Page 18 of Pack Ruin
“Luke,” Brand said softly.
I shuffled my feet. “I think Margarette suspects, but she didn’t press the issue.”
“Finnick?” Samuel’s voice was tight, but Brand shook his head.Samuel didn’t seem comforted. “If anyone discovers this, if Aidan finds out… At the very least, I’ll have to throw her into the cell with Glen. The Council must be notified?—”
Brand began to growl, a low, threatening rumble.
“Mate bonds, mate bond preeminence,” Verona began muttering and stood, rushing to a shelf. “We have almost everything ever recorded about pack law, the ancient laws, in this room. True mate bonds should always trump any other law. We just need to find the right way to frame it… There must be away. There’s always a way.” She dropped another stack of books on the table. “You boys, read for a way out. Flor? Pass that over.”
She held a hand out imperiously, and I closed the dusty book where I’d signed my name. I’d hoped she wouldn’t look, but I saw her face change as she opened it back up and read it. She staggered for a moment before regaining her balance. Then, carefully, she placed the book back on the stand, and closed the glass doors around it as if she was trying to put a pin back in a grenade. She didn’t say a word about what I’d written, and neither of the men asked, though I was almost certain Brand knew.
Brand knew everything, just like he knew when I’d had enough.“We need to sleep,” he announced and held out a hand, nodding to his relatives, who were both reading furiously. Desperately. “Join me, little flower?”He led me to a side door, not toward the bedrooms.
“Where are we going?”
His smile was as bright as his gaze. “It’s time for me to show you my lake.”
“Is it everything you hoped?”Brand asked the next morning as we sat side by side, staring out at the calm water.
“It’s exactly as you described it,” I whispered. “The most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”
Brand had run beside me for three miles or so the night before, from the Alpha’s Den to a cabin hidden in a grove of aspen trees. He’d insisted on carrying me over the threshold, muttering something about old ways.
Someone had obviously freshened up the small one-room bungalow, and left a picnic basket filled with food for breakfast. We’d slept, woken up and made slow, sweet love to each other, Brand’s eyes gleaming like twin moons in the darkness. Then we’d gotten dressed in sets of generic forest-green sweats that had been stored in a cedar chest, and he’d led me to the water.
At first, the lake had been dark, reflecting stars. But as the sun rose, it had turned a lighter blue and gold, then pink, orange, and bright turquoise. Mountains on the far side of the valley reflected in the water, until it was a perfect mirror of the opposite shore and sky.
It truly was the most peaceful, gorgeous place I’d ever seen. Ducks called across the water, swallows dipped to drink as a soft breeze blew, and for the first time in my life, I felt utterly safe. And completely incomplete.
I tried not to show Brand what I was feeling, but he lifted me onto his lap, feeding me purple grapes and squares of cheese, and didn’t mention the tears on my cheeks. “We’ll all live together,” he said at last. “Here, or somewhere like this. We’ll build a home, with enough rooms for as many mates as you call to your side, my queen.”
I pressed a kiss to his lips, his beard tickling my face, and sighed. “What did I do to deserve you, Brand Becker?”
He shrugged. “Must have been something pretty amazing. If I say so myself, I’m a catch.” At the same moment he said that, a giant trout leaped out of the water. I snorted at Brand’s teasing, then laughed at his pinkened cheeks.
“He’s almost as much of a catch as me,” a voice chimed in from the trees behind us.
“Glen?” I gasped and jumped up. “Did you escape?”
Blue eyes sparkled like the water, and white teeth flashed as he stepped out from under the trees, wearing dark gray sweatpants and a red flannel shirt.
“There’s no cage that could keep me away from you, Flor.” Glen struck a pose like a bodybuilder as I ran to him, except one of his hands was filled with flowers. “Oof!Woman, has Grandma Ida been feeding you?” he teased, pretending to stagger under my weight as I hugged him.
“How did you get out?” I ignored his teasing and pushed back to stare at his face. He seemed fine. Uninjured, but a little tired. There was a tension in his eyes, though. Fear.
Of course there was. He had an order of execution from the Council hanging over his head.
Before he could answer, Brand joined us. “Has Grandma Ida been feedingyou, is the question? Say, baking you cakes with files in them?”
“Not a file.” Glen grinned and pushed his curls away from his forehead, looking like a toothpaste commercial I’d seen once. “She slipped a key right underneath a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, though.” He held the slightly bedraggled bouquet of wildflowers out to me. “I brought you a courting gift.”
“A what now?” I sputtered.
“Damnit,” Brand muttered for some reason.
Glen winked at him. “Better catch up, Bearman.”
I smacked Glen’s arm. “A courting gift? What are you thinking? You’re a wanted criminal! You stupid ass, what in the hell are you doing out here in the open?” I grabbed the flowers in one hand and his forearm in the other, dragging him toward the cabin. Brand jogged ahead of us. “If anyone sees you?—”
