“That’s great, but I don’t want to imprint on someone. I want Luke. He is my choice. He is my animal’s choice. You just won’t respect that, though, will you? It’s why you recently tried to convince him to wait longer to claim me. Yes, I heard all about it from one of your many friends—they don’t all agree that you have the right to dictate when I claim my own mate.”
Noelle’s hands balled up. “You’re too young to bind yourself to someone.”
Blair snorted. “If it was one of the pack who wanted to claim me so soon, you’d have no problem with it.”
“I only want what’s best for you.”
“You love me. I know that. But your definition of what’s best for me is, in fact, what’s best for you.”
Noelle’s mouth opened and closed. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it is. But it doesn’t surprise me that you’d deny it. It doesn’t surprise me that, even now, when I’m about to walk out that door and join Luke’s pride, you’d refuse to admit you’re in the wrong.” Blair slid her gaze to Embry. “I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff in a day or so.”
“Mitch and I will pack it up for you,” Kiesha offered, and Mitch nodded.
Blair gave them a grateful smile and then glanced over her shoulder at Luke. “Let’s go.” She opened the door and walked out.
“Blair!” Noelle shouted. “Blair, you get back here right now!”
Instead, Blair ignored her and headed right for Luke’s SUV.
“You can’t leave, you can’t—let me go, Mitch!”
“We can’t stop her from leaving, Mom,” said Mitch. “She’s not a child anymore.”
Les called out her name, but Blair ignored him as well, waiting as Luke held open the front passenger door for her. He then placed a protective hand on the top of her head as she slid into the vehicle.
“Embry, do something,” Noelle pled as the group piled out onto the porch. “Stop him.”
Luke pinned the Alpha with a hard glare. “I strongly advise you not to try it. You’ve pissed me off enough already by not only letting Blair down but telling her to withhold things from me. You really want to make that worse?”
After a long moment, Embry sighed and then shrugged at his sister. “He’s her mate. I can’t come between mates.”
“Right decision.” Luke closed Blair’s door and then tossed her duffel in his trunk.
Noelle tried dashing down the porch steps, but Mitch cuffed her arm and said, “Mom, just … stop.”
Blair turned away from the scene to instead watch as Luke settled on the driver’s seat and clicked on his seatbelt. Saying nothing, he switched on the engine and drove off, his muscles bunched, his jaw hard.
“Be sure you want to come home with me, Blair,” he said. “If you’re not, I can take you to Elle’s apartment; you can stay there for however long you need. But if you come home with me, that’ll be it; there’ll be no going back. I won’t claim you tonight—you’ve had far too shitty an evening, and neither of us are in a good frame of mind. But if you sleep in my bed even just once, you’ll never leave it. I won’t be able to let you go. So be sure.”
She frowned. “Do you want me to hurt you? Is that what this is? You know better than to think that I’d say I was ready to be claimed if I wasn’t damn sure. I’d never mess with your head that way. But punch you in the throat for thinking differently for even a second? Yeah, that’s an appealing thought right now. Asshole.”
His lips quirked in amusement. “All right, then.”
CHAPTER THREE
Luke fought a smile at his mate’s humph. It was always best to stay on Blair’s good side. He’d learned that early.
Had it not been for the fact that she’d just confirmed she was ready to be claimed, he wouldn’t have it in him to smile right now. God, he was pissed. Exponentially pissed. Someone had been sending his mate gifts. Wooing her? Taunting her? He didn’t know. He knew next to nothing, because she’d kept it all from him.
More, someone had left a corpse on her goddamn doorstep. The corpse of a woman he used to fuck. A woman who’d lied to his mate that he’d betrayed her.
The entire situation was messed up.
He subtly drew in a breath, pulling Blair’s gentle feminine scent into his lungs, letting it settle him and his pacing cat. Peonies and pink pepper.
The first time he’d met her, her scent had filled him with a haunting, primal protectiveness that had been his constant companion for years. When the spice of a fully grown shifter female laced her scent, his possessiveness developed a sexual undertone—one that was exacerbated by the mating urge when it crashed into his consciousness three months ago, driving him to take her, bite her, and make her indelibly his.