COLE
Feeling like a whore that had just been used, fucked and trashed is one of the worst feeling in the word.
It made you want to rush ho and wash the stench off your body.
I did not go ho.
I drove with the windows down and the music loud enough to drown out the part of my brain that was still replaying Lila on her knees looking up at , her mouth around , her eyes saying I own you and her lips saying will you help , and the worst part was not that she had done it, the worst part was that I had stood there and let her and then said yes like I always did.
Like I always would.
Carlos had my glass on the counter before I sat down and I wrapped both hands around it and stared into it and thought about the kind of man I was, which was not sothing I recomnded doing at midnight after the day I had just had.
I had grown up with nothing, not as a figure of speech, as a hard plain fact, it was a fact that followed you into every room you ever walked into for the rest of your life and reminded you where you ca from.
My father was dead before I was old enough to keep the mory of him, my mother had walked away with my elder sister, and other my elder sister, who was thirteen years old and still too young to be saddled with such responsibility made a tough decision when she left on the steps of Gravemoon pack house before dawn and walked away.
I did not bla her.
I had tried to and never managed to.
Alpha Corvin had co outside that morning with Marco and Victor behind him.
Victor and Beta Marco had suggested I was dropped off at the holess shelter. Alpha Corvin had looked at sitting on that cold step and said to them to bring in.
Victor had protested that I had no wolf and Alpha Corvin had looked at , he knew I had no wolf.
A man that powerful did not miss that and he took in regardless and I had spent years never knowing whether to be grateful or suspicious or both.
I trained twice as hard as Rowan and Ryker from day one because I had no wolf and that on its own was an embarrassnt.
I used the embarrassnt well, and I beca the best swordsman in Gravemoon and nobody handed that, I took it, and it was the only thing in my life that was entirely mine.
Then Lila walked in and my wolf woke up for the first ti and aid itself at the worst possible woman available and I had been paying for that ever since.
When I started fucking her, I knew imdiately she didn’t want to keep . She has multiple n lined up to give her exactly what I was giving her. So I decided to settle for whatever crumbs she was willing to give of herself.
Truth is when she got together with Rowan, I was willing to keep being her toy in the secret but she had seen it as too risky and decided to dump . Not until today.
She had taken apart completely in that room and put back together facing the wrong direction and sent out with a job to do and I had said yes because I always said yes to her and I hated myself for it but I was already a man she had in her claws. She knew it, I knew it. There was no need fighting it.
I slid the envelope and the money across the bar without looking at Carlos, "Make sure she gets this."
He picked it up, turning it over in his hands, "She has been asking for you."
"I know."
"She wants to know when you are coming." He set it down flat on the bar.
"Tell her it is too heated right now." I turned the glass in both hands. "I cannot co."
He refilled my glass without being asked and I looked at him then muttered those forbidden words, "Victor is back."
His hands stopped moving on the bar, bottle suspended mid-air.
"This should be between us," I pressed, "I an it."
He looked at for a long mont, bottle still hanging in his grip, then set it down slowly, "When have I ever blabbed about anything?"
"I appreciate you man," I left money on the bar and walked out.
The drive back I turned the music up until the door panels rattled and kept it there all the way through the gates and into the car park where I sat in the dark for a while before going in, because going in ant the night was over and the night being over ant tomorrow started and tomorrow I was going to have to look Rowan in the face.
Rowan who trusted .
Rowan who called brother and ant it.
Just past midnight and the pack was quiet, corridors empty the way I had tid them to be, and I moved through the building with my keys in my fist and my head down and made it to my room without running into anyone.
I opened the door, reached for the light, turned it on.
I grabbed the fra and stumbled back, my heart slamming hard against my ribs, "The fuck? you scared the actual hell out of ."
Nia was sitting on the edge of my bed with her arms crossed and her eyes already on the door.
She stood up and looked at suspicious, like she was trying to read , eyes moving across my face slow and thorough, taking inventory, "Where have you been, Cole?"
I stepped inside and closed the door, dropped my keys on the table, "Went out for a drink, needed air."
Her jaw tightened, "Bullshit."
I turned to face her, "Excuse ."
"Since morning." She did not raise her voice which was worse than if she had, "You have been gone since morning, you co back after midnight slling like a bar, and that is the story you are going with."
I crossed my arms, "That is what happened. I sll like bar because I was at the bar."
"Cole." She mumbled my na like she was trying to give a chance to co clean.
"What are you doing in my room, Nia?" I kept my voice flat.
"Don’t try to change the topic." She took a step forward, chin lifted.
Sothing in that had been worn thin and raw all day snapped, "I do not owe you an explanation, what I do is not your business, we are not together."
The room went quiet imdiately I uttered those words.
She looked at and I watched it land, watched her absorb it, chin going up slightly, arms tightening across her chest, and she looked at with eyes that had gone very still, "I know that, you have never let forget it, we are just fuck buddies, I am fully aware of what this is."
She moved toward the door and I caught her wrist and pulled her back before I had thought it through, "I am sorry."
She looked at my hand on her wrist and then lifted her eyes to my face, "Did you go to see Lila."
I took a deep breath, enough to make the lie sit right, "No."
Her eyes moved across my face slowly, checking everything, lips pressed together, and I held her gaze and kept my breathing even and waited.
"Cole." She said it quietly, and the quiet of it made my chest pull tight, "I have covered for you, kept my mouth shut about things I should have said out loud a long ti ago."
Her eyes stayed locked on mine, not wavering, not softening. "I will not do it again if you go back to her."
I stepped closer, fingers still around her wrist, "I am not."
She held her ground, not moving back even with close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to hold my eyes, and what was on her face was not hurt and it was not anger, it was the face of a woman who had been hurt ti and ti again by the sa man. I recognized that look all too well.
"I hope you rember who had your back when nobody else did," she said.
I tightened my grip on her wrist, "Is that a threat."
Her eyes t mine and held them and she did not look away and she did not give the out I was looking for.
"No." She let the word sit for a mont. "It is a reminder, because nobody else knows you were the one who opened the door for Freya the night Luna Zoya died, Cole."
"Nobody knows that except ." she added and my heart sank imdiately.
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