14
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Damon
The conference room at Kildare Industries could’ve stored meat. January had turned the city into a frozen wasteland, but somehow the conference room managed to be even colder. I sat across from Carter Chen, pretending to give a damn about water rights while my body staged its daily revolt against existence.
Chen looked good. Healthy. Fed. Probably fucked on the regular. There was no hiding that he loved his mate, and I didn’t realize I had never noticed the shine in his eyes since being mated.
The bastard probably slept eight hours a night too. His suit fit properly instead of hanging off a frame that had given up on muscle mass. Everything I used to be before my wolf decided to throw the world’s longest temper tantrum over a rejected mate.
“The Thompson River access remains contested,” Chen slid a stack of documents across the mahogany table. The papersmight as well have been written in ancient Greek for all I comprehended. “But that’s not really why I’m here.”
Of course it wasn’t. Nobody drove three hours to discuss water they’d been arguing about for decades. Beside me, Ren’s pen scratched against paper, taking notes I’d never read. My beta had gotten good at running meetings while I sat there impersonating furniture.
Chen’s dark eyes studied me with the kind of intensity that made my skin crawl. “I was there that night, at your ceremony. I saw Rhea Thornback. I have met her before, her father was a close ally of our family when we started to reform our omega factions.”
He waited for me to say something, but I didn’t. Her name punched through my chest cavity. My hands clenched under the table, claws sliding out just enough to pierce my palms. The pain helped. Physical damage I could handle. It was the other kind that was killing me.
“Damon, Isawher that night. In heat, before you went all alpha on me.” Chen’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but it was also laced with caution.
“I also knew your brother.” Chen continued, either missing or ignoring my reaction. “Laziel was strong, but he was also reckless. Always pushing boundaries.”
“Your point?” My voice came out level. Amazing what you could manage when your options were control or public breakdown.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table in a way that would’ve made my etiquette teachers faint. “My point is that an omegain heat couldn’t have overpowered him. Not without help. Or unless he wanted her to.”
The words hung there while my brain tried to process them through three months of sleepless nights and bond sickness. Chen was suggesting... what? That Laziel had gone to Rhea’s room willingly? That someone else had been involved? That the scenario I watched every night in my dreams wasn’t what actually happened?
“The evidence was clear. She was found with his body.” The party line tasted stale in my mouth, rehearsed and hollow.
“Evidence can be manufactured. Scenes can be staged.” Chen’s tone stayed conversational, but his eyes bored into mine. “In my territory, we’d investigate more thoroughly before condemning amate.”
The criticism landed exactly where he’d aimed it. Right in the guilt that lived between my ribs. Ren shifted beside me, probably remembering his own questions that night. Questions I’d shut down because looking at my brother’s corpse had murdered any capacity for logic.
“Are you suggesting someone framed her?” The words emerged before I could stop them.
“I’m suggesting that grief makes terrible detectives.” Chen stood, straightening his jacket with the kind of precision that spoke of old money and older power. “And that living with those decisions seems to be killing you faster than any investigation would have.”
He paused at the door, one hand on the handle. “For what it’s worth, I’ve seen alphas in territorial rages. The damage patterns are distinctive. Your brother’s wounds...” He shook his head. “Think about it, Kildare. While you still can.”
After he left, I made it to my private bathroom before my legs gave out. The shaking had gotten worse lately, these tremors that started in my core and radiated outward until standing became optional. I stripped mechanically, dropping clothes wherever they fell. The shower spray hit my skin at temperatures that should’ve hurt but barely registered. Physical sensation had become muted, everything filtered through the static of a dying bond.
I braced one palm against the tile and tried not to think. But Chen’s words had cracked open a door I’d nailed shut three months ago. What if he was right? What if I had missed the truth that was staring right in front of me? What if…
No. I’d held Laziel’s body. Seen the claw marks. Scented Rhea all over the crime scene. The evidence had been overwhelming.
Except her scent would’ve been everywhere in her own room. And claw marks could come from any shifted wolf. And the investigation had been rushed because my mother had demanded immediate justice, and I’d been too destroyed to argue.
My traitorous mind conjured her face that night. Not the mask of political calculation my mother had painted, but genuine shock. Terror. The way she’d begged me to believe her, tears streaming down the same cheeks I’d kissed hours before. The bond between us screaming her innocence while I carved it out of her neck.
My body responded to the memories without permission. Three months of nothing, and suddenly I was seventeen again, hormones overriding higher brain function. The shower water traced paths down my chest, and I remembered her hands following similar routes. The way she’d touched me with curiosity and hunger, trusting me to guide her through her first heat.
She’d been virgin-tight and fever-hot, taking me with little cries that drove my wolf insane. Every sound she made, every clench of her body, branded itself into my memory. The way she’d submitted completely, then clawed my back in passion that left scars I still carried. How she’d begged for more even when her body shook from overstimulation.
My hand moved with the vicious rhythm of a man possessed, rough and unforgiving, punishing the erection that throbbed angrily in my grip. I tried to think of anything else, board meetings, spreadsheets, dry tax law, but the images of her flooded in, unrelenting. Rhea, flushed and wrecked beneath me, her body slick and trembling, green eyes wide and trusting even as she shattered on my cock.
Those memories surged like gasoline through my veins, rushing blood to my dick until it pulsed painfully in my fist. I pictured the way she’d opened for me, tight and desperate, begging for more with every trembling breath. My knuckles whitened with the force of each stroke. I fucked into my own hand like it was punishment, like pain would erase the need clawing at my gut. Skin slapping skin, the sharp drag of calloused fingers only feeding the spiral.
