The problem was that I couldn’t prove one way or the other if Braelyn was involved. I wanted to save her, and there was a slim possibility that she hadn’t been part of this mess if what Brae said was true, and she thought she was saving me from her father instead of delivering me into his hands. But the Brae I had known would do whatever she’d been told, jumping to fall in line when her father commanded her.
I’d asked her once to leave here with me, to just slip into the sunset and leave this place. She’d scoffed it off, and within days, she’d rejected me and humiliated me in front of the pack. I could still hear her words, filled with hatred and loathing like I was the fucking villain in her story.
“You lied to me. This isn’t love or anything to do with mating. It’s just lust that you made me feel. I hate you,” she’d paused, her entire body trembling while nothing escaped the grip she held on herself. I couldn’t smell or sense her emotions over the anxiousness that swelled from me and the pain she was causing. “I never want to see you again.”
“Don’t do this, Brat. You don’t mean what you’re saying. You’re my fucking air, Braelyn. You are my soul. I can’t breathe without you. Come on, Brat, it’s me. I let you in so you could see the parts of me that no one else has. Please don’t do this to me, to us. I love you. I love you more than I ever thought possible to love another person. Brae, look at me. This is us. This isn’t you, because you love me, too. I know you do. I feel you as deeply as you feel me.”
“I never want to see you again. You need to leave and get as far away from here as you can. Do you hear me? Leave and don’t come back. I never loved you. I never wanted you. I couldn’t love you, ever.”
Anger had pulsed through me as her father snorted, watching as his pretty daughter tore out my soul and shredded it while the entire pack watched.
“I will come back here, and when I do, I will destroy you and everything you love. Last chance, Princess. Change your mind.”
“I can’t ever change it. I have decided. Leave!”
Harold dragged me and the others away from her. He told me to run, to leave before he released the alphas on my friends and me. I thought that was the end until I saw the alphas waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain. Harold never intended for us to escape, and I suspected Braelyn hadn’t either. It had been a ruse, one that was orchestrated in advance to make the pack think we’d left in banishment.
Braelyn slipped from the bathroom, her wide, blue eyes slowly meeting mine from across the room. She was the most beautifully crafted woman I’d ever encountered. Her hair was a mess of colors, which might look awkward on other women, but it worked for Brae. Her auburn curls were mixed with caramel strands that hung in sinful waves down her back and over her shoulders. Nordic blue eyes, the color of freshly frozen lakes, watched me, knowing I fully intended to fuck her again.
Her tiny button nose flared, and those pearly white teeth pinched her bottom lip between them. I could scent the arousal of her tight pussy, see the way her eyes widened while peering between me and the closet. She was planning to run from me or to fight.
“Come here.” She lowered her head as her eyes slanted into an untrusting glare. “I’m not asking, Braelyn.”
She didn’t move, her body sliding against the wall toward the closet with her hands gripping the towel. Panic entered her pretty eyes, and I smirked at the scent of fear that filled the room, mixing with arousal. She may hate that I’m her mate, but she craved me as much as I craved her traitorous ass.
“Do you prefer I force you to do everything? I won’t ask again. I will make you come to me, either by scent or as your alpha, Brat. Choose how you wish this to play out.”
Braelyn pushed off the wall, dragging her pretty feet the entire way until she stood before me. Leaning up, I snatched the towel she was using to shield her body from me. She’d grown up in the ten years I’d been gone. No longer the girl with a hint of the woman she’d become, Braelyn was all sexy curves and ample breasts that begged to be suckled, and I noted the small, caramel-colored patch of hair that covered her sex was neatly manicured.
Braelyn had never been short, not even as a child. She wasn’t as a woman either, and I enjoyed I didn’t have to crouch to touch or reach her. Lifting my hand, I gripped her hips and sat up further. Moving one foot to the chair, I stared between her legs at her healed sex. Inhaling, I growled at finding my scent gone from her body.
“You washed my scent away, Brat? That wasn’t smart,” I growled, leaning closer to drag my tongue through her pretty, pink flesh. Her hand landed on my shoulders and tightened as I tasted her arousal.
Finding out that Braelyn was a virgin during our mating ceremony had floored me. It left me stunned after being told repeatedly about all the men that Brae had entertained, using them to get anything her father wanted. She’d whored herself out to the highest bidder, just like she’d planned with Carlson. I’d been told the stories in graphic details a million times because my tormentor had discovered that I could ignore the pain, but I couldn’t shut off my reaction to hearing about and imaging my mate being touched by strange men. Had the stories all been a lie, or had they killed the men she’d seduced once her father had gotten his payment? How she’d maintained being untouched in the most basic way, as a highly sexual wolf, was beyond me.
Braelyn’s soft moan filled the room, and I chuckled at how responsive her body was to me. She fucking hated that it caved to the baser needs of sex. Braelyn despised she was as defenseless as I was for the shit happening between us. This was the reason I’d pushed her away.
If I let her claim me, I’d go to war to protect her. Shit, chances were I still would. I’d let her see my flaws and the part of me that no one else ever had or would. I’d let her into my heart, deeper than anyone ever had been except my mother, and then she’d ripped it out.
I lifted without warning, grabbing Braelyn’s body to move her to the bed. She didn’t fight me, but I sensed it was coming. I could smell the alpha within her needing to test me. It was basic fucking wolf genetics. Alpha mates ripped one another down to the most primitive form to see which one would be more dominant in the relationship.
Once Brae was sprawled out on the bed, I let my hungry gaze slide over her form. Fuck, she was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen in my life. We’d never gotten to this stage of our mating, and now I was rushing through it. I’d marked her, setting claim to her soul, and she was mine now. That knowledge left me reeling with how to handle her.
“Lift your knees, and touch yourself,” I demanded, watching as her forehead creased and a white line marred her mouth. “I wasn’t asking.”
Braelyn obeyed, but just barely. I doubted anyone other than her father had ever forced the princess to do anything. That sadistic prick had cherished his only child, and it hadn’t been in a healthy way, either. He’d been almost obsessed with her, and it had forced us to create our own language to escape his notice.
I watched Brae’s clumsy fingers moving to her core, slowly sliding her fingertips through the mess I’d made by simply tasting her. Settling between her thighs, I watched her working them through the folds, and yet she never once touched her clit. Pushing my pants down my hips, I began stroking my cock, which pulsed with the need to be buried in her tight cunt.