When He's Ruthless (The Olympus Pride 4)

Beside him, Donal said, “That would be my guess. As for why the body was brought here … It’s possible that someone just means to scare Blair.” The Beta shrugged, scratching at dark stubble that was peppered with the same silver as his equally dark hair. “This seems like psychological warfare to me.”

Mitch pushed away from the wall. “But why would anyone want to scare her?” he asked, lifting his compact shoulders, clearly unconvinced. “It’s not like she has any enemies. Macy’s pack mates might well be furious with her for what she did to the fox a month ago, but they’d hardly kill one of their own to frighten her.”

Noelle gave a delicate shrug. “It could have been a member of the Olympus Pride. I would imagine that some aren’t too happy about Luke’s plan to mate a bush dog.”

Blair felt her eyelid twitch, and her female peeled back her upper lip. “You are not pinning this on his pride.” She wished she could say it shocked her that Noelle would try to use this situation to further her own agenda, but it honestly didn’t.

“Don’t be willfully blind, Blair,” said Noelle, her voice fairly vibrating with impatience. “You naïvely persist in believing that his pride will want you to join. Like it or not, being the true mate of one of their own won’t be enough to make them welcome you.”

“They’ve never made me feel anything but welcome.” Particularly his family. Throughout the past six years, they’d made an effort to build a relationship with her, especially his sister Elle and his aunt Valentina. Even when Blair was young, the two women had often took her shopping or on girly outings. Noelle was too intimidated by Valentina—a take-no-shit wolverine shifter—to veto the trips.

“Just because they’ve never been rude to your face doesn’t mean that they want a bush dog for a Beta female.”

“Even if you’re right, it doesn’t mean they’d do something to scare me. I can’t even see why they’d bother. They’d gain nothing from it.”

“Luke’s kind don’t need a rational reason to do any of the things they do.”

Okay, Blair couldn’t really dispute that.

“People say our inner animals are unstable. Pallas cats take that to a whole other level.”

Blair couldn’t argue with that either. They might not be much bigger than domestic housecats when in their animal form, but the precious, snuggly-looking creatures were infeasibly strong and alarmingly vicious. Pallas cats didn’t pick fights, but they were always sure to make the first move—attacking with an unparalleled ferocity that was nothing short of hellishly disturbing. In sum, they were batshit.

Of course, Noelle used that to give credence to her “Luke’s not good for Blair” claims. And while Les had come to accept that the pallas cat was Blair’s mate, he remained stiff and informal toward him. Luke didn’t deserve that. All he’d ever done was try to make her life easier.

Luke might not have entered her world until she was twelve, but it didn’t feel that way, because he’d been such a huge part of it. He called every day, visited regularly, took her places, bought her gifts—determined that she’d never feel anything but safe, protected, and cared for.

Essentially he’d been, in a word, her guardian. A person she’d trusted above all others. A person she went to when she needed advice or simply someone to listen. He’d also been her one and only crush, not to mention her first kiss. The latter, to her frustration, hadn’t come until she was seventeen.

She almost smiled at the memory of how she and Kiesha—who’d only ever had eyes for Mitch—had back then made plans to each take their chosen male off-guard with a kiss. Blair had surprised Luke all right. Initially, he’d started to pull away from her, but then she’d sucked on his tongue … and he’d ravished her mouth, stealing her breath and sending her hormones into a tailspin as their—for lack of a better word—attraction finally found an outlet.

He’d also bitten her neck hard enough to permanently mark her that night. So she’d marked him right back. It had only seemed fair.

There had been no more make-out sessions until Blair turned eighteen. He’d also then treated her to a fair few orgasms, but he’d refused to take it further despite her best—and unrepentantly shameless—efforts to seduce him. He was set on taking her virginity on the very same night he officially claimed her.

Blair loathed having to wait. How could she not, when he was one giant magnet to her? It wasn’t merely about their predestined connection, it was because he was Luke. A fiercely loyal, unrelenting male who might have a darkly calculative streak but never let down the people who mattered to him.

In short, she adored him. He’d made it impossible for her not to. He focused so much energy on her. Made her feel like the center of everything. It was kind of dizzying at times.