Page 15 of The Reveal
Everyone knows him. Back in the day, they whispered about him because he was the leader of that biker gang. The outlaw element that hunkered down here in the hills, where they could do as they pleased and no one bothered them.
That was scary enough.
Tonight, though, it’s more obvious who and what he is.
Ty Ceridwen. Alpha wolf of the werewolf pack.
Here.
At my house.
4.
The huge werewolf pays me no mind, but that’s not exactly a comfort.
He moves so fast it makes my breath catch in my throat—so fast that I only realize he’s moved in the strangled second afterward, when I’m still standing there at the door and he’s pressing Maddox up against the far porch post.
By her neck.
I struggle to get a panicked breath in. I fight to unlock the heavy door.
“Don’t worry,” Maddox squeaks out, her remarkable eyes aimed my way, which is really something given the giant hand on her neck. “I’m fine.”
“Bold statement, babe,” the werewolf alpha growls.
Only then does the lock on the door open, making it frighteningly clear to me exactly how fast he moves. How vastly different he is from me, and by extension, how different Maddox is too.
It makes me feel fragile, and I hatefragile. It’s the gateway drug to an unpleasant end.
It’s also scary when I don’t have time forscary. There’s only living through the moment and hoping I get another one, repeat and reload. The gun is heavy in my hand.
But when I twitch a little, like I might lift it, Maddox shakes her head. Just slightly.
Just enough to keep me from it.
“Am I losing my fucking mind?” Ty Ceridwen growls, but it sounds more like a curse than a question. The same Ty Ceridwen I heard once burned down an entire cartel operation in the woods during Oregon’s illegal weed farm days, then dared them to come for him, and this was before we all knew he was a werewolf. Among other myths and legends that I am pretty sure, now, are all true. “Tell me I did not come home to hear from your own fucking brother that you ran off and shacked up with prey.”
“You don’t like it when I tell you that you’ve lost your fucking mind,” Maddox replies.
And her tone is so ...
My eyes widen. I realize with a start that she’s not scared. She seems whatever the opposite of intimidated is, standing back against the post as if it was her idea to go there in the first place.
I watch one of Ty’s massive thumbs move down the length of her throat, then up again, and I have no choice but to conclude it’s a kind of temper-fueled caress.
And that she ... doesn’t hate it.
“Pack your shit,” he growls at her.
I have to think that a normal person would be terrified by this. Instead, Maddox tilts her head back so he can grab more of her throat in that giant hand of his.
“I can’t,” she tells him, and she doesn’t sound the slightest bit sorry about it. “It’s not that I don’t want to, except ... I don’t really want to.”
“There comes a point, and you know it, when we are going to be out of choices,” Ty says in a low voice that seems to reverberate through the night outside, and even in me, like one of those asshole Harley engines that splits the sky in half. “And when I saywe, babe, I mean you.”
“You’re fully aware of what happens if you go there,” she says as she shrugs, but there’s something different in her gaze. Something harder.
It’s obvious to me that this is an old argument.
