ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (171 page)

I sat up, trying to ignore the hole that had opened up inside of me, and couldn’t. I suddenly felt like crying, tears burning behind my eyes. When he was away I made myself strong. I met the loneliness head on because I was going to win the fight. Even after he’d come back I hadn’t dropped my guard because I knew I’d had to keep my back up.

But now? I’d been stupid enough to let down my guard, to believe that it was going to be alright. His absence now was like a missing limb. And it hurt.

I got up and found clothes, pulling it over my skin, covering up my nakedness. There were times when being naked was glorious, when it felt right. And then there were times that it made me feel vulnerable, even when I was alone. Like now, after he’d left me. After he’d made me believe it was all fixed.

The phone rang and I picked it up. Charlene’s voice sounded hollowing over the receiver.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know. John ran out of here like he was possessed. There’s an issue at the office, someone said they found a spy.”

“What? This is home. They can’t bring work home,” I said and realized how stupid I sounded.

“I know,” Charlene answered quietly.

I ended the conversation and hung up. I wasn’t going to sit at home anymore and wait for him to come home, to make me feel worthy of his attention again. I pulled a light jacket over my t-shirt and stepped into my pumps. I was going to that office, and I was going to demand they let Reid come home because this was his time off.

It was only a five minute drive from the house and I heard the voices from inside before I stepped through the front door of the office building. A small, dull-looking woman sat behind a big desk. Her hair was tucked into a bun in her neck and her glasses looked like they belonged on someone more serious, more sure of herself.

“Where are they?” I asked. She knew who I was. Everyone here knew who I was.

“We’re not allowed to let civilians in,” she said, and sunk in on herself like she was trying to hide behind the big desk.

“I don’t actually care. If your superiors have an issue, you tell them to phone me.” I walked around the desk and through the door behind her where the voices were floating from. The first door was another office, where John was leaning with his hands on a desk, talking loudly to a man behind it that tried in vain to calm him with gentle words. When I walked passed John stopped yelling and swung around to look at me. I stormed past and a moment later he was following me. I bet the man was happy to be rid of him.

“What are you doing here?” John asked.

“I’m here to get Reid,” I said and walked on. “It would do you good to go to Charlene, too. You guys are killing us.”

“This is pack business,” he said. When I flung myself around to look at him, he closed his mouth like he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Pack business?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

He opened and closed his mouth, searching for words and failing to find them. I turned again and followed the sound of Reid’s voice into a room to my left. The room was bare, with four naked walls and a concrete floor. A metal table and chair was in the middle, and it didn’t look like this room belonged in an office building at all. A young man sat on the chair. He had dark skin and black hair, eyes big and terrified. He looked like he couldn’t be older than eighteen. Reid stood in front of him, radiating hatred. It was hot and scalding, and I could feel his power crawling on my skin. His eyes were a light blue, a color I’ve come to fear in the last twenty-four hours.

Abdul, another one of his team that I recognized, stood to the side and babbled fast words in a language I didn’t understand. I guessed that it was the boy’s language, but his eyes were on Reid. If I were him I’d watch Reid too. He looked like he was going to pounce.

I noticed an official in uniform standing in the corner last of all. Why was the man doing nothing? Maybe Reid and his team outranked him. It was strange that no one else was around.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, and it was like all of them just realized I was there after I spoke. Reid turned his head to me, and he breathed in like he was sniffing the air. I wondered if he recognized me at all when his eyes looked like that.

“What are you doing here?” he asked and his voice was a deep grown, something that shouldn’t have been able to come out of a human throat.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said, crossing my arms. I didn’t look him in the eye, I wasn’t stupid enough to challenge him, but I wasn’t going to back down. I did my best to push away the spark of fear I’d started to feel when I’d seen his eyes, and I squared my shoulders, staring very hard at his chest.

It wasn’t very easy to be stubborn when I couldn’t look him in the eye. Eye-contact had most of the impact.

“This is pack business,” Reid said. It was the second time I’d heard that since I’d arrived. It didn’t make sense.

“Yes, I’m starting to hear more and more about this ‘pack’ business of yours,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound as scared as I was. Point for me.

Reid’s face closed. Not that it had been very open before, but he was blocking himself off from me even more.

“Get her out of here,” he said to John. John to a step toward me, but I held up my hand.

“Don’t touch me, John,” I said, and I looked him in the eye. He averted his eyes, and I knew what was going on. Reid was Alpha of this little pack, and his team were part of it. I knew a bit about werewolves. I’d looked it up long ago, just after we’d gotten married. I hadn’t thought it was the same, because Reid was in the army and he didn’t have a pack he answered to the way other wolves did. But I realized now I’d been wrong.

“Reid asked me to escort you out,” John said, sounding unsure.

“Is Reid your Alpha?” I asked John. He hesitated for a second, eyes flicking to Reid, but then he nodded.

“Right, and I’m married to him. Which means that I’m the Alpha’s mate. The second. Right?” I was going out on a limb, but John was starting to look nervous.

“Reid asked me to—“

“I know what he asked you to do,” I said. “But I’m telling you not to. I’m outrank you, John, back off.”

He swallowed, glancing at Reid again, but then he stepped back. When I looked at Reid again he looked like he was going to explode. His face was red and his muscles bulged under his shirt. A vein stuck out on his forehead and I could actually see his pulse in his neck.

“Take it easy, Reid,” I said in a soft voice, still not looking into his eyes.

“You have no right to pull rank on them,” he said and his voice was calm. The dangerous kind.

“You married me. You gave me this position. Either I’m your wife and part of the pack, or neither.”

He pulled his lips back and snarled at me like an animal, but I let it slide. I was  starting to see a really ugly side of him, but I could feel the tension, the magic, in the room, and this wasn’t the time to confront him about it. The idea was to diffuse it without anyone dying.

“I’m going to ask you again,” I said in a low voice. “What are you doing?”

“This is a spy,” Reid said, pointing to the boy that stood trembling the middle of the room. He half-stepped behind Abdul like he would protect him, but if I knew anything about pack I knew where Abdul’s loyalties lay.

“It’s a child,” I said.

“He needs to die,” Reid said again and his voice had that animal quality to it.

“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My ears started ringing and it was like everything inside me stopped. The room started spinning slowly around me.

“He should have a hearing, at least,” I heard myself say, but my voice sounded far away.

“He’s an enemy,” Reid said.

“No, Reid. He’s a child.”

Reid growled at me, again a sound that didn’t sound right coming from his throat. I was suddenly sick of him treating me like that. Something inside me snapped.

“Stop it,” I said and I knew it was dangerous. No one just told the alpha what to do like that. But I was over it. I was over all of it. “Don’t be an animal. No one deserved just to die without a fair trial.”

I looked into Reid’s eyes and the blue flame in them scared me. But I held onto the stare. I was challenging him.

“Kill that boy, and you lose me,” I said. It was a direct challenge, an ultimatum. John gasped and I knew that my threat was as serious as I thought it was. But what scared me more than Reid’s eyes, the animal, the side of him that I suddenly saw, was that I meant it. If he killed that kid today, without having anyone step in and speak for him, I was going to leave him. I could walk away.

Yes, it would hurt.  Yes, I’d miss him. I loved him. But I have lived most of our married life alone. I could do it again.

“You’re not kidding,” Reid said and it was a statement, not a question. His voice sounded more like his own. He was swallowing his wolf down. I nodded, because I wasn’t kidding.

“Put him in a cell,” Reid barked. I turned my back on him – another very dangerous thing to do with an alpha, I’d read – and walked out.

Chapter 6

I did what I expected he usually did. I walked away from home, away from the confining walls that reminded me every day of what I didn’t have. At first a man that was home all the time, but I’d gotten used to that. A family when all my friends had kids but I’d told myself it would happen in time. And now the man I thought I’d married. All these things I felt I’d lost somehow. How was it possible to miss something I’d never had?

But I did have it once. Maybe not physically, but they’d been there in my dreams, in our dreams together when we’d talked about building a future. And now it felt like it was shattering in front of me. Everything ran through my fingers like sand.

I walked for miles. I walked until my legs ached. I walked until my mind quieted down. I walked until I could finally face going home again. Not because the house was empty, as usual, but for a change because he was there. I felt dread with every step I took back home, and it dragged me down because I knew I shouldn’t have felt that way about my husband. During the short time he was actually home.

When I walked through the front door Reid sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees and fingers laced together, knuckles pressed against his mouth.

“Where have you been?” he asked. His voice wasn’t as hostile as his face.

“I needed a walk,” I said.

“For four hours?”

I rolled my eyes and walked past him to the kitchen. He followed me.

“Don’t walk away from me,” he said.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I answered and he looked surprised, like he hadn’t expected me to stand up to him like that. And it was true, usually I didn’t. Usually I accepted his bad moods, understood what he was struggling with, dealt with it calmly because I was his wife and I supported him. But I was over it.

“You were away for a long time,” he finally said after looking like he was searching for words. His voice was lower, softer, but it wasn’t enough to calm me down. It wasn’t nearly enough to make me feel like I should be the strong one again. When did I ever have the chance just to let go? To scream and cry and lose it all like he usually did?

“Do I need to remind you that the times you do that, just disappear, you stay away for the whole night?” My voice was a lot more hostile than I’d meant it, but there was no way in hell I was apologizing today. I would man up and mean it.

He looked out the window without saying anything else. The switched off, distant Reid I’d come to know the last couple of days. The Reid I just didn’t know anymore.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I turned to face him, hands hanging by my side. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I was trying to find a reason to keep trying. “You’ve never been this bad. I get there are things you struggle with when you come back. And I try, I really do. But you’re just not home anymore, Reid. I wait for a man that never comes back.”

He opened his mouth to say something and a spark of hope ignites inside of me. If he just talked to me, we could figure this out. But after a moment of silence he closed his mouth again, and the hope died out again. I buried my face in my hands, tried to calm the storm of emotions that started to build up inside of me, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t push it down the way I usually could. I breathed out in a shudder.

I turned with my back to him, werewolf rules to hell and closed my eyes, trying to press the tumult of my emotions down. I wanted him to come to me, to touch me, to try talk to me. To do anything at all. But he just stayed where he was without saying anything.

When I turned around again I was angry.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. His face was carefully expressionless, but his eyes were their natural green color. Not the fiery blue. I was the one that was losing control. “I do everything for you, Reid. Everything. And all I get in return is your absence. Even when you’re home. Don’t you want to be here?”

When I stopped long enough for him to realize I wanted an answer he nodded his head.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said softly, but I still didn’t believe him.

“Why then?  What’s the problem? What’s so bad that you can’t be here with me, even when you want to? What is it?”