Page 75 of Bride

“I understand the push for a ceasefire, I suppose.” Her eyes flicker to me. “Are you not worried about what this might mean for your pack, Koen? The Humans border your territory.”

“No.” Koen takes a bite of his steak. He and Lowe bickered like an old married couple over who’d get to eat mine, so I decided to give it to Amanda.Look, Serena, I’m making friends.“Not all of us live to stir up shit with other species, Emery.”

“Indeed. Some of you even have Vampyre spouses.” Her tone is chilly. Here I was, thinking she approved of our love.

“Some of us are lucky,” Lowe says, sincere-sounding, like our marriage is one of his proudest accomplishments, the culmination of years of deeply harbored love. Good actor. “Do you need to feed?” he asks, turning to me, voice instantly more intimate, and yep.

Great actor, great timing.

“Please.” I smile adoringly at my nurturing partner, pretending not to notice the gagging looks around us.

He holds my eyes and murmurs, “Let’s go, then.” We step out of the dining room just as Koen calls John afuckwaffle.

“Does he like to make enemies? Start fights? Watch the world burn?”

“Koen’s big on...” Lowe searches for the right words. “Unfiltered honesty.”

No shit. “Who did he challenge? To become Alpha, I mean.”

“No one. His mother was Alpha before him. When she passed, Koen just ascended.”

“How delightfully monarchic. And the pack was just okay with it?”

“Not all of them.”

“And?”

His hand presses on my lower back, wordlessly asking me to take a right. “There were challengers.”

“And?”

“He’s been Alpha for well over a decade, has he not?”

“Mmm. True. Are he and Amanda doing it?”

“She’s his second.”

“Well, are they?”

A brief pause. “Traditionally, the Alpha of the Northwest pack takes a vow of celibacy.”

Oh, God. “Did you?”

Lowe shakes his head. “Feels like it, though,” he murmurs, just as we reach the office. I immediately unhook a pin from my nape and drop on my knees in front of the lock, letting my dress bunch up my thighs. A few seconds later I open the door with a butler-like flourish.

“What?” I whisper, noticing the upturned corner of Lowe’s mouth.

He slips in first, scans the room, then gestures me inside. “Just picturing you doing the same...” He closes the door behind him and turns on the light. I see a fireplace so large it could comfortably sleep a midsize family—and a suspicious amount of antlered wall decor. “To break intomyroom.”

“Ah. Right.” I flinch. “About that, Iamsorry that...”

“You went through my underwear?”

“Yeah, that.”

He points at the computer on the desk with a small smile, and I dart there, giving the antlers a wide berth, glad to have something else to focus on. “I’ll hide your scent, but make sure you touch as little as possible,” he reminds me.

We don’t have much time, so I nod and hurry. Lowe already bugged several spots in the house, but what I’m doing will allow us to track and rifle through any communication from all of Emery’s devices. And since she doesn’t have an Alex, she’ll never realize.

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