Page 17 of Broken Arranged Mate
Her body jerks, her chin tucking to her chest, her hand snapping to her side like a robot. I pause, confused, until moments later she raises her head, fury burning in her eyes, and I realize what I’ve done.
“Sorry,” I croak, meaning it. “I…I’m still getting the hang of that.”
She’s breathing hard, and there are tears at the corners of her eyes. I stand there for a moment, wondering how this is going to go—I’ve just imposed the weight of the alpha leader on her, an omega. Dorian has told me to use it sparingly, and in my fear, I accidentally whipped it out and exercised it on her.
“Ash, I’m sorry,” I repeat, taking a step closer to her. She eyes me warily, a flash of something startlingly close to fear moving over her expression.
“I want to go up,” she says, and though I’m worried about the structural integrity of the thing, I feel bad enough about what just happened to nod and try the handle. When it doesn’t work, I use a tiny bit of force to buckle in the door, so we can walk inside.
It’s dusty, and a critter skitters along the back wall, but thankfully, there are no shifters hiding out. We climb the spiral staircase around the outside, higher and higher, until we finally reach a trap door. Ash pushes against it with surprising strength, and when it pops open, it rains a shower of dust and grime down on us.
When that clears, bright light shines right through.
“Wow,” Ash breathes, pulling herself up through the hatch. I follow her to find a large room, something like a control room, circular and featuring floor-to-ceiling windows. Just outside the room is a large balcony encircling the entire space, with a tall metal railing.
It smells damp, dusky, old. I imagine Grayhide shifters up here, watching for enemies, flashing codes to their men on the ground.
“This is it,” Ash says, spinning around and looking at me definitively.
“This is…what?”
“Where we’re getting married,” she says, and for some reason, the sound of it coming from her mouth makes my stomach twist, so it takes me a second to catch back up.
When I do, I feel my brows drawing together. “I thought we were getting married in that warehouse.”
She’s shaking her head. “No—you can’t—it doesn’t matter. I want to do it here. Looking over both territories.”
I bite my tongue. It doesn’t make sense to me—in fact, I don’t understand why we didn’t go through with the ceremony right there during that council meeting.
Maybe I don’t understand it, but as I watch Ash meander around the perimeter, looking out at the land, I recognize the low, pitching feeling of something in my chest.
Satisfaction.
And I’m feeling it at the prospect of making her happy. Something I couldn’t do with the house.
“Fine,” I relent, and the smile that stretches over her face is enough to make up for everything else that’s happened today.
Chapter 10 - Ash
Because of our stop, we’re a little late meeting Dorian at the border, and I can tell the few minutes are weighing on him as he paces back and forth. I see the moment he registers us coming down the road, nearly half a mile away from him, and he finally stops pacing, stopping near his truck.
When we get closer, I realize there’s someone else with him.
“Oren, man!” Aidan booms, stepping forward to throw his arm around Oren, who doesn’t duck in time to avoid the hug. “How long has it been?”
“Not long enough?” Oren grumbles.
Aidan looks to me, his blonde-gray hair glinting in the deep orange of the setting sun. Even now, after everything with Jerrod Blacklock and becoming a father, there’s something boyish about him, a certain lightness to his step that I’ve never seen in Dorian’s or Oren’s.
It’s almost like Aidan refuses to let the world weigh him down. Sometimes, I’ve wished I could reach out and take a little bit of that for myself.
“How areyou, Ash?” Aidan asks, cutting his eyes back to Oren with a joking lightness. “Is he treating you okay?”
“What kind of question is that?” Oren scowls, crossing his arms and looking the very image of the wordgrumpy.
I laugh, shrug one shoulder, and say, “About as good as a Grayhide can, I suppose.”
That makes Aidan laugh—he loves a good multi-layered joke. “Touche,” he relents, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
