Betrayed Forced Mate (Rosecreek Special Ops Wolves #4)

Again, a silence settles between us, the sound of my voice still echoing in the distance, bouncing off the trees.

“Did it ever occur to you that I was hurting, too?” Zane asks, voice quiet. I blink at him—of course, he was hurting. He was the one who got to do whatever he wanted because of that hurt.

“You know, while I was rising to the occasions and handling shit, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about feelings. Yours, mine, or otherwise.”

“Rising to the occasion,” Zane says, nodding, then spinning and walking around the front of his car. He slaps his hand on the roof of the car, grinning at me, but there’s something pained and deeply resentful in his gaze. “You know what, By? You want me gone? Fine. I’ll go. I’ll fucking leave you to the one good thing in your life.”

“Zane,” I say, but he’s already slammed the door shut, his tires kicking up gravel as he speeds out of the lot.

Chapter 24 – Olivia

“Bigby is still trying to push us to go to California,” Rosa says, “at least just Kaila and me. He thinks things are getting more unstable around here, especially with the news of the commander.”

“Right,” I say, chewing on the side of my nail. “But you’re not going?”

“I mean,” Rosa says, laughing, “don’t you think we’ve wasted enough of our lives hiding out? Plus, I don’t want Kaila to miss Christmas in Rosecreek.”

Though we’ve only been here for six months, it feels like much longer than that. I take a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling. We slept for only a few hours when we got home from the emergency meeting. I woke up when Byron was climbing out of the bed. He leaned back, kissing me on the head, saying he had something he had to do.

When he left, I moved to the couch, curling up. I woke up to Rosa calling me, wanting to talk about the commander thing, and re-hash what happened to me when I was cursed. Then, like all our conversations, it spiraled into a thousand other discussions.

I’m in Byron’s apartment, head hanging off the side of the couch. When I first came in, my eyes fixing on this spot, a shudder ran through me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d done, how it felt to have him inside me.

Releasing inside me.

“Listen, Rosie,” I say, clearing my throat.

“Shit,” she says, amused, “you only ever call me that when it’s serious. Are you going to say you think we should go? Because I’m only doing that if you come, too. I mean, you’re the one in real danger, here.”

“No,” I whisper. “I think you should stay. There’s actually something…else. That I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Please tell me this is Byron-related.”

I laugh, closing my eyes, images of him, naked and flushed over top of me, flashing through my mind.

“Yeah,” I say, voice choked. “It’s about Byron.”

“Well, spill!”

“The other night—”

I stop when the door bursts open, and Byron stumbles in, his eyes red and his face flushed. He looks like he climbed a mountain in freezing weather. He’s breathing heavily.

“Rosie,” I whisper, “I have to go.”

“Olivia?”

I hang up the call, sitting up on the couch, my eyes trained on Byron, who looks unstable. Like he might take off at any moment.

“Hey,” he says, his voice low and gravelly, and I realize he’s been drinking.

“Byron,” I say, worry burrowing in my chest. “What is going on?”

“It’s nothing,” he says, starting past the couch, but I reach up and grab his hand, stopping him so he drifts back in my direction.

“Hey,” I say, quietly, not wanting to lose whatever progress we may have made when I accidentally loosed all those memories on him. “Don’t do that. Please. Don’t shut me out.”

He takes a deep breath, then rubs a hand over his face.