what—I think I know exactly what this is.”

“That’s great,” I say, “because I thought I was having a stroke.”

“Yeah,” he says, leaning over me, his shoulder pressing into mine as he points at the screen. “That is a classic shapeshifter glitch.”

“Shapeshifter?” I ask, glancing up at him, eyebrow raised. “So…a shifter?”

“No,” he says, clearing his throat. “That’s actually—”

“What the fuck?”

I turn to see Byron standing in the doorway to his computer room, looking enraged. His eyes flicked between Rafael and me. At this exact moment, I feel a rush of emotions that must be coming straight from him.

Betrayal, confusion, anger.