Page 113 of In Doubt
The man slams his fists down again so hard I’m sure he’s going to bend the wood. “Be thankful it’s not your heads,” he growls at the four of us. “Because if you ever come within a yard of her again … if you ever look her way, I’m going to crack your skulls and use your brains to make omelettes.”
I snort a laugh and he rounds on me, his caramel eyes burn with fury and I notice they’re the same colour and shape as Giorgie’s.
“You’re Giorgie’s brother, Riccardo, right?” He glares right at me, his nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge. “I’m Jake and this is Levi.” I point to the others behind me. “Dylan and Aiden. We’re friends of Giorgie’s. Is she here?”
In the next flash, Ric has me by the scruff of my collar. “Are you fucking deaf? You’re not going anywhere near my sister.”
I wonder if every suitor of Giorgie’s receives this treatment or whether we’re the lucky ones.
“Why?” I growl.
“Why?” Ric spits back. “WHY?!” he repeats, his face turning purple. “I don’t know what you did to her, but I had to fly all the way out here to pick her up. She left for this trip so excited she could hardly contain herself, and then she begs to come home a week early, and looking like her whole world ended.”
“I would never hurt her,” I growl. “I’m in love with her.”
Ric’s grip on my shirt falters for a moment, then tightens. “There are plenty of people, of alphas, out there who hurt the people they claim to love.”
“But I’m not one of them,” I hiss. “And I’d rip the throat out of anyone who tried to hurt her.”
“Then do you care to explain to me what the hell happened here? Why the hell she wants to come home? Why she looks like someone broke her heart?”
“I think you ought to ask your sister,” I say softly.
“I have but she won’t tell me,” he says, his voice cracking slightly. He knocks me backwards, and steps away. “All she will tell me is that she had some kind of panic attack and it shook her up.”
“She thought someone was filming her,” I explain not wanting to betray Giorgie’s trust, but needing to give him enough to understand we have his sister’s best interests at heart. “They weren’t,” I say, lifting my palms as the murderous intent returns to his features.
He scowls at me.
“We would have brought her home, escorted her I mean, if she’d‘ve let us,” I add. “It nearly killed me to let her go like that.”
“We?” Ric asks.
“We’re a pack,” I tell him.
His brow furrows. He examines me, then Levi and the others before drawing himself up to his full height, his legs planted wide, his arms drawn against his chest, blocking our access to the lifts.
“It seems you had your chance with my sister and you blew it. She doesn’t need a bunch of fuck boys,” he emphasises the word ‘boys’, making every hair on my body bristle with annoyance, “messing her around.”
“We’re not fuck boys,” I growl. “And we’ve no interest in messing around.”
Giorgie’s brother scoffs, pointing to my face. “My sister told me about you, about all the crap you’ve got up to. It was in the fucking student paper–”
“That’s all bullshit! Some fucker twisted what really happened,” Levi snaps.
“Look at you,” he says, sweeping his hand in front of him and taking us all in. I peer at my packmates. We’re all covered in dirt and grime, our shirts damp with sweat.
We haven’t shown up looking like the most suitable set of suitors.
But dammit, I know she’s meant to be ours.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “We look like shit and we’ve fucked up.” He nods and I take a deep inhale. “But I love her and I know this pack is where she belongs. We can undo all this crap and make it right. We can keep her safe and protected. We’re determined. We will work our arses off, every one of us. When we put our minds to it, nothing can stop us. And we’ll plough every ounce of that grit into making Giorgie happy.”
“Too fucking right,” Levi adds, the others nodding.
Ric tilts his head to one side, peering straight into my eyes. I meet and hold his stare, not flinching for a moment.
Finally, he says, “Well, if that is the case, what the hell are you going to do to put things right? Giorgie should be out there on the dig of her life. Instead, she’s curled up in bed, begging to go home.”
