Page 68 of Bride

It’s standard for the mate and children of the former Alpha to maintain formal relationships with the current leadership, and several Weres have been invited for the weekend. Tonight, though, it’s just the three of us at the table, and I’m too clueless regarding Were affairs to participate in the conversation. I try to follow as they talk about borders, alliances, other packs, but it’s like starting a triple-timeline TV show from season four. Too many plot points, characters, world-building details. What Icando is appreciate the complex dynamics at play during the meal, and the expert wayLowe navigates them. No one mentions that he killed Roscoe, and I’m grateful for that.

We’re escorted to our room early in the morning. There is one bed, which will luckily not lead to any weird sharing situation, because I’ll disappear into the closet the second the sun is up. I gesture at Lowe to sit and lift a finger to my lips. He gives me a confused look but complies without argument, even as I reach for his jeans pocket and take out his phone. For an Alpha, he’s surprisingly good at doing as I say.

I spend several minutes sweeping the place for bugs and cameras, and checking for strong Wi-Fi networks under Lowe’s increasingly amused gaze. When I find none, I catch his pitiful must-be-hard-to-live-subsumed-by-this-level-of-paranoia look, and I’m tempted to scrape a lint ball from my pocket and tell him that it’s state-of-the-art spyware, just to berightfor once.

He probably wouldn’t know better.

“Can I speak? Or would you like to espionage more?”

I glare. “Your golden boy Alex told me to do this.”

He shakes his head with a small smile. “Emery knows better.”

“So we’re not going to entertain the possibility that she’s going to slit our throats in our sleep?”

“For the time being.”

“Hmm.” I go through his phone to make sure it’s not being tracked. It’s an interesting, vaguely wistful window into Lowe’s life. Not that I expected to find it chock-full of MILF porn, but his most visited websites are European sports news and fancy architectural magazines that look as entertaining as a traffic jam.

“Sorry your baseball team is doing so poorly,” I offer.

“It’s doing fine,” he mutters, offended.

“Uh-huh, sure.”

“And it’s rugby.” He stands to retrieve my blood cooler.

“Anyway. Emery doesn’t seemthatbad.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Lowe opens the cooler, and then the secret compartment where we stowed the tools Alex gave me. “Mick has been collecting intel on the attacks and sabotages in Were territory, and it overwhelmingly suggests that she’s behind them. But she also knows that if she were to openly challenge me, she wouldn’t stand a chance. And it’s possible that several of the Loyals aren’t even aware of the kidnapping attempt. They might not know they’re on the bad side of this war.”

I stand by him, checking that all the equipment is accounted for. “Father used to say that there are no good or bad sides in a war.”

Lowe chews on his lower lip, pensively staring at the bags of blood. “Maybe. But there are sides I want to be part of, and others that I do not.” He looks up, pale eyes just inches from mine. “Do you need to feed?”

“I can do it in the bathroom, since we’re sharing this”—I glance around at the flowery wallpaper, canopy bed, landscape-based art—“marriage chamber.”

“Why would you use the bathroom?”

“I’m assuming you’ll find it gross?” Serena always said that there’s something repulsive about hearing blood being swallowed, though she eventually got used to it. I get it: I might be a (shamefully enthusiastic) peanut butter consumer, but I find most human foods gag-worthy. Anything that requires chewing should be launched into space via a self-destroying capsule.

“I doubt I’ll care,” Lowe says, and I shrug. I won’t babyproof his environment. He’s a big boy who knows what he can take.

“Okay.”

I grab the bag and make quick work of it. Blood is tooexpensive—and too hard to clean up—to risk spillage, which is why I use straws. The process takes less than two minutes, and by the time I’m done, I’m smiling to myself, thinking of the three-hour dinner I’ve just been subjected to and feeling superior.

Weres and Humans areweird.

“Misery.”

Lowe’s voice is gravelly. I dispose of the bag, and when I glance at him, he’s sitting on the bed again. I have the impression that his eyes have been on me for the entire time. “Yes?”

“You look different.”

“Oh, yeah.” I turn to the mirror, but I know what he’s seeing. Rosy cheeks. Blown-up pupils with a thin lilac rim. Lips stained with red. “It’s a thing.”

“A thing.”

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