Danae’s POV
I stopped before I could help it.
Galen’s familiar scent reached me as my stomach knotted.
I drew an unsteady breath and turned.
He was coming straight toward us, jaw tight, anger burning in his eyes.
My heartbeat stumbled, then began to race.
“Walk,” Eirwen whispered, gripping my arm.
“Don’t answer him.”
Too late.
He covered the distance in seconds.
His hand closed around my upper arm and jerked me toward him, fingers digging through fabric into flesh.
I caught his expensive fragrance, with something hotter and wilder beneath it.
“Running again?” His face was close to mine.
“You’ve got good at that.”
“Take your hand off me.”
I fought to keep the words steady.
Adrenaline flooded my body, and every inch of skin beneath his grip wanted to recoil.
His fingers pressed harder than any human hand should have been able to.
I was horribly conscious of how easily he had closed the distance, how little time Eirwen’s warning had bought us.
“After we discuss what you’ve done.”
He lowered his voice.
I’d learned to fear that quietness.
“You destroyed everything.
I’ll never be a true Delta because of you.”
Anger surged through the fear.
I tore my arm loose.
“Go to hell.”
His palm struck before I saw it coming.
The crack seemed to fill the parking lot.
My head snapped sideways, heat bursting across my cheek.
There had been no hesitation in the blow.
One moment I was answering him; the next, the side of my face burned and I was struggling to keep my balance beneath the shock.
He advanced again.
“You owe me.
Everything I did for you.
The wedding I paid for and you ruined.”
His eyes shifted toward something feral, then back.
Eirwen stepped into his path.
She was so much smaller than him, but nothing in her posture yielded.
“Back off.
There are cameras everywhere.”
He turned that curled lip on her.
“You’re next.
I haven’t forgotten what you did.”
“Supported my friend after you cheated?
Is that what you’re threatening me for?”
He grabbed me again.
The force dragged me toward him and wrenched my shoulder; pain ran down my arm beneath his bruising fingers.
“I cheated?
She slept with another wolf while our bond was intact.”
Humiliation burned alongside the anger.
He made it sound like something filthy I owed him an explanation for, while Drusilla and their son became facts he could simply brush aside.
My face was hot, my breath uneven, but I couldn’t let his version stand unanswered.
“After I found out you’d lied to me for years.
I chose not to spend another moment looking at your cheating face.”
“You’re no better than I am.” His breath was hot against my skin.
“I felt you with him.
Through the bond.
When you fucked him.”
His grip tightened.
I bit my lip against a cry.
“Every penny I lost on that wedding—you’ll pay it back.”
Tears pressed behind my eyes.
“You had an affair.
You have a son, Galen.”
The amber of his eyes darkened toward gold.
His pupils changed shape, leaving him somewhere between the man I knew and the animal I had every reason to fear.
“Ungrateful little bitch.”
He twisted my wrist.
Pain shot upward.
Then he shoved.
I stumbled backward into a concrete pillar.
The impact burst across my shoulder blades and drove the breath from my lungs.
My legs folded, and I slid down before I could make them hold me.
Eirwen rushed toward us.
“Stop!
What is wrong with you?”
His backhand caught her with enough force to spin her around.
She caught herself against a parked car.
Three bloody lines opened across her cheekbone, left by nails that had become too long and too sharp.
“Enough.”
The command rolled across the parking lot, deep and absolute.
Something primal lived in that authority.
Even through the pain, something inside me answered it.