Page 141 of Defiant Beta

He’s setting things in motion to ditch me. Yeah, well, no need.

“I was thinking about seeing my sister,” I say.

And I swear his shoulders relax. “That sounds like a good idea. You can spend time with your sister.”

I bet you can’t fucking wait to get rid of me.

I smile, injecting a hint of guilt into it. “Yeah. I’ve not spent as much time with her as I should have. Can I borrow a phone and ask her to come pick me up?”

“I can give you a lift if you want?” Vincent offers.

My molars grind together. I order myself to stop before he hears my mounting rage. “No need. Pack Ashe lives miles away from here, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Everleigh will probably push me to stay the night.”

Levi is watching me, light green eyes narrowed, as if he suspects I’m up to something.

He has good instincts. He should listen to them becausetheyare not ditchingme.Iam ditchingthem.

I put my unfinished toast on my plate, drain the juice from my glass, and get up. “I might as well get packed up to leave.”

They all freeze.

“Leave?” Xavier says slowly.

“Well, yeah.” I glance at them. “I was hardly going to stay here forever, was I?”

A strange silence fills the room.

I continue, “It’s time I got back to my normal life, and you got back to yours.”

Again, no one responds.

“The phone?” I ask Vincent, holding my hand out for it.

“Here.” Levi pulls his phone out of his back pocket and reluctantly offers it to me. “You can use mine. But you don’t?—”

I take the phone with a false smile. “Thanks.”

Vincent puts his mug down and moves to hand me something from his pocket. “I have?—”

“No thanks,” I cut him off with a serene smile. “You’ve been more than generous.”

In the entryway, I sit on the bottom step to call Everleigh and ask if she can pick me up.

“Did something happen?” she asks.

I glance at the kitchen. There hasn’t been a whisper of a sound since I left it. “Nothing. Just realized it was time to leave. How quickly can you get me?”

She’s silent for a beat. My tone was carefree and casual, but Everleigh is my big sister; she knows when something is up. She always has.

“Give me thirty minutes. Do you mind if?—”

“I don’t mind which alpha you bring, Ever.” Wherever she goes, one of her alphas is never far away. “Wait, were you in the middle of?—”

“On my way." She quickly hangs up, but not before I catch the sound of male laughter in the background.

I scrub out the mental image of my sister having sex with her alphas. I love her to death, but that is not something I want to be thinking about.

Three alphas watch me as I walk back into the kitchen. None of them has moved.

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