Page 11 of The Alpha's Forced Bride

Harvey never broke eye contact with me. “It will start with a ritual run by the elder woman of the pack.” He rested his hands on his knees as he continued to stare at me. “Right after that is a purification ritual, and then you'll walk barefoot to my home, where you'll meet me naked.”

This time, my snort was a lot more indignant and disrespectful, which is how I meant it to be. “You've got to be kidding me.”

More than that—my body had to be kidding me because I felt the way that my thighs tensed up at the sound of him talking about me meeting him naked. In my chest, my fast heartbeat made me think about how close Harvey must have been to me at one point. I glanced at his lips, daring to study the prominent cupid’s bow and the lush curve of his bottom lip.

His eyes, though, those were the kicker. Those honey pools were dangerous.

I glanced at the others. Those two had black eyes. It terrified me to notice that the red color had disappeared from the redhead's eyes, and now they had become entirely black. Great. Just from the look of their eyes, I knew I was in the middle of a demon pack, and their alpha was going to make me his demon wolf queen. What was next? The birth of the wolf antichrist?

“We'll do this very quickly,” Harvey continued. “The women who will come in will be very understanding of your specific feminine needs. They'll understand exactly how to take care of you.”

I stared aghast at him. “Are they going to be doing things to me?”

“I just mean they’re going to be sensitive about your body.”

“You made it sound worse.”

He stood up then, towering over me like a skyscraper. I shrank back, hating the fact that that was my reaction to him. But I was intimidated by his height, and I was in a space that didn't give me much to work with. I was somewhere on the coast but I had no idea where I was. My inner wolf was whimpering and cowering in fear. I didn't like it. I also didn't like the way being vulnerable with him made me feel kind of good. Some intuitive part of me understood that I was in the company of someone I didn't really have to fear.

That doesn’t make sense, I thought as I tilted my head back to meet his gaze. I shouldn’t feel like I can trust him. But part of me does.

He hadn't exactly tried to hurt me. He hadn't strapped me down, and he wasn't trying to torture me. He certainly didn't poison me, either. But it didn't make sense. If this was who was supposed to be my mate, why was he possessed? Why would the ritual match me with someone evil?

I stared up at him. “What's your pack name?”

He sternly gazed into my eyes. “We’re the Grimpaws.”

Yep, that was it. I was in the middle of a demon wolf pack, and this would be the rest of my life, wouldn't it? Unless my family came to get me or I could find a way out, I was going to be stuck here. I didn't want to be stuck here. I didn't want to sleep on the stupid cot, didn't want to be in this musty basement, and I really didn't want those guys to keep staring at me the way they were. I couldn't gauge what they actually felt from their expressions.

I couldn't tell because their eyes were such a glassy black—like dark stones sitting in the night or two black holes ready to suck me in. They were scary, and the energy that they gave off was sort of hungry, as if they were just never satisfied with anything that they received.

When I turned back to Harvey, his eyes had turned black, too. My heart skipped a beat.

He stroked my cheek. “You'll be our salvation. You'll become my mate. We're going to save this pack together.”

What did he mean by that? My skin tingled where he touched me. Part of me dared to lean into his touch, while another part of me scolded myself for getting turned on by a bad guy. Were my standards that low?

As he started to move toward the door, I tried to get up from the cot but got dizzy. Oh no. I was starting to feel sleepy. He must have put something in one of the other bits of food—maybe some kind of drug. I didn't know. But as my head swam, my eyes followed him. I watched him latch the gate and walk off with the two other men.

I watched him get to the bottom of the stairs just after the two men had gone up. He paused and glanced back at me as if he wanted to take me with him. It was strange how much my heart stuttered at the sight of that. There was a part of me that also wanted to go with him, to be taken out of the cage and wrapped up in his arms. He called me his salvation, but did that mean he was mine?

Or would I just be damned like the rest of them?

Chapter 5 - Harvey

Annoying slurping noises filled the air, followed by the sound of Clancy sighing. “She's beautiful, you know. Ridiculously beautiful.”

That aggravating sound came again just as fast as it had disappeared. More slurping. A cough. Elongated sucking sounds.

Ugh.

Clancy was sipping something so thick through a straw that he was making choking sounds while trying to get it through. That was probably another one of his homemade milkshakes he thought tasted great. I was willing to bet his demon convinced him of that.

The slurping sounds came back, then turned into gurgling as the liquid bubbled at the end of the straw, signaling the end of his concoction. He set the cup aside with a sigh and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. I glared at him from the desk while I bent over more and more paperwork. The tome, as big as it was, still needed to be tended to despite the fact that we already knew pretty much everything about our symptoms.

As we had predicted the previous day, Kirk was suffering from another round of convulsions. He was our data recorder for the most part, and with him being out of commission and Clancy being more preoccupied with his drink, I had to be the one who took care of things. As always, I was the one who stepped up to the plate.

“Her hips are really nice,” Clancy continued. “She's young, and she's got a great body. Bit of an attitude, though.”

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