Page 71 of In the Mouth of the Wolf

CAMDEN

“Well?” Elias asked as I came back down the stairs.

“Operation Eyrie was a success.” I closed my eyes, reaching through Elias to check in with Marlowe. The bond was smooth and peaceful. “Can’t you feel how much better she is already?”

Elias’s jaw ticked in annoyance. “Yeah, but you kind of stole my thunder, and I wanted to…”

I arched my eyebrow and he huffed, giving up. “Okay, fine. I owed you one.”

I nodded and jumped over the back of the couch to sit, the weight on my chest lifting as I flopped down. “Now we just gotta beat the shit outta Nolan.”

My hands curled into fists at my side. What the hell had he done to her? Gotten into some weird fight about how tomatoes were technically a fruit or something stupid like that? I knew how much he loved being right about dumb shit.

“Look,” Archer started. “No matter what happened, we need to remain calm and not stress Marlowe out any further. Did you not feel her regret over the bond? If she rejects it…”

My chest still ached from the sharp pain of her remorse.

Archer, in typical Archer fashion, had put together a “handbook for alpha-omega bonds” based on his research for us. Shifters were social animals – we learned by watching others’ behaviors. Since there hadn’t been an alpha-omega bond here in nearly a century, we didn’t have any examples to go by. We were going off instinct and outdated anecdotes mostly, so Archer wanted to be thorough.

I’d skimmed through most of it – it was a little dense to get through, but I had read the warnings about bond rejection.

Omegas had a built-in cooling-off period and could reject bonds if they tried hard enough. In the past, some alphas had found a loophole by just barking at their omegas until the bond was settled, never giving them a chance to be alone enough in their thoughts to initiate the break.

But we weren’t those types of alphas.

If an omega was able to successfully dissolve the bond, it was said that the alphas would never be the same. They’d go through life feeling like a part of them was always missing and wouldn’t be able to form a bond with anyone else. It was like losing your soul.

Marlowe was already my everything. The first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about at night. Even a taste of her bond rejection had been one of the worst things I’d ever felt.

I touched base with her again, and she seemed better for now. Tranquil, even. I wanted to keep it that way.

“Okay, fine,” I grumbled. “We’ll beat the shit out of him figuratively, then.”

About ten minutes later, Nolan finally pulled up, bringing the groceries inside.

I kept my mind focused on Marlowe and her need for non-violence as he entered, tail between his legs. “What the fuck happened?” I yelled.

Calmly.

He sighed and put the bags down on the floor, running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. Really. I asked her to go to the liquor store and pick out the wine, but she came back empty-handed and on the verge of tears. She wouldn’t tell me anything, so I took her over there and found two guilty-looking, bitchy beta females. I saw red. I knew they’d done something, but Marlowe kept begging me to leave it alone. She and I argued and… I think she thought I was going to hit her.”

Archer leapt over the distance between them and pummeled him into the ground.

Elias and I looked at each other, our eyes wide open in surprise. So much for Mr. We-Can’t-Beat-Each-Other-Up.

Nolan didn’t even put up a fight. He accepted every punch until Elias and I finally pulled Archer off him. “How could you?” he seethed. “She regrets the bond because of you!”

I nodded at Elias and he took Archer out of the room to cool down. I sighed and walked over, helping Nolan back up. Blood dripped from his nose and his eyes were starting to swell shut. “Well, it’s a good thing Marlowe needs some space because if she saw you right now, she’d likely freak out all over again.”

Nolan walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of peas out of the freezer, bringing it to his cheek while looking at me suspiciously. “How are you the calm one in all of this?”

I chuckled darkly. “Oh, beneath this placid surface, I’m a hurricane of fury, believe me. But Marlowe’s tucked away in her new nest and seems to be feeling better, and my desire to keep it that way is greater than my need to kill you. At least for now.”

He snorted. “Well, that’s comforting.”

I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what would come next. For a difficult decision I might have to make, depending on the answer. “I have to know. You said Marlowe thought you were going to hurt her. Were you?”

His eyes widened in horror. “Never,” he answered emphatically. “Cam, how can you even ask that?”

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