Page 38 of Forbidden Bonds
“Who is that?” Larissa asks.
I can feel her trembling. My baby is so fucking brave it stuns me and makes me mad all at once.
“He runs the government black operations. Infiltrations like the one Ethan was on when he rescued you…” I direct my glare at the alpha. “I still don’t know why he’s so pissed at you. Can’t think what one little omega, and prisoner of the Uncorrupted, could have done. Care to enlighten me?”
A tic thumps in Ethan’s jaw. His eyes are showing a lot of fucking white.
“Don’t,” Larissa begs, her hand moving against my chest. Instinctive. Soothing. Only her eyes are clouded with pain, and my hackles are up.
Images slam into me hard and fast.
The drugs they’d administered forced her heat along. Now they were shut in a nesting chamber together, Larissa and Ethan. She was hurting. He paced like a caged beast.
“I’d sooner cut off my dick than put it in your scheming cunt.”
His thoughts ripped into her, purposely cruel. He was thinking about snapping her neck, picturing it in horrific detail.
She didn’t know he was mated when she picked him.
She hated herself.
She still wanted him.
His fingers wrapped around her throat.
She whimpered and the scent of slick saturated the air.
She was flat on her back, his powerful bulk caging her. His fist wrapped around her throat. “I’d rather fuck a corpse, bitch,” he snarled, lips beside her ear. “When I get you out of here, as I’ve now decided I will, I’m going to find the biggest motherfucking bull of an alpha and watch him ruin your cunt.”
He smirked. “I wasn’t joking about the corpse,” he whispered. “Make the show good for them, and I promise I will get you out. Betray me, and I’ll snap your fucking neck.”
Larissa jerks back. I blink, my chest heaving, as I piece together what I saw. With a roar, I launch myself across the room with Ethan’s murder on my mind.
Jordan, Kade, and Lucian all try to cut me off. Not fucking fast enough. I have my fingers around his throat, and we both go crashing into the coffee table. A scream. A loud crack asthe coffee table gives up and splinters under our combined weight. Someone has me in a chokehold. I don’t give a fuck about breathing, myself, I just want the motherfucker under my fingers to give out first.
Another scream, my fingers are peeled from Black's throat, and I’m yanked away.
Ethan staggers up, chest heaving. I’m like a raging bull, and it’s taking everything for Jordan and Kade to hold me back.
I snarl at my brother while stabbing a finger at Ethan. “He touched my fucking woman. He touched what’s mine, and then he punished her for it. When she was in heat and couldn’t even help herself. Threatened to kill her! To have her fucking ruined! Give me the fucking gun, Lucian, I’m gonna off the fucker right now!”
A tiny body slams into me. It takes the wind out of me in the way no one else could. Small hands petting. A sweet, high, anxious purr.
“It’s okay, Rhett. It’s over. That was in the past. His mate was pregnant. I couldn’t see it when I picked him. I didn’t know. But it hurt him to touch me. It hurt him so much. And then he came home, and he had to tell her what he had done—what he needed to do so that we both didn’t die. There was no good way out of that scenario.”
The fight goes out of me. I shake out of the restraining holds and crush her to me. I still want to fucking gut Ethan.
“My motherfucking coffee table,” Lucian grouches. “I liked that table. The right height. The perfect color. I had a fancy fucking designer make the shit for me.”
“So, no one is going to address the elephant in the room, then?” Ethan says. “If word of this gets out…”
“Word of this isnotgoing to get out,” Lucian says decisively. “The government has already done enough to Rhett. I will blow their HQ the fuck up.”
“We all have things at stake,” Ethan says, calm now. “They won’t hear about it from me.”
I lift my head slowly, trying to play catch-up with what the fuck they are all talking about. “I’m missing something,” I say slowly, unease burrowing deeper in my chest.
I glance down, finding Larissa’s worried eyes on me. “No one told you what happened. You couldn’t possibly have guessed so much, and in such detail. I was thinking about it—strong, volatile emotions. Probably Ethan was too. Rhett, you just read my mind.”
