My mouth clamped shut. I wished I could take those words back, because they were a vulnerability I didn’t need.
Leighton didn’t give me a look of pity, though. The look she gave me was nothing like the ones Mercury and Ambrose had been giving me for years. She rolled her eyes and placed a hand on my chest, shoving me back down to the couch.
“If you think a bond mark can be brushed off so easily, I don’t think I can help you,” she said.
“It’s going to fade,” I rebutted.
I fought down the arousal I felt at having her hovering above me. At first glance, she was dainty. Her dominance was less ‘in your face.’ That made her all the more dangerous, and knowing she could ruin me turned me on. Her aura worked differently but would trump mine any day of the week.
“Sure,” Leighton agreed. “But she gave it to you in the first place. Have you considered the meaning of that? Because I don’t think it was inconsequential.”
I’d never in my life been anything but inconsequential.
My parents had me purely so there would be a Loranger heir—not because they wanted a child. Dad and Pop’s late wife hadn’t been able to bear children, but when she’d died of cancer and their third pack member had passed away from grief right behind her, they’d shacked up with a twenty-year-old omega supermodel.
Mom.
She’d get anything she wanted, under one condition.
A child.
Just one, so the Loranger name wouldn’t die when the remnants of the pack did.
So, I’d been born, the process as efficient and unemotional as creating a test tube baby. I was raised by nannies while Mom partied away her twenties and Dad and Pop worked themselves into early graves.
There was never a thought in any of their heads about me. I was their means to an end.
“Hormones are a powerful thing,” I muttered.
I couldn’t sit still, not with those thoughts swirling around in my head. My attempt to stand was blocked by Leighton. We ended up chest-to-chest, and my breath caught.
This whole situation was as dangerous as I’d thought. I’d pushed my way in, following my stupid whims and running toward the waving red flags, but they didn’t want me. They couldn’t.
What use was I?
All I did was push boundaries and fall apart at the tiniest hint of rejection.
Like right now.
Pushing past the female alpha, I headed for the kitchen. Mercury would be somewhere. He could be a barrier so I didn’t have to have this conversation that Leighton was adamant about forcing on me.
Her hand caught my arm, and I ripped it out of her grasp with a hiss. Where she touched me heat seeped into my veins, vanilla cream lingering on my skin.
“You’re not what I always thought you were,” she said.
I forced myself to turn around, waiting to see the disappointment in her face.
Instead she wore a little smile, bordering on a smirk. She stared into my eyes, seeing everything I was good at hiding from the tabloids and the women I fucked.
“What am I, then?” I asked. Hearing the answer terrified me.
“I thought you were a whiny fuck boy who was angry my brother had the balls to turn you down.”
My teeth sunk into my lip, holding back my wince.
“But you’re broken.”
“Wow, can’t believe you figured that one out,” I snapped sarcastically.
