Lilia’s POV
And with that, the pretense between the two sides was torn away for good.
Alex’s men traded a look.
They still wanted to gamble on force.
But Marcus and Derek gave them no opening.
Two shadows moved at the same time, so fast I couldn’t track the motion,and in the next breath all six of them were pinned.
It had happened too quickly to believe.
Alex’s side held the numbers, but the gulf in bloodline rank wasn’t a matter of degrees.
It was a canyon.
Now I understood why Callum groveled rather than cross Kael.
Derek and Marcus alone were enough to subdue these men.
In front of Kael, they had never been anything but prey waiting to be culled,and I found myself wondering, despite everything, just how powerful the man holding me actually was.
Alex groaned through the pain, his eyes never once leaving Kael.
With death that close, none of his arrogance was left.
Blood and cold sweat dripped off his ruined wrist onto the floor.
“Alpha Kael…” His lips shook as he found his voice.
“I was blind. I offended you,and your woman. The hand, I accept it. I only beg you… leave us a way out.”
He sank slowly to his knees, and with his left hand gripped his own torn right wrist and,wrenched.
A wet crack.
The sound of the bone giving way cut clean through the room, tangled with the howl he strangled in his chest.
Kael leaned back in his chair, looking down from above, and savored it in silence for a few seconds.
I clung to his waist, face buried against his chest, unable to look up.
The reek of blood was so thick I couldn’t breathe around it.
He glanced down at me.
Whatever he read there,that I was genuinely frightened,made him lift one hand and flick it, almost idly.
“Get out.”
The whole pack of them scrambled out of the room, too frantic to even pull the door shut behind them.
Derek and Marcus shifted back to human form, took one look at the two of us pressed together on the sofa, and withdrew with a perfect, wordless understanding, closing the door on their way out. This chapter was taken from novelping(.)com without permission.
The room went abruptly silent.
Nothing left but the soft crack of firewood.
“Finished kissing?”
Kael’s voice broke the quiet, lazy as ever, his thumb grazing the curve of my ear.
A jolt of tingling warmth shot straight through me and snapped me back to myself.
I jerked my head up.
“Who,who kissed you?”
His gaze dropped, directing mine to the left side of his chest.
Only then did I see the red mark still sitting there,the print my lips had left in all that panic, smudged with a little unblended foundation.
“I’m sorry. I’ll wipe it off.”
My face went hot in an instant.
I snatched a napkin and leaned in, dabbing at it with exaggerated care.
At that distance his scent closed over me completely,no escaping it.
The muscle under my fingertips was solid, the power beneath the skin startlingly real, and every stroke of the napkin met the heat of his body.
My heartbeat started hammering for no reason at all, something thrashing wild inside my chest.
I bit down hard on my lower lip and refused to look at him again,and my eyes disobeyed me, drifting back every few seconds.
“You’re blushing.”
Amusement had crept into Kael’s voice, low and rough enough to burn my ears.
In those near-gold eyes, the interest of a predator surfaced for a moment.
I turned my face away and said nothing.
He had no intention of letting it end there.
His hand came up, tipped my chin toward him, and held my eyes where he wanted them.
“I saved you. And you wrecked my business.”
The warning in my gut flared.
Alex’s wrist snapping under his own hand was still playing in full color; playing dumb was no longer an option.
“I…
thank you, Kael.
I’ll repay you someday.”
”Not someday.” His gaze fixed on my mouth, his voice dropping low, edged with something that allowed no argument. Get faster updates on g.com.
“Now.”
”How?”
The question came out of me barely above a whisper,and then I saw it, the want rising openly in his eyes, some long-dormant beast finally waking.
Dread closed around my heart in one motion.
I shook my head hard, shrinking back on instinct.
“No,no!”
”So heartless?” He was displeased, clearly.
Long fingers caught my jaw, firm enough to stop me from turning away without quite hurting, the callused pads rough against my skin.
“Not even one kiss?”
”One…
kiss?”
I stared at him.
It was that simple?
“Mm.” He nodded.
“Kiss me, nicely, just once,and we’ll call it even.”
When I didn’t move, he bent his head and brought his lips to my ear.
“Alex and his men haven’t gotten far. You know the rules of this place by now. What do you suppose they’d do to an Omega who doesn’t even have a wolf?”
I went rigid.
In a land ruled by bloodline and claw, I knew exactly how fragile I was.
No wolf meant no leverage at all,nothing to fight back with.
And I knew this man had no reason on earth to risk a feud with an entire Pack for a stranger he’d stumbled into twice.
Fine.
One kiss was cheaper than my life.
I sniffed, nodded, my voice shaking.
“I’ll kiss you. I’ll kiss you…”
He laughed under his breath, the sound thick with satisfaction, and turned his cheek toward me,then his lips, cool, came down on mine instead.
The instant we touched, a shiver ran through me.
His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck.
I didn’t dare fight it.
Somewhere along the way my eyes had closed,and my arms, entirely without my permission, climbed up around his neck and let him deepen the kiss, taking every breath I had left.
I never noticed the moment the resistance I’d wound tight in myself began to loosen,thread by thread, with the strange pull of his breath.