SWNOVELS Chapter 335
Chapter 335
EMILY
I end up spending more time than I probably should with Ronan and by the time I make the long run back to Rathborn pack
lands,
I’m in a better mood than I’ve been for a long time.
He’s just so easy to talk to, and I got to ask some of the burning
questions about vampires that I’d needed clarified.
If Ronan thought my questions were odd or extremely specific, he
didn’t say so.
Part of me wonders if Ronan is someone to whom I can tell the
truth of what I am.
But immediately, the part of me that loathes myself and fears
rejection shies away from the idea.
Ronan is a new, neutral friend, not influenced by my distant past
growing up as daughter of the Alpha in the Rathborn, or my recent
past and the terrible things that happened to me.
I don’t want him to start looking at me differently–or worse, start looking at me like I’m some freak–so I’m not going to tell him the
truth.
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At least, not any time soon.
2/6
It’s nice to think if we remain friends long enough, I might be able to tell him one day and he’ll not only accept me, but maybe
there are ways in which he can help me.
Of course, I have to make sure no one ever, ever finds out about
Ronan.
A wolf being friends with a vampire?
They’d never understand it. And they’d definitely never accept it.
They’d probably assume he was up to no good and forbade me
from ever seeing him again.
Or worse, I realize with a shiver. Axel is the Slayer, so he might simply kill Ronan.
I can’t let that happen.
I refuse to let that happen.
Ronan is the one good thing that’s just mine right now, and I’m not going to give him up or put him in danger.
I’m lost in thought as I lope through the woods in wolf form, and
I register that I’ve just crossed over the territory line back into Rathborn pack lands when this huge form streaks out of nowhere
and barrels right into me.
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It knocks me over, and it’s not until I find myself pinned to the ground that I register the scent and realize it’s Axel.
3/6
I whine and bare my teeth, snapping my jaws at him, but he easily
avoids me.
After a moment, he raises himself off me and then shifts.
“Shift back, Emily,” he tells me in a furious voice as he gets to his
feet. “You will explain yourself.”
I think about defying him and simply darting off into the woods.
But Axel is bigger, stronger and far more skilled than I am.
I doubt I’d get far before he ran me down.
And he’s already pissed off enough as it is.
If I run, it’ll just enrage him further and probably make my inevitable punishment even worse.
But, I think as I shift, whatever punishment he has in store for me, it will have been worth it after everything I found out about
Ronan, ending with the feeling that we’re growing closer, and maybe he can understand me in a way no one else ever will.
Reluctantly I shift and rise to my feet.
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“What do you want?” I ask, crossing my arms.
4/6
“What do I want?” he repeats incredulously, as if he’s so angry, he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. “Your impudence
knows no bounds.”
I make a face at him, but before I can say anything in response to that positively Victorian–sounding statement, he grabs me and
hauls me into him.
Then he’s scenting me while I try to fend him off.
“Would you quit doing that?! I’m not your mate!” I wriggle out of
his grasp, but of course he looks angrier now.
Surely, he can’t smell Ronan on me, not with the scent blocker he
was wearing.
I could barely scent Ronan myself when he was standing right in
front of me.
“You’ve been with another male. The same one I scented on you last time!” he shouts at me, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d
think he was angry and jealous.
But he has no right to be jealous.
Not when he so callously rejected me.
“You’re imagining things,” I tell him dismissively, and try to step
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past him, but he’s having none of it.
5/6
He grabs me again, and this time his grip is hard enough to bruise.
“Tell me where you’ve been, and who you’ve been with,” Axel
growls in a low, dangerous voice.
My heart trips over itself and then beats in triple time.
Part of me is scared of what he’ll do this time.
Something worse than cuffing me to his bed?
But I endured worse at the hands of the old Roberts Alpha.
I won’t sell out my new friend, and risk Axel turning his Slayer
wrath on an innocent vampire.
I must almost be hysterical at this point, because I almost laugh at
the fact I thought the phrase innocent vampire.
Who would have ever believed I’d put those two words together in
a sentence?
But Ronan is innocent as far as I’m concerned.
He certainly doesn’t deserve whatever fate would befall him should Axel go after him.
“I’m not telling you anything,” I tell him in a mostly calm voice, that
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only betrays the slightest tremble.
His eyes narrow and his expression becomes icy.
6/6
“Clearly you want to learn your lesson the hard way,” he replies,
and my blood runs cold at his tone of voice. “You’ve only got
yourself to blame for what’s about to happen.”
B