It was a question to myself, forcing me to reply with hate, but instead, it was fire coursing through my veins. Desire that an unmated alpha in his forties had no right to feel.
Especially for her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
I shocked her just as I shocked myself, and she turned back to me. “Knots. There are knots.”
For a second, I couldn’t understand what she meant. I furrowed my eyebrows in question, and she snorted to herself, tipping her head back and looking at the ceiling before looking back at me. “I didn’t know about knots.”
I nodded, and instead of letting her go, I gestured to the fridge. “Beer?”
She was entitled, and we haven’t exchanged one word that wasn’t hostile since she got here. But in the light of the moon, when she looked so fragile, and my cock was still hard from watching her whine over the bed… I wanted a truce.
It took her a moment to accept, but eventually she nodded and came back in. I handed her a can and jerked to the side, making my way to the living room. I didn’t wait for her, but I wasn’t surprised when I heard her steps following me in. My eyes castup once again, wondering where the others were and why the doctor wasn’t the one explaining to her about knots.
“It wasn’t right for Karl to keep everything from you,” I said as I sat down in the armchair.
Her expression closed in a second. Her eyes flashed with anger, but then she lowered her eyes, sitting across from me on the bigger couch. Like a switch, I just watched her control herself, and I decided that if she could, I could too.
“Yeah, I don’t know what he was thinking. Even if he had bad memories…”
“He didn’t,” I said.
She snorted. “How the fuck do you know?”
I grunted and sipped from the beer, and she followed my lead.Weapons down, I reminded myself. She didn’t know anything. Defending her father wasn’t a crime, was it? If my heart wasn’t so full of hatred, I’d even think it was honorable.
“He had a good life here,” I finally said. “I’ve known Karl since he was a child.”
“But he left and asked me with his dying breath never to come back,” she challenged me.
“Maybe pack life wasn’t for him,” I said out loud something I’ve been thinking about for over twenty years. “He wanted to do more. He talked about traveling a lot. I thought he would calm down eventually. But once it was clear we weren’t getting an omega, things only got worse.”
The words coming from my mouth were bitter like unripe fruit. I wanted to spit them between us and draw a line. I wanted to push her away and blame her for being his, but instead, I sipped from my beer.
“He and Mom traveled a lot,” she said, and those tears that she was keeping in her eyes were running down her cheeks. “It was their favorite thing to do.”
Silence wrapped us like a warm blanket, and we both drank without saying anything else. I thought this was it, the moment I let go of my anger and started anew. I thought she was going back to her room, but once she finished her beer, she placed it over the coffee table without a coaster. Sven was going to kill her.
“It’s fucked up he never told me.” She distracted me from her water rings over the wooden table.
“It’s better you found out here than with your pack,” I grunted.
I ignored the stab I felt in my heart and grabbed a coaster before putting my can down.
“You know I don’t want a pack, Anders.”
The way she said my name had my insides twisting, and suddenly, I was too aware of the situation. I was still just in my boxers, and she was sitting naked from her waist down, careful to keep her legs closed or I’d get an eyeful of her cunt.
“You don’t know them yet. Maybe you do,” I argued even though I wanted to keep her.
Keep her?I couldn’t keep her. Not when she wasn’t mine, not when she was my friend’s daughter, and not when these few words were the only ones we ever exchanged without a bite.
“All I want is to go back home and—”
I could understand the urge to go back home. I loved our village, and I’d struggle being away from home. “You love Brazil.”
But confusion flashed in her eyes, and her eyebrows furrowed. “I like my country, yes. But it’s not why I want to go back home.”
