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Chapter 16

A hurd knock on the door had pulled Elise from her sleep, she could barely keep her eyes open, and worse, the pain she was feeling felt like she had been barreled by a heavy boulder.

Elise should have known how much she would have regretted it. Regret the decision to drink so much at the party last night.

Now that her head was aching so bad, she felt like it had been split open, a punishment for her greedy and guilty thoughts from last night with Rygan.

She could still taste him on her skin. She groaned as she rolled out of the gray cotton sheets, her dress draped to the floor while she had slept naked.

She moved to take a robe from resting on an armchair, wrapping it around herself, as she heard Hana’s voice echo from the door. “Elise?”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” she mumbled as she pushed another lock of hair obstructing her view from the door as she sat down back by the foot of the bed.

The look on Hana’s face was almost comical; she was trying so hard to burst into laughter as she saw Elise’s face. Elise had told her to speak casually to her, and now they were friends.

It felt all new to her, especially since Elise never had a friend back at her pack as all her days were filled with training to become the perfect wife for her future mate. “Oh my God, El, don’t tell me you listened to one of Beta Tazmin’s dares and drank all the wine.” She appealed.

“Ugh, I wish… but I did this all to myself.”

“Why?”

To forget about Rygan. But she didn’t dare say that out loud, not when she would be shamed by Alvira, who for sure wants her out of this pack.

Hana then rushed to get a jug of water, filled a cup up, and handed it to Elise to drink. She thanked Hana quickly as she took the cup, a drink of the cool liquid felt like a refreshing drop down her throat as she sighed in relief.

“How about going to the hot spring? It’s on the top floor, but no one ever goes there. I heard it can help with the headache and relieve stress still in your body. You can go there while I prepare a hangover soup for you. How about it?” Hana suggests.

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was too good and enticing of a suggestion to refuse, and Elise was far too intrigued; she had never seen a hot spring in a house before, especially since her pack never dealt with the outside human world, but rumors held that the Black Moon Pack did have outside yet strict relations with them and learned more unique builds from them.

Elise made up her mind as she trudged out of her room, heading through the quiet house. Hana told her Rygan didn’t need a swarm of maids, especially during the day. So the house is fairly empty.

And right where Hana had mentioned them were the white-lined doors. Elise pushed them and walked in head first. Her face was immediately warmed by the heating steam of the pool. A gasp escaped Elise’s lips as she let out a breath in awe of the gray marvel- lined walls and a window deck that let light into the space.

There was no one here, and Elise then took off her soft cotton robe, letting it rest on one of the small benches as she dipped her naked body into the water.

A moan of relief escaped her lips as she dipped fully in. She needed this silence to think about what happened last night. From what Emmett had tried to do and how, for a moment, she felt like something had taken over, Emmett’s body was by the wall. Like her wolf had taken over.

Elise raised her arms to check for the bruise from Emmett’s brutal hold last night, only to see that nothing was there. Strange, she thought as she dipped both her arms back into the warm, steaming water.

She recalled what happened after that-bits and pieces while drunk-and how Rygan had come in. The next thing she knew, she was pulled to the wall, with his hand between her skirt and her hands wrapped around his neck.

“Ugh,” she groaned, recalling how shamelessly she moaned before she came from just his fingers. “You’re so st**d,” she muttered to herself before she dipped her whole body back into the water. Until then, only bubbles remained on the surface of the pool. After spending at least thirty seconds submerged in the water, she didn’t hear the door open, and someone else had come into the hot spring,

When Elise felt her lungs start to ache, she pulled herself out of the water, pushing her hair back in a sleek drag. That was when she noticed a change in the calm, cool scent that surrounded her; now there was a hit of mint in the air.

“It looks like the hangover hit hard,” Rygan’s voice echoed through the spring, her eyes immediately meeting his stormy ones, and her stomach did a flip from just the intensity of his gaze on her.

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Chapter 16

That was when she noticed his gaze had moved closer, down to the expanse of her naked breast, with her nipples hard and peaked from the hot water.

“Why are you here?” She snarled.

“It’s my home; shouldn’t I be?” He called, making her face flush in embarrassment. It had been a mistake to come here-a dangerous mistake, especially being left in a place like this alone with him.

She climbs out of the water, not caring as his gaze turns dark in lust at her naked frame. She quickly reaches for her robe, tying it fast as she marches to the door. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be here,” she said. Elise reached for the doorknob when she stopped.

Rygan’s large, warm hand slid over hers as she felt his warm chest press against her back. “You don’t need to leave, Elise; I don’t mean it that way,” he countered, but Elise knew it was dangerous to be here with him.

Her mind could hardly think with him around; it was never safe to try to act like his very presence didn’t affect her, and something inside her was thrashing, forcing a need to touch him. Elise wondered if it was her wolf inside.

“I told you, Rygan, it’s better to be apart; I don’t want anything to do with you, so please,” she whispered, and Rygan’s hold loosened against the doorknob.

She finally escaped the room, walking down the steps in record time and to her room on the second floor. Her eyes were already blurry with tears while walking; she hadn’t noticed someone was coming the other way and bumped into them. “Oh!-I’m so sorry,” she quipped.

“El?” A voice called as she looked up to see Kaide, his eyes staring with concern and confusion, a dark gaze clouding over them as he caressed her face.

“What happened?” he asked as his jaw tightened. Elise knew that he was being protective of her, and she didn’t want to think about Rygan, so she shook her head in response to his questions.

“Nothing, Kaide, nothing at all.”

How was she going to tell him she’d slept with the man he told her to avoid? No, she would deal with it herself. She’d shut all her emotions out.

That’s the only ways she knew how.