“No! I could have been… I mean, if we weren’t together for the past few years… I gave up lots of opportunities.”

“I’m sorry about that.” I hadn’t meant to dangle any X-rated carrots in front of him. “So, if not sex, what then? The Pride? Did you want to be an Alpha?”

“What did you want?” Brian snapped, and I realized I’d struck a nerve. “What did you get out of this?”

“I…” But telling the truth was a lot harder than asking for it.

“If you deserve the truth, I deserve it. Why did you wear my ring?”

I exhaled slowly, preparing to put into words something I’d never consciously admitted, even to myself. “Because you were safe, and the ring was like a shield. As long as I wore it, other toms stayed away. That’s what I thought I wanted. That is what I wanted, four years ago.”

I’d needed to be left alone, when my species needed me to be propagating. Being engaged to Brian with the graduation clause meant I wouldn’t have to think about getting married for four long years. Only those years had felt a lot shorter than I’d expected.

“And the truth is that I thought I would marry you. I thought that by now we would have fallen in love, because that was what made sense. But love doesn’t make sense, Brian. It isn’t easy, and you can’t just decide to feel it. If we were in love, we’d want to talk to each other all the time, even if all we do is argue. We’d be pulled toward each other any time we’re in the same room. We’d have to fight the urge to touch each other, because we’re not supposed to, but ultimately, we’d lose that fight because when it’s love, it can’t be helped.”

My hand flew to my mouth, as if I could take the words back, but it was far too late for that. I hadn’t known what I was going to say until I was already saying it, and I hadn’t known it was true until I heard it.

“Who are you talking about, Abby? Because it’s not me.”

“No one.” I closed my eyes, horrified by what I’d just done. Conflicted by what I’d just then come to understand.

“It’s Jace, isn’t it? Damn it, Abby, please don’t do this. You know what he’s like. The man’s never met a skirt he didn’t want to lift. Calling himself an Alpha hasn’t changed that.”

A growl began low in my throat. “Calling himself—”

“You know what I mean. He’s an Alpha with an expiration date. A placeholder. You deserve something better. Someone who will treat you like a treasure. He’s using you—”

“He’s not even doing anything!” Jace had pushed me away. Twice. That was the opposite of using me. “Listen, I’m so sorry that I said yes for all the wrong reasons. I’m sorry that I let it go this long when I knew we weren’t in love. The best I can do to fix this is to tell you the truth now.” I took a nervous breath. “I won’t blame you if you hate me.”

“I could never hate you,” he said after less than a heartbeat, yet the words sounded hollow. “But I think you’re making a big mistake. You’re going to regret this when you see what he’s really after.”

“He’s not after anything!” I stood to pace on the tile, my face burning with indignation. “This isn’t about Jace. This is about you and me. I have no doubt you could have made our marriage work. But you deserve better than a marriage that has to be made to work. And so do I.”

SEVEN

Jace

The rest of the west cabin was empty, but Abby was on the phone in Luke and Isaac’s bathroom. I couldn’t make out any of her conversation, though.

Not without trying, anyway.

It would have been completely inappropriate for me to eavesdrop on her, but almost everything I wanted to do with, or for, or to Abby was completely inappropriate. And anyway, I didn’t actually want to know what she was saying; I just wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to know how she was holding up after seeing her picture plastered all over that sick bastard’s wall, and if she didn’t know I was listening, she wouldn’t hide anything.

But I resisted the urge, because we’d agreed that she was an enforcer, and I was an Alpha, and there was nothing more to our relationship. Just like any other enforcer, if she needed to talk, she’d tell me.

Her overnight bag sat open on Luke’s unmade bed with several articles of clothing hanging from it. Most of her stuff was jeans and cotton tees, but something green and silky peeked from one end of the bag, and I really wanted to know what it was.

Abby didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would wear sexy underwear, but then I was learning all kinds of new things about her.

Focus, Jace.

I glanced around the room in search of something to divert my attention from that green scrap. On one corner of Luke’s desk, I found a gruesome and bizarre computer printout. I picked it up, scowling at the picture, and hinges creaked in front of me. When I looked up, Abby stood in the bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but a towel, and I forgot all about the grisly image.

Hell, I forgot my own damn name.

I’d seen her naked, of course. Most recently in September, before the Pride’s annual fall group run. But in that setting, the last thing on my mind had been…

“Jace?”

My gaze snagged on her damp, plump lower lip, the gateway to indulgences forbidden to me on the basis of decorum, and professionalism, and many reasons I could no longer quite remember.

“Jace?” she said again, and I blinked.

“Sorry. I was just thinking about—” Tasting. Touching. Breaking every rule I’d ever been bound by in my entire miserable life… “—running. Together. Um…” I blinked again and cleared my throat, grasping for focus and control.

Get it together. You’ve seen many nude human women.

But Abby was neither nude nor human, and those two facts made all the difference. Wearing nothing but a towel, she seemed to straddle some erotic line between naked and clothed, and my mind couldn’t quite fathom the temporary state.

Though the rest of me knew exactly how to proceed.

“I was thinking about a Pride run,” I finally managed to say. “We should do one this month. Make it a winter tradition.”

“Sure.” Her towel slipped a fraction of an inch, and I realized I was holding my breath. I knew what she looked like beneath that white cotton, yet being limited to my own memory made me ache to refresh the mental image by removing her towel.